Burn calories by just walking with this 40-minute workout

Walking is a really great activity for helping people lose weight safely and its a super cost-efficient way to stay fit. But it's not always sunny outside and there are days when you won't want to leave the house. In this case, you can stay active and burn over 400 calories without going out and it only take 40 minutes.

With a routine like this you can ditch your best shoes for walking for a day and instead just nip into some comfy activewear and set yourself up in your living room or wherever it is you like best to workout in your home. 

This walking based routine was created by personal trainer Johanna Devries, also known as Grow with Jo on YouTube, and has a slight spin on it to maximise the number of calories burned during this workout. She has made this a Tabata-style workout. Tabata is a form of HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) that is typically has shorter rest periods than a usual HIIT workout, and is consequently more intense. 

Devries explains the benefit of making this a Tabata session, "This workout is programmed to give you bursts of movement in short intervals with rest periods . The goal is to get your heart rate up, keep it up, and recover, and to challenge yourself to go stronger each time."

Grow with Jo's 40-Minute Walking Tabata Workout

There are five Tabata circuits included in this 40-minute workout. Each exercise within these is performed for 20 seconds, followed by 10 seconds of rest. Although this is an intense routine, it's also low-impact so this is a good workout for beginners to try out or for anyone trying to rebuild their fitness.

Devries demonstrates every exercise in the video to allow people to follow along with her and there are audio cues to signal when an exercise or rest period has begun and ended. 

According to this study published in the Journal of Sports Science and Medicine, Tabata workouts that feature a mix of bodyweight and plyometric exercises can improve cardiorespiratory endurance and helped people burn more calories than they did completing a normal workout. 

However, it's also been found that not everyone enjoys the intensity at which Tabata is performed at. In an eight week study, researchers found that not all participants enjoyed Tabata as much as alternative forms of exercise and this was especially significant as the weeks went on.

Devries workout does strike a balance between intense bouts of exercise to bump up the heart rate and increase calorie burn with walking periods to catch your breath and level out the demand of the session. But if Tabata isn't for you, there are plenty of other low-impact ways to burn calories at home such as training on one of the best elliptical machines regularly.