Tracking WOD calories

Sbiscotti

What are y'all using to track your calorie burn at the box? I know a lot of people are using monitors...suggestions for ones that are. Accurate and won't interferes with CF movements?

jordymils

I personally don't track my calorie burn at all, ever. The only thing that the monitors track is your heart rate, and it then bases your possible calorie burn off of how slow/fast your heart rate is. The problem with trying to judge calorie burn on heart rate with something like crossfit is that it is not steady state, and therefore your heart rate will constantly be going up and down, especially when doing strength lifts. It doesn't take into account the burn that keeps going after you leave the gym from weight lifting and resistance training.
So for example, if you did 30 mins of back squats for strength, with normal rests between sets, it would have your calorie burn VERY LOW because even though you're working hard and building muscle (which in turn burns more calories), you're not moving all that fast. If you then do a WOD that has push press, running and power cleans, it would have a higher calorie burn reading for the time that you're running, but would lower again during push press and cleans. And again, push press and cleans are building more muscle that will aid in higher calorie burn later on, even at rest.

I know this doesn't really answer your question haha but honestly I think heart rate monitors are a waste of time for anything that isn't steady state, especially when it's resistance/weight training.
But someone else might have an actual suggestion for you

mes1921

I agree that it's probably not always accurate, but I like to know what my ballpark for each workout is. I have the polar loop and h7 (or h6 can't remember) heart rate monitor. The loop is more of a bracelet than a watch, so I wear it loose and can push it out of the way for movements. The loop has a website, polar flow, that will give your session feedback, average heart rate, and zones so you can judge and determine closer to what you probably burned. And just know that strength days the estimate will probably be low and cardio will probably be high. I go off the assumption that it evens out throughout the week.

Inkratlet

I'm with jordymills. I don't track calorie burn, ever.

Todays WOD for example was a 400m run, 1 minute of as many DU's as possible, box jumps for height and a 1000m row. So let's say I spent a max of 15 minutes actually doing the WOD, and 45 minutes warming up, chatting, trying on someone's new lifting shoes, practicing DU's and box jumps, and watching other people.

It just gets too complicated, and as it's pretty inaccurate to track calories burnt unless you are doing steady state cardio it doesn't seem worth the effort for me.

MUALaurenClark

I wouldn't track it either...for the exact reasons Jordy mentions.

Also, if you wear a HRM during the day when you're just sitting on the couch, it's still going to track HR and estimated calories burned. Those are calories that you will burn NO MATTER WHAT you are doing, including when you are working out...

so lets say you burn 75 calories in an hour just sitting on your butt....then you "track" your calories during a wod class that's 60 minutes (10 minutes for warm up, 20 minutes of strength, 10 minute amrap, a few minutes of instruction in between, and cool down/mobility at the end) lets say it says that you burned 300....well, 75 of that is what you would have already burned just doing nothing, so now you have to subtract that.

too many people wear them and see this huge number and get excited, but they're grossly inaccurate.

here's what I do...
i log about 5 cal/minute for my warm up
3 cal/minute for strength work
and 8-10 cal per minute for my WOD

also, If you're doing something like EMOM and have rest time in between, don't log that. Literally only log the minutes that you were moving

MDLNH

I agree with all of the above !!!

However, I have worn my HRM for entire sessions (Warm-up, WOD, Cool-down) and it gives me a rough guess on what I burned for the overall total time. I can than base future sessions from that. Trying to track each individual portion would be a distraction. Overall, I'm not so focussed on the calorie I've burned during CrossFit - it's more about personal endurance, PRs and beating my last time.

*I save the caloric-burn tracking for running and cycling :-)