How are people burning such high calories

irrelevant. who cares?

questions you should be asking yourself are things like "what sort of exercise regimen can I commit to doing regularly?", "how should i structure my diet in a way that will keep me satiated?", "what are my fitness goals?"

Great post!!

Screw heart rate recommendations. And circuit training, sprinting, rowing and high intensity strength training are all easy ways to burn that much.

High intensity workouts...

http://sportsmedicine.about.com/od/Exercise-Metabolism-Energy/a/Does-The-Fat-Burning-Zone-Burn-Fat-Faster.htm

Short answer is so many factors go into how people can hit those numbers. Is the number 100% correct. Of course not. All just based off of a calculation. With a HRM it is more accurate as it should be setup with you height weight etc.

I regularly burn approx 800-1000 per session playing competitive volleyball, or really hard cycling (spin class, bike training). Don't really care about the calorie burn in essence more about the HRM information I get so I can compare my performance to see if I am getting more efficient, or how hard I actually did work.

I am a pretty big guy at 6'4 - 225.

I will throw in some of my data for variation based on weight and fitness level--two runs, 4 years apart:

February 2009--ran (had to walk some) 7.0 miles, burned 1216 calories. Weight: 192. HR: ave. 176, max 181

February 2013--ran 7.6 miles (no walking), burned 690 calories. Weight: 163. HR: ave. 143, max 157

So I went nearly 10% further a few days ago but burned 526 fewer calories than I did when I was heavier and in worse shape. That's not in an hour, but I think it's a good illustration of different calorie burn.

They're not staying within heart rate recommendations if they are actually burning that. Hell, my heart rate generally sits around 190+ when I am going hard.

same here, mine sits at about 185 when im working hard

Definately the weight. When I was 400 pounds I could do walking intervals on the treadmill and burn a 1000 calories in a hour. Now at 280 I'm hitting about 750 - 850 calories in an hour, depending on my intervals.

I go over the recommendations. What's the worst that can happen?

Yesterday alone i went to the gym and just the treadmill alone for only 25 minutes i lost 200 calories and on the cycling machine 28 minutes i lost 112 calories, I mean they say if you loose 600 calories each day you will loose the weight.
On Monday i weight 175 pounds and this morning no lie i took my early weight and it said 171 pounds. And that is just with the Gym, 30 day shred level 1, and watching my calories, oh sorry and I also started Herbal Life.

I'm just gonna go out on a limb here and say

1.)they are obese
2.) they are extremely out of shape
3.) their calculation is WRONG

Just wanted to chime in with a bit of clarification here. Firstly, HRM's are not terribly accurate to begin with (especially the lower end models like Polar FT7). Models that take into account resting HR and VO2 max are a little better. Most folks do not accuratley know what their max HR is and/or not capable of testing it so that further dilutes the accuracy. Most importantly, HRM's are designed to estimate caloire burns for steady state aerobic activities like running, so using them for thinks like kick boxing, circuit training, or High intensity activities where many breaks are taken will not be as accurate. They are next to useless for weight lifting calorie numbers.

With all that being said, let's take about the "fat-burning" zone in an over simplified explanation. At all times during training, your body is burning both fat and carbs for energy. Your training instenisty will determine the mix being used. What the HR monitor fat burning zone is trying to tell you is the point at which your body begins to go into oxygen debt because you are excersing harder than your current fitness is capable of keeping up with. If all you care about is calorie burns, then training at this higher intsensity for short intervals is fine. Note of warning; if you don't take sufficient breaks and regularly workout at this high threshold without recovering, you are risking metabolic damage and overtraining. However, if you care about improving your overall aerboic fitness, you need to establish your base by doing a lot of easier training at an intensity at which you could still carry on a conversation.

To all the people who are telling the OP that her question is “irrelevant”…

How can you say that? That is a perfectly legit question. She is obviously trying to learn something about her HRM, reasonable expectations for a calorie burn, etc.

Whatever happened to the idea that the only useless question is the one that was never asked?

I will throw in some of my data for variation based on weight and fitness level--two runs, 4 years apart:

February 2009--ran (had to walk some) 7.0 miles, burned 1216 calories. Weight: 192. HR: ave. 176, max 181

February 2013--ran 7.6 miles (no walking), burned 690 calories. Weight: 163. HR: ave. 143, max 157

So I went nearly 10% further a few days ago but burned 526 fewer calories than I did when I was heavier and in worse shape. That's not in an hour, but I think it's a good illustration of different calorie burn.

Unless you A) set your HRM with your actual VO2max and HR max at the start, and then adjusted your HRM settings to reflect your higher VO2 max after training increases, then you are not comparing apples to apples. Your initial calorie reading were an overestimate when you started and they are an underestimate now.

Calories burned = body weight x intensity.

That's it.

Burning high calorie numbers is simple math---it just requires that someone have the right combination of weight and fitness.

220 lb person runs 6 miles in 1 hour = 1000 calories.

176 lb person runs 7.5 miles in 1 hour = 1000 calories

150 lb person: needs to run 9+ miles in 1 hour to burn 1000 calories.

Walking 4.0 mph: to burn 1000 calories in 1 hour you need to weigh ~ 500 lbs.

I usually burn less than 1 cal per minute during intense exercise, but I know I used to burn more than 1 cal per minute when I weighed more. Also, I don't let my HRM tell me how intensely I should be exercising. I use my common sense for that. Where are you getting your HR recommendations? My HR hits the 180s during high intensity intervals, and sits in the 160s during steady state cardio. Of course age, weight, gender, etc will affect what your HR "should" be.

You must mean 10 cal per minute during intense exercise don't you? You burn very approximately 1 cal/min just sitting there staring at the monitor and reading this forum.