Calories burned in hot vinyassa yoga class?

bjz82much

Does anyone have any suggestions for tracking calories burned in a hot yoga class that includes lots of movement (and sweat!)? I know the default in the database is too low because I used to wear a heart rate monitor to class and found I was burning about 2.5x more than what the database said. But, I don't really like wearing the monitor for yoga, plus sometimes I attend slightly less intense classes than when I was wearing it so I can't use information from previous classes. Any suggestions?

vorgas

It doesnt burn any more calories than a regular yoga class of the same movement intensity (maybe 5 calories more or so).

Heart Rate Monitors are able to calculate calorie burns by measuring the volume load placed on your heart during steady state aerobic exercise (like jogging, biking, etc).

Yoga is not steady state. It is mildy aerobic. Your HR is responding to constrictive loads, not volume loads. In a hot class, it is pushing more blood to create sweat, not pushing more oxygen. The sweat is from an external factor, not an internal factor, so it is not a reliable measurement either.

Personally, any yoga teacher who told me hot yoga burned more calories than normal yoga is somebody who clearly doesnt understand basic physiology, and I wouldnt trust anything they told me.

demoiselle2014

Hot yoga makes people feel like they are working extra hard, but that's an illusion created by the heat.

brianpperkins

First of all, a HRM is useless for caloric estimates from yoga. Second, according to testing done by Colorado St. University hot yoga burns about the same number of calories as walking for the same length of time.

Hornsby

An hour of yoga, around 200-250 based on my results.

bluefish86

I use this as a point of reference: http://www.yogaaccessories.com/Calorie-Count-Hatha-Vinyasa-and-Hot-Yoga_b_70.html

Hornsby

bluefish86 wrote: »

I use this as a point of reference: http://www.yogaaccessories.com/Calorie-Count-Hatha-Vinyasa-and-Hot-Yoga_b_70.html

That is pretty over exaggerated there. I would expect that though since it's a yoga site promoting yoga.

brianpperkins

http://www.news.colostate.edu/Release/7359

Based on the comparison to calories burned from walking, it appears the researchers reported gross rather than net calorie burns.

Hornsby

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25141359

Good study for Bikram Yoga.

90 minute session - varied from 179 to 478 kcals

Participants were guided through a standardized 90-min yoga class performed in a hot environment using Bikram's Standard Beginning Dialogue, while expired gas was collected and heart rate was recorded.