Strength Exercises and Calories

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michaela4910
michaela4910 Posts: 531 Member
in Fitness and Exercise
Does weight training burn calories, do you track them and how do you figure how many calories you burned?

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  • juggernaut1974
    juggernaut1974 Posts: 6,212 Member
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    michaelallanson wrote: »
    Does weight training burn calories, do you track them and how do you figure how many calories you burned?

    Yes, though in my experience, not all that many.

    As with all exercises, it depends on the intensity and duration.

    MFP has an entry under "cardio" exercise for "strength training". It tends to give me about 200 calories per hour. I find that to be a little high for me based on trial & error.
  • michaela4910
    michaela4910 Posts: 531 Member
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    I think I work hard, I work out at about 80-90 percent one rep max but I rest one minute between sets. It seems so different for calorie burn from cardiovascular work.
  • Ninjaninja1
    Ninjaninja1 Posts: 7 Member
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    It does burn calories but over a longer period of time. You will still be burning calories hours after the workout.
  • Azdak
    Azdak Posts: 8,281 Member
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    There are two questions here, which is why we he answers are often unclear. 1) Does strength training burn calories? Yes, of course it does. 2) How much and can I track it? How much varies quite a bit, and the tricky part is that you can't really measure it accurately. Its not easy to do even in a research lab--just too many variables.

    Because of that, some people don't bother--they use it as "buffer" in case they overeat. Others take a conservative number as an estimate and use that.

    If you are doing mostly strength training, then it might be more important for you to log some number.

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