Burning 400 calories in 15mins

I'm not sure if it is at accurate rate of calorie burn, seems high to me. But I just wanted to find out what's in your hand on your lap.

TavistockToad wrote: »

ikeezimora wrote: »

Afternoon all. Am a 45 year old male. I currently burn 400 calories on the treadmill over a 15min period. I take two minute rests after two minutes of very fast running where my heart rate gets to 160. Can anyone advice if this is good for my body

sorry, but i don't think that you do!

Same. If you are resting for 2 minutes between running, that's only 8 active minutes.

Don't believe the calorie burn is accurate. That would put you up there with Olympic athletes. Michael Phelps burns
About 16 calories a minute swimming. For 15 minutes that converts to 250 calories.

Interval training is fine. Gasping for air is usual. High heart rate is usual. But if you cannot sustain it without getting dizzy or feel like passing out, then you need to lower the intensity.

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MeanderingMammal wrote: »

ikeezimora wrote: »

Afternoon all. Am a 45 year old male. I currently burn 400 calories on the treadmill over a 15min period. I take two minute rests after two minutes of very fast running where my heart rate gets to 160. Can anyone advice if this is good for my body

Notwithstanding the observations that your calorie estimate is significantly higher than is likely, the question of whether alternating moderate pace running with walking is perfectly reasonable.

There is nothing wrong with it, but I'd question how much value you're getting from it. Run/ walk intervals are quite a good way to build up your ability to run for longer. As an example the first three runs off Couch to 5K alternate 60 seconds of running with 90 seconds of walking, with the whole session taking about 35 minutes. Over subsequent weeks runners build up until they can run for 30 minutes at a time.

By the time you can run for 20-30 minute continuously you're going to get aerobic capacity building benefit.

In terms of whether 160bpm is a risk, that depends on you. As a 47 year old I can hold 170 BPM for an hour if I'm racing, but it's not comfortable. If you can train yourself to run for longer you'll find that your HR doesn't rise to 160bpm as easily as it does now.

This. Unless you have heart problems, 160 probably isn't too high for sustained effort. That said, you'd likely get more benefit as a new runner (and less potential for injury) from trying to run a slower pace for longer. It's better to get a good aerobic base under you first and the easiest way to do this is to run slowly for longer.

I'm not much younger than you (41) and 160 BPM is just about my aerobic threshold (about 90% of my measured maximum). It's well within range of what I hit and sustain on some of my runs.

Unfortunately, you're not burning 400 calories in 15 minutes. Assuming that you cover about 1 mile in the 8 minutes that you're actually running, it's probably closer to 125 depending on your weight.

In terms of calorie burns, the difference in what you'll burn at 130-140 BPM vs. 160 BPM isn't enough to worry about. Since mileage is the biggest driver of calorie burns, you'd probably be better off running at 140 BPM for the entire 15 minutes than you are running at 160 BPM for 8.

That does seem a bit high and unlikely. Can you tell us exactly how fast you were going? Last year I was doing some fartlyk training to try to shave a bit of time off my half marathons and was was running on my treadmill at about 8-8.5 mph which is about my normal run speed. About every 4-5 minutes I would put it up to 11-12mph for about a 1 minute straight which is a pretty fast sprint. Doing that for one hour I burnt about 1100 calories which was approx 7 miles. So 400 calories burnt in 15 minutes is almost not likely. It sounds like your treadmill needs adjusting. Even 467 calories on an elliptical for 16 minutes seems a bit high but unless you were sprinting at about 13mph for 15 minutes, which not many people can, it is way off. And if your cardio is up and you don't have any heart problems, I don't think it harms your body but none of us here are doctors so maybe ask your doctor about it.