Written by Denis Cindric, NC Personal Trainer, O2 Fitness @ Falls
Adding Sprints to your routine can help you get those abs you've always dreamed of! As you probably know, sprinting has such a high intensity that it burns a ton of calories.
Hidden Benefits of Sprinting:
Basically, when you perform vigorous exercise, it takes your body many minutes and sometimes hours to recover from the exercise. In order to recover your body needs to take in more oxygen. Oxygen is necessary for fat burning, and following intense sprinting your body will burn more fat even after you stop working out. This is just an example, but let's say that sitting and watching tv burns 2 calories per minute.
After a good sprint workout, your body might burn 4 calories per minute for the next 2-24 hours. 2 hours is 120 minutes times an extra 2 calories per minute equals an additional 240 calories burned. Some research on elite sprinters has shown that their metabolism can be raised even 24 hours after an intense sprint type workout. 24 hours is 1440 minutes. Imagine if your metabolism was 1 calorie higher each minute following an intense sprint workout-- that's an additional 1440 calories a day!