Calories burned on spin bike

sphrrson

I am a 24 year old female and weigh 163 lbs. I spin for about an hour a day on a stationary spin bike at my gym. I spin with some resistance but not a whole lot and the machine says I burn roughly 700 in an hour. Is this correct?

hill8570

Sounds overblown. Anything over 10 calories a minute (which is working out pretty doggone hard) is very suspect.

missiontofitness

Agreed. The most I've done is around 300 calories in an hour, and that was with a pretty vigorous and consistent effort with a good amount of resistence, and I was in the low 130s/upper 120s at that point (I am also 5'4). That was what the machine told me, so I imagine it could have been overestimated a little bit.

Since you are about 30lbs over what I was at the time, I highly doubt you burned double what I did.

You can consider a HRM for a better guess of your calorie burn.

miriams76

It's possible. When I do half an hour of vigorous spinning, my heart rate monitor watch says I've burned around 350 calories even if the resistance isn't all that high (compared to the highest level). I can still get my heartrate up above 85% for most of the duration and perhaps that is why?

NJL13500

I currently weight 164 and I wear a heart rate monitor during spin class. I consistently burn between 550-600 calories per class.

bigd66218

The highest amount of calories I burned was 51 minutes during a spin class which was 1,000 calories. I wore a Polar A5 heart rate monitor and was in the red zone for 40 minutes of the workout with a highest reading of 203 bpm. Never again, I almost had to go to the ER since it took over 5 minutes to get my heart rate down to an acceptable level. The 700 calories estimate seems a bit high, probably closer to 500-525 calories. The only way to get the correct number is a heart rate monitor and track. At the time that I hit the 1,000 calories my weight was 255lbs. height 6'6".

zipa78

sphrrson wrote: »

I am a 24 year old female and weigh 163 lbs. I spin for about an hour a day on a stationary spin bike at my gym. I spin with some resistance but not a whole lot and the machine says I burn roughly 700 in an hour. Is this correct?

I have yet to find a piece of fitness equipment that didn't lie through its teeth when it comes to estimating calories burnt.

Here's something that I found on spinning.com

According to Harvard, a 125-pound person can burn an average of 210 calories in 30 minutes of stationary cycling, while a 155-pound person can burn 260 calories and a 185-pound person can burn 311 calories.

cardbucfan

The 700 seems way too high. I spin several times a week. I'm 5'9 and weigh 145 right now. My polar f4 HRM tells me I burn around 10 calories per minute so an hour would be around 600-and I push myself hard. That number includes the calories I would have burned just being alive though so my extra calorie burn is around 540.

sijomial

Could well be possible (but....).
On a stationary bike last night at a very steady pace (zone 3, which is my pace for multi hour rides) I burned 668/hour. Power meter and properly calibrated HRM counts both very similar.

862 is my highest in an hour but that's pushing very, very hard to exhaustion.

Caveat - I'm an experienced cyclist and also your description of "some resistance but not a lot" puts a lot of doubt in my mind.

By the way your weight has little to do with cycling effort on a stationary bike unless you are standing cycling!

DeeTee68

Here is a formula based on 1kcal/kg/hour from The Compendium of Physical Activities to work out calories burnt on a Stationary Cycle.

Bodyweight (kg) x Metabolic Equivalent value (MET) x Duration of 60 mins (shown as a percentage of a decimal fraction of 60 mins)

Very Light Effort 3 MET
Light Effort 5.5 MET
Moderate Effort 7.0 MET
Vigorous Effort 10.5 MET
V.Vigorous Effort 12.5 MET

So if you are 73.93kg (163lbs) doing a light effort for an hour
73.93 x 5.5 x1, your calorie burn would be 406 calories.

As the others have said exercise machines over estimate calories burnt.
Better to use this proven formula as a guide but not gospel.

sk1982

I'm a little bit heavier than you and in order for me to reach the 10 calorie a minute my HR needs to be above an average of about 155. A typical hour long spin/RPM class for me would burn in the region of 450-550 calories with peak HR's of 170-180....i.e. working PD hard. Good chance your hour of solo spinning is only burning 300 odd calories - get yourself to a class and turn that resistance up - it works!

kcjchang

Too high, but that depends on what you call "some resistance". On my trainer at ~18 mph, I'm burning about 700-800 cal/hr based on a virtual power meter calibrated to the resistance curve for my trainer. (Until price comes down, this will have to do.) Also the more fit you are the lower the cal/hr at a given intensity. I'm still getting back into shape.

DeeTee68

kcjchang wrote: »

Also the more fit you are the lower the cal/hr at a given intensity. I'm still getting back into shape.

not based on fitness but weight look at the formula I posted above. the MET rate stays the same no matter how fit you are. Scientifically proven formula.

kcjchang

DeeTee68 wrote: »

kcjchang wrote: »

Also the more fit you are the lower the cal/hr at a given intensity. I'm still getting back into shape.

not based on fitness but weight look at the formula I posted above. the MET rate stays the same no matter how fit you are.

MET is very subjective and it take years of training and coaching. The rating does not change but your gauge of the effort to rate should; what used to be hard becomes easier as one gets more fit and should be modify accordingly. It's reflective of the adaptation of the skeletal muscles from stress (e.g mitochondria density and numbers, Type II density and metabolic, etc and up to genetic limits of course).

Power meter is as close as you can get as it does not lie.

sphrrson

Thanks everyone! This helped me a lot