STRENGTH TRAINING AND CALORIE BURN

ngolden3320

Can anyone help! Is there a way to figure out how many calories you are burning when using the machines at the gym? I work on arms and abs every other day and then legs and abs on the opposite days. I work up a sweat using them, so I'm pretty sure I am burning some sort of calories.

sijomial

Sweating has very little to do with calorie burn.
Feeling hard has very little to do with calorie burn.

Just enter the duration (under the cardio section of your diary) and you will get a rough estimate based on METS.
There's no practical way to be accurate for strength training but it's not a high calorie burner anyway (that's not the reason for doing it of course).

SugarDarlin1959

I was wondering the same thing. The thing is that cardio burns calories while doing that exercise while weight training continues to burn calories afterwards, rebuilding muscle fibers. My thought is to use a heart rate monitor to see the percentage of increase while lifting. Look in the Store section here and see what will be compatible with MFP, like Garmin.

ngolden3320

Thanks. I always do my strength after cardio

piperdown44

One, weightlifting, regardless or whether free weights or machines, doesn't burn all that much in the way of calories. I enter my lifting sessions under "cardio" "weightlifting" and the calorie burn of "1".

Two, a HRM is set up and calibrated for steady state cardio, not weight lifting. You'll not get an accurate calorie burn from lifting weights with a HRM.

Three, the amount of "after burn" from lifting weights is minimal.

Many, many topics on this around here with links to the information (research papers, journal articles, etc.)

ASKyle

I do not log strength training, as there is no accurate way to do so.

Exercise for health, calorie deficit for weight loss.

TeaBea

ngolden3320 wrote: »

Thanks. I always do my strength after cardio

You probably want to do your strength training first because form is important there, whereas not so important for cardio.

SonyaCele

i dont log my strength training, its just part of my daily activity calories.

sijomial

@SugarDarlin1959

The thing is that cardio burns calories while doing that exercise while weight training continues to burn calories afterwards, rebuilding muscle fibers.

Nope. Both strength and cardio have an EPOC effect - and it's so small it's insignicant.

My thought is to use a heart rate monitor to see the percentage of increase while lifting.

It would have to be a very sophisticated unit with specific mode for strength training. The vast majority of HRMs will give a hugely inflated number.

RoxieDawn

piperdown44 wrote: »

One, weightlifting, regardless or whether free weights or machines, doesn't burn all that much in the way of calories. I enter my lifting sessions under "cardio" "weightlifting" and the calorie burn of "1".

Two, a HRM is set up and calibrated for steady state cardio, not weight lifting. You'll not get an accurate calorie burn from lifting weights with a HRM.

Three, the amount of "after burn" from lifting weights is minimal.

Many, many topics on this around here with links to the information (research papers, journal articles, etc.)

Yep to this!!! +1

toughmudderMN

I wouldn't log it. I have tried to use heart rate monitors during lifting sessions and it gives me crazy numbers. I figure an hour of heavy lifting burns roughly 300-400 calories.

Azdak

toughmudderMN wrote: »

I wouldn't log it. I have tried to use heart rate monitors during lifting sessions and it gives me crazy numbers. I figure an hour of heavy lifting burns roughly 300-400 calories.

Which is a perfectly fine number. Not sure why so many people think it's a negative to say that.

sijomial

Azdak wrote: »

toughmudderMN wrote: »

I wouldn't log it. I have tried to use heart rate monitors during lifting sessions and it gives me crazy numbers. I figure an hour of heavy lifting burns roughly 300-400 calories.

Which is a perfectly fine number. Not sure why so many people think it's a negative to say that.

True dat! Seems people encourage food logging of tiny amounts (despite them also being estimates) but another estimate of 200/300/400 calories expended gets frowned on.
If you are calorie counting, to me, it makes sense to have stab at both sides of the equation.

hazleyes81

TeaBea wrote: »

ngolden3320 wrote: »

Thanks. I always do my strength after cardio

You probably want to do your strength training first because form is important there, whereas not so important for cardio.

Not quite true. Bad form when running can just add easily lead to injury (chronic or acute) and decreased performance.

AlisonH729

toughmudderMN wrote: »

I wouldn't log it. I have tried to use heart rate monitors during lifting sessions and it gives me crazy numbers. I figure an hour of heavy lifting burns roughly 300-400 calories.

According to this list which is what comes up if you Google this question (just sayin') you'd have to either be on the larger (read: heavier/taller) side of 'weight lifting - general' , or fall into the 'weight lifting - vigorous' category to burn 300-400 calories an hour lifting. Which may be true for some people but not me. Womp womp. (Its all relative though I suppose.) Anyway, I still log it with the 'strength training' entry under cardio even though its only 82 calories for 30 minutes.

Whenever I see people questioning how many calories strength training burns my initially reaction is, "Not as many as you want it to."

toughmudderMN

AlisonH729 wrote: »

toughmudderMN wrote: »

I wouldn't log it. I have tried to use heart rate monitors during lifting sessions and it gives me crazy numbers. I figure an hour of heavy lifting burns roughly 300-400 calories.

According to this list which is what comes up if you Google this question (just sayin') you'd have to either be on the larger (read: heavier/taller) side of 'weight lifting - general' , or fall into the 'weight lifting - vigorous' category to burn 300-400 calories an hour lifting. Which may be true for some people but not me. Womp womp. (Its all relative though I suppose.) Anyway, I still log it with the 'strength training' entry under cardio even though its only 82 calories for 30 minutes.

Whenever I see people questioning how many calories strength training burns my initially reaction is, "Not as many as you want it to."

I should clarify. I weight 230 pounds and am pulling some heavy weight ( 385 DL, 315 Squat and 255 bench for reps). In general if you goal is to be a caloric deficit any calories that you burn from weight training that are not logged are like a bonus towards your goal. ( assuming you are hitting your deficit goal)

AlisonH729

toughmudderMN wrote: »

AlisonH729 wrote: »

toughmudderMN wrote: »

I wouldn't log it. I have tried to use heart rate monitors during lifting sessions and it gives me crazy numbers. I figure an hour of heavy lifting burns roughly 300-400 calories.

According to this list which is what comes up if you Google this question (just sayin') you'd have to either be on the larger (read: heavier/taller) side of 'weight lifting - general' , or fall into the 'weight lifting - vigorous' category to burn 300-400 calories an hour lifting. Which may be true for some people but not me. Womp womp. (Its all relative though I suppose.) Anyway, I still log it with the 'strength training' entry under cardio even though its only 82 calories for 30 minutes.

Whenever I see people questioning how many calories strength training burns my initially reaction is, "Not as many as you want it to."

I should clarify. I weight 230 pounds and am pulling some heavy weight ( 385 DL, 315 Squat and 255 bench for reps). In general if you goal is to be a caloric deficit any calories that you burn from weight training that are not logged are like a bonus towards your goal. ( assuming you are hitting your deficit goal)

Sorry @toughmudderMN, I didn't mean to imply you weren't getting those burns. Actually by posting your stats it drives home the point that you have to be putting in work to get those kinds of calorie burns. (And in reality, not everyone is. Average Joe off the street comes in to the gym, pushes some plates around on the Universal for awhile and wants to say he burned 400 calories, but its probably not true.) So it's good to see the chart, and be realistic.

leticiafriend86

I use my fitbit to track my calorie burn since it has a heart rate monitor on it.

singingflutelady

leticiafriend86 wrote: »

I use my fitbit to track my calorie burn since it has a heart rate monitor on it.

Heart rate monitors were not designed to calculate calorie burn for strength training and non steady state cardio.

dcresider

An AHA moment: so maybe that's why I never lose any weight because I keep eating up those so-called strength training calories.

Asher_Ethan

I had to Google, "how many calories would a 150 pound, 30-year-old woman burn weight lifting," to get a number. It said 200 calories an hour for weight lifting and the number seemed to be true for me.