What is considered a hard workout?

autumnsholokhov
autumnsholokhov Posts: 21 Member
edited December 2024 in Health and Weight Loss
Whenever I look at an activity level description, it always says that "very active" means you do a hard workout 6-7 days a week.

I workout 7 days a week, however I'm trying to gauge if it's hard or not. What's your take?

I do 40 minutes on the treadmill, however, I push myself to run/sprint and speed walk a lot on there. By the end of the workout, I'm panting and sweating a great deal. It feels like a hard workout, since it's in no way leisurely for me :P but it's also only 40 minutes.

Does that change anything? Or would you still count it as hard?

When I think of a hard workout, I think of like 2 hours or something.

Thanks!

Replies

  • Seffell
    Seffell Posts: 2,249 Member
    Activity level usually is for your lifestyle outside of intentional exercise. To my knowledge very active is for like professional athletes and people doing a highly physical jobs. Like all day long. Not for 40 minutes.
  • Machka9
    Machka9 Posts: 26,643 Member
    From the Guided Setup under Goals ...

    How would you describe your normal daily activities?
    Sedentary: Spend most of the day sitting (e.g. bank teller, desk job)
    Lightly Active: Spend a good part of the day on your feet (e.g. teacher, salesman)
    Active: Spend a good part of the day doing some physical activity (e.g. waitress, mailman)
    Very Active: Spend most of the day doing heavy physical activity (e.g. bike messenger, carpenter)

    ____________________

    If you spend most of your day sitting and only 40 minutes of your day being active ... you're sedentary.
  • Lleldiranne
    Lleldiranne Posts: 5,516 Member
    Do note, though, that activity level on this site is different than most calorie calculators - because this site gives you calories before exercise, and other sites usually give you total calories including exercise (TDEE). So take that into account when deciding what to look at. The above answers are talking about the MFP calculations.

    That said, a hard workout is probably relative, just like heavy lifting. It's what would be hard, or intense, for you. Where does your heart rate end up? If it's in the 40-60% of max range for the entire time, that's not very intense, even if you go for 2 hours, but up near 80% for most of the time then it may be more of a "hard workout"

    The bottom line, though, is that your body burns what it burns and you're just trying to get the best estimate. Be really honest with yourself. If you feel like you really are very active, start with that. Give it a month. If your weight loss isn't what you expected, then you know you probably need to drop your calories in a bit more. If you're satisfied with your rate of loss, then keep doing what you're doing. (Note that this also requires a pretty good tracking of what you're eating)
  • I_amnr
    I_amnr Posts: 129 Member
    edited April 2016
    I'm not sure what your goal is but I used to do 5 days and burn about 800-1000 calories a work out according to my HRM. Because I was on 1800 to 2200 calories by the 5th day my energy and enthusiasm really tapered off . For me 4 days a week and burning 650 to 750 calories in an hour seems a lot better for my body and I can keep the intensity up until the last day.. mix the routines up, do timed intervals and circuits and you should be fine. if you got Heart rate monitor you can really track how intense each work out is and according to my HRM those routines are classed as intense
This discussion has been closed.

Categories