You can actually take shortcuts when it comes to fitness. Are you good at it?

Fitness is not all about working hard, nor is it about being as diligent as a bull. Sometimes you also need to "take shortcuts". This is not about cutting corners, but about integrating reasonable resources within an effective time to achieve better exercise results.

Exercise should be moderate

If you master the rhythm of strength and weakness during half an hour of aerobic exercise, you can achieve twice the result with half the effort. That is, adding gentle recovery time between intervals of high-intensity exercise. For the same half-hour aerobic exercise, this kind of exercise with varying rhythms will consume twice as many calories as exercise with a steady rhythm.

Just like watching a movie, there are build-ups and climaxes, and not necessarily all of them have the same rhythm and style. The same goes for exercise, it needs to be done in different levels. You can't just keep sweating profusely without getting the desired results.

Dr. Katherine Jackson, director of the Department of Kinesiology at California State University, pointed out: "If you do high-intensity exercise continuously, you will soon be exhausted, but intermittent rest and recovery can help you maintain this high-intensity level.

Cycling with one leg

When you're exercising on a scooter, you can increase the intensity of the exercise by intermittently pushing one leg harder on the pedals. At the beginning, you can pedal with both legs at a moderate intensity for 4 minutes, and then focus on your left leg and pedal with high intensity. After 30 seconds, change your right leg to the main power leg and push for another 30 seconds. Then, pedal both legs together at a moderate speed for 4 minutes as a way of adjustment and recovery.

In this way, push hard on one leg for 1 minute every 4 minutes, for a total of 30 minutes. Michael Yusef, manager of fitness trainer education at Chelsea Pyles Fitness Center in New York, says this single-leg bike exercise can help you burn 20% more calories.

Split exercise time

Yusef also recommends that fitness enthusiasts split their daily exercise into two parts. For example, if you used to run 5 kilometers every day, you can split it into 2.5 kilometers in the morning and 2.5 kilometers in the evening. "When you shorten your workout, you can try to increase the intensity so that you burn more calories over the same distance," he says. Or, if you do an hour of aerobic exercise every day, you can run on the treadmill for 20 minutes, climb on the stair climber for 20 minutes, and then sprint on the spinning bike for 20 minutes. The effect will be much better than if you exercise on just one machine for an hour.