Why doesnt MFP track calories burned during strength??

strength training doesnt burn as many calories as you think they do. the majority of your calories were burned during the warm up, the row and the cool down.

from http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/fat-loss/exercise-and-weightfat-loss-part-1.html

People always ask about calorie burn during weight training and it’s harder to pin down values. It also depends staggeringly on the type of activities done (e.g. whole body vs. isolation exercises), rest intervals, rep ranges, etc. Clearly repetition clean and jerk will burn a lot more calories than barbell curls.

On average, studies have found a calorie burn of 7-9 cal/minute seems to be about right (again with huge variability) but that only holds for the actual work time and a lot of time in the weight room is usually spent resting. When we have tracked calorie burn for various types of weight training (ranging from Olympic lifting to isolation machine work) with tools such as the Bodybugg/GoWearFit or Polar heart rate monitors, a calorie burn of 300-400 cal/hour is about the average.

so let's see, a lift probably takes 10 seconds, so 6 reps a minute... yay 9 whole calories per set if you're doing 5-6 reps laugh:

You should not use a HRM for strength training...it will not be accurate.

i use an HRM during my strength training. just because it's not 100% accurate f the calorie doesn't mean that it doesn't have it's uses (ie tracking, you know...heart rate)

It's way way way off, not just a little. But, yeah, if you're actually tracking heart rate, that's great. That's what it does. Calorie burn is crap though.

Most people think a HRM (Heart Rate Monitor) is actually a CBM (Calorie Burn Monitor).

CBM's don't exist because it's impossible to do that. Lol. But, if you come across one, let me know. That would be amazing.

true.you have take those things with a grain of salt especially since so much can go wrong with the sensors. there are weird times when the HRM thinks my heart rate is like 205 and i'm barely breathing over rested state because i'm warming up on the bike. other times i'm sucking hair and it only registers at 135. both of those were because of weird positioning of the chest strap.

but yeah, i think 75% of the "i don;t know why i'm not losing weight" threads are because people are eating more than they think+not burning as much as they think and are eating those calories back

You should not use a HRM for strength training...it will not be accurate.

i use an HRM during my strength training. just because it's not 100% accurate f the calorie doesn't mean that it doesn't have it's uses (ie tracking, you know...heart rate)

It's way way way off, not just a little. But, yeah, if you're actually tracking heart rate, that's great. That's what it does. Calorie burn is crap though.

Most people think a HRM (Heart Rate Monitor) is actually a CBM (Calorie Burn Monitor).

CBM's don't exist because it's impossible to do that. Lol. But, if you come across one, let me know. That would be amazing.

Isn't that the doohickey where they put a tube in your mouth?

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I believe the heart rate bit is useful for resting between lifts.

It's actually 0% accurate for calories with strength training. Heart rate has nothing to do with calorie burn during strength training, as strength training uses the anaerobic energy pathway, which is completely unrelated to the aerobic system.

Very true for strength training - for high tempo circuit training a HRM sort of works as an aid to guesswork. But any indirect correlation is more likely to come from any increase/decrease in volume of weight lifted and not from heartbeats counted.

Still impossible to verify any accuraccy but that's life.

1 - There are too many variables with strength training for any data base to be remotely accurate in RE to calorie burn. There are some reasonably decent formulas out there, but even then...

2 - As has been noted, a HRM is useless for anaerobic activities like strength training...whatever number you get is going to be very inaccurate. Your calorie burn has nothing to do with your HR...your HR is just used in an algorithm that assumes a steady state aerobic activity as a reasonable measure of what % of VO2 max you are at. Anaerobic activity is a piss poor gauge of VO2 max

3 - Strength training is about developing strength, preserving lean mass, increasing bone density, etc...it is not about the calorie burn right now...it is a long term investment in your overall body composition and health and well being. Also, there is no data base, calculator, monitor, etc that can estimate the after-burn of strength training over the next 48 hours.

When I was doing MFP and eating back exercise calories, etc I usually just chalked it up to a couple hundred calories for a good 60 minute session.

This is the reason I think the TDEE method is superior. No screwing around with how many calories you burn, you just monitor your results via measurements weekly or monthly, and adjust TDEE until you have it nailed.

Word!

Makes life so much simpler.

(And makes questions like "how many calories does X burn?" obsolete)

This is the reason I think the TDEE method is superior. No screwing around with how many calories you burn, you just monitor your results via measurements weekly or monthly, and adjust TDEE until you have it nailed.

Word!

Makes life so much simpler.

(And makes questions like "how many calories does X burn?" obsolete)

Truth. I love this site for the database, but their system really over complicates things, and generally confuses most people.

i don't know how many sets/reps it takes to find your one rep max

but i would expect doing one rep maxs to burn many calories