How many calories do we actually burn during exercise?

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

The number of calories we burn during physical activity depends on a lot of factors, so the readings on the treadmill are something like the average temperature in the hospital. Today we will understand what factors, besides weight, height, gender and age, affect the number of calories we burn, how to speed up this process, and also look at the tables with the average value of calories burned during functional training, yoga or weightlifting. …

The computer in a treadmill, elliptical trainer or stepper only requires you to enter your age, height and weight, and then gives you the arithmetic mean. Much more information is needed to understand how many calories you are actually burning.

The simulator is not able to measure your body temperature, and also does not take into account the surrounding climatic conditions, that is, air temperature, humidity and the presence or absence of precipitation.

Calories burned are influenced by your muscle mass, body fat percentage, fitness level, metabolic rate, body temperature, ambient temperature, relative humidity, rainfall or rainfall, barometric pressure, altitude, while running - your wind and wind direction, sleep patterns and even your diet.

For example, T is temperature, B is humidity. The combination of high T and high B is very difficult; high T and low B are already easier; high B and low T - normal conditions; low T and high B - very cold; low T and low B - heat transfer is above average.

Breath

With an increase in physical activity, the pulse rate rises, breathing becomes intermittent and frequent. This is because the heart is trying to pump as much oxygen as possible for the muscles to produce ATP (adenosine triphosphoric acid). It is she who is the fuel for our body during training.

Adenosine triphosphate (abbreviated ATP, English ATP) - nucleoside triphosphate, plays an extremely important role in the metabolism of energy and substances in organisms; First of all, the compound is known as a universal source of energy for all biochemical processes occurring in living systems.

ATP was discovered in 1929 by a group of scientists at Harvard Medical School - Karl Loman, Cyrus Fiske and Yellapragada Subbarao, and in 1941 Fritz Lipman showed that ATP is the main carrier of energy in the cell.

The main role of ATP in the body is associated with the provision of energy for numerous biochemical reactions. Being a carrier of two high-energy bonds, ATP serves as a direct source of energy for many energy-consuming biochemical and physiological processes. All these are reactions of the synthesis of complex substances in the body: the implementation of the active transfer of molecules through biological membranes, including for the creation of a transmembrane electric potential; implementation of muscle contraction.

It turns out that during such intense training, 5 kcal is burned for every liter of oxygen that you inhale. Thus, if we compare two people with approximately the same physical parameters, who do the same exercises, more calories will be burned by the one who breathes more often.

It also means that the less prepared you are, the harder your workout will be and the more frequent your heart rate and breathing will be. This means that you will burn more calories than a more prepared person. If you want to burn more calories, breathe more often!

Tables

For running and cycling, there are special sports applications that, together with additional gadgets (heart rate monitor and sports watches), more or less accurately calculate the number of calories spent on training. For example, Garmin watches such as the Fenix 3 and Forerunner 920XT theoretically take the ambient temperature into account, while the Strava app takes the weight of the bike into account.

But for other activities - yoga, Pilates, step aerobics, functional training, weight lifting, and so on - getting even average data is much more difficult. For this, special tables are compiled, which will give you only a general idea of the number of calories burned. But that's better than nothing. We provide you with data for the main types of training.

Aerobics - 5.2 kcal per hour per 1 kg of weight.
Fast dances - 7, 4 kcal per hour per 1 kg of weight.
Football - 4.4 kcal per hour per 1 kg of weight.
Volleyball - 4, 8 kcal per hour per 1 kg of weight.
Jumping rope - 5, 6 kcal per hour per 1 kg of weight.
Classes on an elliptical trainer - 7, 4 kcal per hour per 1 kg of weight.
Climbing stairs / step - 7, 4 kcal per hour per 1 kg of weight.
Stretching - 1, 8 kcal per hour per 1 kg of weight.
Weight training - 3, 8 kcal per hour per 1 kg of weight.
Ashtanga yoga - 6 kcal per hour per 1 kg of weight.
Static yoga - 3.2 kcal per hour per 1 kg of weight.
The exercise cycle is 4.4 kcal per hour per 1 kg of weight.
Easy step aerobics - 7, 4 kcal per hour per 1 kg of weight.
Intensive step aerobics - 10.6 kcal per hour per 1 kg of body weight.
Exercise bike (medium load) - 7, 4 kcal per hour per 1 kg of weight.
Exercise bike (intensive load) - 11, 1 kcal per hour per 1 kg of weight.
Rowing machine - 7, 4 kcal per hour per 1 kg of weight.
Intensive lifting of weights - 6 kcal per hour per 1 kg of weight.

Calculator to calculate the calories burned during strength training.

Swimming is a separate story, since the watch does not take into account the number of calories that the body spends on heating, because the water temperature is always lower than body temperature.

Usually swimmers use four times more energy than athletes. Swimming at a speed of 400 m / h burns 3 kcal per 1 kg of your weight per hour, slow swimming with a breaststroke - 6 kcal, slow swimming with a crawl - 7 kcal, fast swimming with a crawl - 8 kcal.

You can manually calculate the approximate number of calories burned during your swimming workout and compare with the indicators that the application will give you based on the data obtained from your watch.

What is Cooper's test

If you are wondering what methods athletes use, we suggest you try calculating your fitness level using the Cooper test.

Kuper's test - the general name for a series of tests for the physical fitness of the human body, created by the American doctor Kenneth Cooper in 1968 for the US Army. The most famous variation, which consists in a 12-minute run: the distance traveled is recorded, and on the basis of this data conclusions are drawn for sports or medical purposes. Kenneth Cooper has created more than 30 such tests, but this one is widely used in professional sports such as football. When performing the test, 2/3 of the muscle mass is involved. Considering that Kenenise Bekele holds the world record in the 5,000 meter race and is 12: 37.35, then he would have covered about 4,800 meters in a 12-minute run.