High-Impact Exercise Pros and Cons

When it comes to cardio exercise, there's no shortage of activities to get your heart rate up, from machines to home exercise, from outdoor activities to group fitness classes.

One major thing to consider, when thinking about your cardio workouts, is the impact of your exercises. The amount of impact can have a big effect on how many calories you burn. The impact level of your exercises also directly affects how strong your bones are. High-impact exercise has many advantages, but it isn't for everyone.

Basics

High-impact exercise is one of the most effective ways to burn more calories since it's easier to get your heart rate up when you're jumping around more. High-impact exercise also strengthens the bones. Experts know that subjecting the bones to stress, like high impact activity, causes them to add mass in response.

Similar in the way that strength training creates more muscle, when you subject your muscles to a resistance they aren't used to, they grow stronger in response. But high-impact exercise isn't for everyone, of course. 

Not everyone enjoys the jarring nature of things like jogging or jumping rope and, of course, not all joints like that kind of thing either. Still, if you can work some high-impact into at least some of your workouts, you'll likely find you get better weight loss results.

Pros and Cons

If you're on the fence, there are some good reasons to add some high-impact exercise to your regular workout routine, even if it's just a bit at a time. But it's not always roses and butterflies. Most people who can't do high-impact exercise know it, but others find out only after giving it a try.

Keep in mind that if you've tried high impact but quit due to pain, you can try cross training to build up your muscles first. Strong muscles act like brakes and can help decelerate high impact movements. Strength and muscular contraole can lead to more success during high impact exercise and decrease the chance of of injury or overuse/stress-related injuries.

High-Impact Exercises to Try

You can always try high impact exercises like running, but you can also avoid the constant impact by adding little bursts of high-intensity exercise to a regular, lower impact routine. Try choosing some of the following moves and adding them periodically throughout your workout:

• Burpees
• Froggy Jumps
• Jogging in Place
• Jumping Rope
• Jumping Jack
• Long Jumps
• Plyojacks
• Side to Side Jumping Lunges
• Squat Jumps

High-Impact Workouts

Below are some great high-impact workouts to try:

• 40/20 High-Intensity Interval Workout
• Tabata Cardio Workout
• Treadmill Cardio Circuit