8 Great Low-Impact Workouts for Weight Loss

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Summary: Want to lose weight but your joints won’t let you? Try one or more of these low-impact workouts that are excellent for weight loss.

You’ve probably heard quite a lot about High Impact Interval Workouts being a great way to lose weight, but what if that high impact affects your joints and makes exercising painful? It’s far better to do a low-impact workout that doesn’t cause you pain because you don’t want to put that kind of stress on your body and you want to find a way to exercise that you actually enjoy.

However, just because you can’t do high impact workouts doesn’t mean you can’t get your heartrate up and increase your metabolic burn. There are plenty of low-impact exercise that do just that, and here are eight to pick from for your next workout.

  

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1. Cycling. Whether you have a bike set up in your living room, you use one at the gym, or you are outside getting fresh air, cycling is a great way to get your heartrate up without stressing your joints.
2. Hitting the pool is a classic workout for anyone with an injury or joint pain. Moving through the water creates much less resistance and no impact, allowing you to get your heart rate up and use muscles throughout your body.
3. Rowing. Rowing outdoors can be more difficult to come by, but a fun sport you can do alone or with a team if you get connected to a club. You can also utilize the rowing machine in your gym. Just be sure to power the move with your legs and finish the stroke with your arms and back.
4. Barre. This ballet-inspired workout has become incredibly popular over the past few years, and for good reason. Barre classes utilize, you guessed it, a barre, to do low-impact series of small movement moves that will leave muscles sore that you didn’t even know you have.
5. Kettlebells. If you’re really swinging and working hard, you can burn up to 12.5 calories per minute with kettlebells, which is comparable to going for a jog, but you’re also gaining muscle at the same time.
6. Power Yoga. This type of yoga keeps you in motion almost the entire workout, holding each pose for only a few breaths before flowing into the next move. Power yoga keeps your heartrate up, engages your muscles, and improves flexibility.
7. TRX stands for total body resistance training and utilizes suspension straps during regular moves, like squats, planks push-ups, and pull-ups, making your core and other muscles work harder.
8. Circuit Training. Circuit training is strength training, but you move through a sequence of strength moves without stopping, which gets your heartrate up and helps you to burn more calories than you would in regular strength training.