Weight Training

pixelled

Weight training doesn't count towards workout time? And you get no calories for it? I hope I'm doing something wrong because that seems completely backwards. to me.

sammys1girly

You can count it under the cardio section and it has the calorie amounts burned off there. That's what I do, as I want my workout calories to be counted!

YukonJoy

That's stupid. I burn way more calories when I strength train. Plus after strength training your body continues to burn calories as your muscles cannibalize some fat whereas with cardio it's just a one shot deal.

How annoying of them.

reese66

I believe you can log it under cardiovascular...:flowerforyou:

natskedat

The only hitch with logging strength and cardio the same is that in cardio, many muscle groups are moving at the same time, and thus, are burning more calories. Your body works really hard to feed all your muscles at the same time. When you're strength training, you're isolating a muscle group. Since the calories burned according to your HRM is based on your heartrate, it will calculate your calories burned on your elevated heart rate, assuming you're doing cardio work. Your body is only working one muscle group, though, and so is not burning the same number of calories as it would if your heart were elevated to the same level doing cardiovascular work.

Does this make sense or did I ramble?

In short, using one muscle group burns much less energy, and thus fewer calories, than a whole body cardio workout.

PaulC9554

On the understanding that I need to elevate my heart rate during exercise I've watched my heart rate monitor when doing weight training. I've noticed that during heavy single sets my HR doesn't increase much, it does however if I do circuits - medium weight, high reps, no rest between stations. So I guess it depends on what type of weight training you do.
Which pretty much agrees with what the previous post said.

pixelled

Agreed Yukon!

Reese & Sammy .. I guess I can manually add "Weight Training" under cardio but how do you know how many calories to assign?

mistyb47711

lof under cardio....I use my HRM and I log it under my exercises as Strength & Cardio (HRM).....i log my full workout from the time I start to when I step off the elliptical.

pixelled

Nat .. yeah that makes perfect sense. Except like Yukon said I find when i weight train I lose weight much faster because the body works for several hours after to repair the muscle. Muscle also requires more energy (calories) just to exist so even sitting still you burn more cals when you have muscle to maintain.

Just seems very backward to me that weight training doesn't count for anything.

PaulC9554

Reese & Sammy .. I guess I can manually add "Weight Training" under cardio but how do you know how many calories to assign?

A lot of people will recommend using a HRM.

Countrymade

I wear a HRM during strength training and I burn calories and fat. I know the calorie burn is accurate so I count my weight training as exercise.
Although weight training is listed in the data base they don't count it as exercise because it wouldn't be very accurate. You would have to know what size weights are being used , machines, etc and the person doing the strength training .

natskedat

Yes, it does seem backwards that you don't get any credit for weight training, because it does keep your metabolism elevated and prevents your body from reaching equilibrium (i.e. a plateau). But, since the activity itself doesn't burn that many calories, MFP doesn't recognize it. Since MFP is designed as calorie restricted, and the activity of weight lifting doesn't burn a significant number of calories, they assume that you're not going to exceed your calorie goal, regardless of how buzzed your metabolism might be.

I agree that it's unfair.

dreanance

Be careful using a HRM for weight training, they are designed for cardio and depending on the type of weight training you do it won't be accurate. For something like circuit training it may be close, but not for heavy isolated muscle lifting.

I do wish there was another way to track it though, since in my eyes a heavy lifting session changes how much protien I need in a given day.

mstorious

The FAQ says this:

A. Estimating the calories burned from strength training is very difficult because it depends on a variety of factors: how much weight you lifted per repetition, how vigorously you performed that exercise, how much rest you took between sets, etc. Because of this, we do not automatically calculate how many calories you burned from strength training exercises.

However, if you'd like, you can add "Strength training" as a cardio exercise to get a rough estimate of how many calories you burned. Please be aware though that this is definitely a rough estimate and can be fairly inaccurate.


My two (or more) cents:
I would suggest that if you want to use it as a cardio workout, that you do circuit training with less rest between exercises. Otherwise the calories burnt are negligible. I found this handy chart ( http://bit.ly/nUwlLd) that shows you approximate calorie burn for exercise based on weight. Keep in mind that this doesn't account for lean/fat mass differences in calorie expenditure and/or heart rate during exercise but is a rough estimate.
You can use rating of perceived exertion (it's your body so if it feels like a 14 then it probably is, even if a friend is only at a 10 doing the same exercise) to tell you what is light/mod/heavy :
6 No exertion at all
7 Extremely light
8
9 Very light
10
11 Light
12
13 Somewhat hard
14
15 Hard (heavy)
16
19 Extremely hard
20 Maximal Exertion
© Gunnar Borg 1985

If you do not have a heart rate monitor you can add a zero after the RPE number to get an approximation of what your HR should be at that exertion level.

Max heart rate can be estimated (+/-10bpm is normal) using this formula HRmax = 208 − (0.7 × age) from there you can multiply by a percentage for intensity level.

For example : moderate exercise is considered RPE 11-13 with HR of 40-59% I am 34 so:
208-(.7*34) = 184.2 x 50% (approximate RPE12) =92bpm

Sorry I totally geeked out on your post..:ohwell:

ltf304

I'm not sure why it shouldn't count, even with an HRM. Even during a cardio session you are only using your legs (treadmill, stepmill, elliptical) so I'm not sure how not using the whole body scenario pans out. I do a full body workout, so I may be doing a lunge with a shoulder press at the same time. This gets my HR up pretty high. I wear my HRM and count strength training as calories burned and I have for months while continually losing weight and eating all my exercise calories. If that isn't proof that it counts, then I don't know what is. I need those extra calories too and if I didn't eat them, I would be exhausted with no energy. Good luck!

ltf304

Also, pretty much all of MFP friends do the same thing and they lose weight.

natekorpusik

Also, pretty much all of MFP friends do the same thing and they lose weight.

Agreed.

Rae6503

So far while using MFP I've only done the strength work outs associated with Turbo Fire. I don't use a heart rate monitor. There's an entry in the cardio database called: Strength training (weight lifting, weight training). I use there. It doesn't burn much but a little.

PaulC9554

I think it's to do with the heart rate. Here's how I see it. If I'm wrong then I hope someone will correct me. Sitting still / sleeping etc burns calories every second as we know. In the gym, when exercising (CV) after a few minutes my HR starts to increase. Eventually, while exercising my HR will reach a desired rate and I can then keep it there for some time. As my HR is elevated and steady so my body is working harder. When I train with heavy weights, over the short time period of a set my HR will increase slightly but as i'm not exerting myself for long it's not working much harder than it does normally. After weight training the body will repair the damaged muscles so it's working slightly harder than it does normally during repair. I'll take in extra protein (eating back calories burned) after weight training and the body uses it to repair the muscle. Through the constant breaking down of muscle and repair cycle my muscle mass increases and as we know, the bigger the muscle mass, the more calories burned generally. So in the long term building muscle burns more calories but as a rapid exercise it doesn't involve much CV which seems to be key.

pixelled

Thank you all so much for the informative responses.

@mstorious.. thank you for geeking out! Great info
@Rachel.. yes! I found the strength training entry in cardio. It doesn't give much but at least it acknowledges my workout time and adds it to my goal.

I understand and agree that the immediate calorie expenditure isn't as high as doing cardio (which I also do almost every day) but I believe the overall calorie expenditure over a 24 hour period is significantly elevated when you build muscle through weight training. You can't measure that with an HRM unfortunately as your body is working hard to rebuild in the hours that follow, even when your heart rate isn't elevated.

I guess I'll take the small calorie increase it gives me and run with it