How many calories burned from strength training?

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The thing I've noticed with strength training, I notice more in the mirror than I do from cardio. Regardless of what people say or the calorie counters say or the scale says. When you are working your muscle properly they're getting pumped and full of water. You're naturally going to carry extra weight from that alone, which skews the scales upwards from say cardio. And you're muscles are pumped so it looks better right out of the gate. But I also feel like in my own personal fitness journey, that It always seems like I lose more BF% from lifting on a deficit than any other means I've tried. But I do cardio and combined with weights sometimes and a lot of total fitness routines with a lot of mobility stuff as well because as I get older I feel these are more and more important to my overall health and skill set. Its all good for us. All I know, is the calorie counter tells me walking my dog burns more calories than deadlifts. Which one makes the mirror better?

There are some Apple Watch apps that measure strength training well via heart rate. It's way less than you'd think.
I burn about 250-300cals for a hard hours workout (active cals).

Then again most cardio workouts are reported incorrectly anyhow. Most show resting cals + active cals which is wrong. 800cals active from a cardio workout is VERY tough to do in an hour.

I also just used the lifting under cardio which gives me about 150 calories for 30 minutes which always worked just fine and seems to be a completely reasonable estimate.

ETA: my Fitbit usually gives me somewhere between 130 and 170 for lifting...so in the ball park anyway.

Very little: https://www.health.harvard.edu/newsweek/Calories-burned-in-30-minutes-of-leisure-and-routine-activities.htm

30-minute strength training session burns an average of 90 calories (180 calories per hour) for a 125-pound person, 112 calories (224 calories per hour) for a 155-pound person and 133 calories (266 calories per hour) for a 185-pound person.

A study in 2014 by ASU tried to show that the calorie burn was higher - they used exercises like crunches, pushups and pullups in their study. However, nobody does these for 5 minutes straight let alone 30 minutes or an hour. These, along with most strength training lifts are done for only a few seconds at a time with much longer rests between those sets. It's like a football game... where the actual game might run over 3 hours the actual ball is only in play for about 10 of those minutes.

jseams1234 wrote: »

Very little: https://www.health.harvard.edu/newsweek/Calories-burned-in-30-minutes-of-leisure-and-routine-activities.htm

30-minute strength training session burns an average of 90 calories (180 calories per hour) for a 125-pound person, 112 calories (224 calories per hour) for a 155-pound person and 133 calories (266 calories per hour) for a 185-pound person.

A study in 2014 by ASU tried to show that the calorie burn was higher - they used exercises like crunches, pushups and pullups in their study. However, nobody does these for 5 minutes straight let alone 30 minutes or an hour. These, along with most strength training lifts are done for only a few seconds at a time with much longer rests between those sets. It's like a football game... where the actual game might run over 3 hours the actual ball is only in play for about 10 of those minutes.

In your link there is significant difference between general weight lifting and vigorous weight lifting., which I've seen on other weight lifting calorie calculators as well. I'm not exactly sure what that means. But I'm thinking it has to do rest periods. If you are doing standard strength training where you lift big, then rest for 2mins between sets that makes sense. But if you are doing dynamic high volume sets with little or no rest between them, that's when the HRM calculators start giving you really inflated numbers. Like for instance if you do a 6 set pyramid with no breaks and then rest for a min. That's a lot different than resting for a min or two between each set. Long story short its not easy to guestimate calories from weightlifting.

I think the problem with calorie burn calculation from lifting is that intensity can vary by HUGE amounts.
When I do squats or deadlifts, 5 sets of between 3 and 5 reps so heavy that my head is spinning and I'm sweating profusely takes the same amount of TIME as 5 sets of 10 to 12 preacher curls or skull crushers... but there is no way whatsoever that I burned even similar calories. I also strongly suspect that the EPOC after the big compounds lasts quite a lot longer than isolation exercises. It's also not all about heart rate... Effort is a better indicator IMHO.

That said, I just log it under the cardio heading "weight training" because it probably averages out overall. (I suspect it's slightly low for my personal preference for lifting as heavy as I can before my form breaks down)

heybales wrote: »

GottaBurnEmAll wrote: »

mutantspicy wrote: »

simon_pickard wrote: »

There are some Apple Watch apps that measure strength training well via heart rate. It's way less than you'd think.
I burn about 250-300cals for a hard hours workout (active cals).

Then again most cardio workouts are reported incorrectly anyhow. Most show resting cals + active cals which is wrong. 800cals active from a cardio workout is VERY tough to do in an hour.

I find the exact opposite to be true. My fitbit usually gives me about 100 cals every 10min of strength training which is high. My smart watch will give me even higher numbers, for 50 min workout I burn like 560 to 600 cals. I just assume those numbers need to be halved, and then I don't care. Because I aim for my MFP calorie goal of deficit at lightly active and basically ignore my weight lifting calories. I do like tracking them tho, I like to review my heart rate spikes and compare different workouts to see whats up.

Which Fitbit do you have? Are you using an integrated setting on it for weightlifting or are you just letting it read your heart rate?

@heybales can you add some insight here? I was pretty sure that Fitbit had updated their watches to use METs for strength training, not heartrates, and that's my experience with my Charge2.

It's been infrequently enough I can't even remember which models are doing what now.

Because I did have someone given their detailed numbers like you did - and it did NOT appear to be using the MET method, though they could select Weights as the workout. It was well above, so still HR-based. But I can't recall the model.

But as mutantspicy mentions - perhaps it was a firmware update issue that would take care of it.

I did have someone else with Charge2 confirm what you saw, MET based for lifting. So perhaps it was first model with newer firmware.

What's newer than Charge2 at this point?

And original Charge allowed picking a specific workout too, right?
Seems that could have a firmware update to use same method then.

TBH, I have't kept up with the newer models because I'm happy with my Charge2, but I know they've come out with newer stuff.

I use my Fitbit charge 2 for lifting. I ordered the versa a couple weeks ago, fitbits newer model which is a smart watch and it will be here Thursday. Anyhow, I'm 5'7", 164 pounds right now and today was interval upper body weights. 30 min and Fitbit gives me 120 calories for that on the weights setting. I'll be curious to compare the versa to the charge 2. For 30 min on the arc trainer, using the elliptical setting because it's the only thing close to the arc trainer, it gave me 207. Seems reasonable to me.

heybales wrote: »

GottaBurnEmAll wrote: »

mutantspicy wrote: »

simon_pickard wrote: »

There are some Apple Watch apps that measure strength training well via heart rate. It's way less than you'd think.
I burn about 250-300cals for a hard hours workout (active cals).

Then again most cardio workouts are reported incorrectly anyhow. Most show resting cals + active cals which is wrong. 800cals active from a cardio workout is VERY tough to do in an hour.

I find the exact opposite to be true. My fitbit usually gives me about 100 cals every 10min of strength training which is high. My smart watch will give me even higher numbers, for 50 min workout I burn like 560 to 600 cals. I just assume those numbers need to be halved, and then I don't care. Because I aim for my MFP calorie goal of deficit at lightly active and basically ignore my weight lifting calories. I do like tracking them tho, I like to review my heart rate spikes and compare different workouts to see whats up.

Which Fitbit do you have? Are you using an integrated setting on it for weightlifting or are you just letting it read your heart rate?

@heybales can you add some insight here? I was pretty sure that Fitbit had updated their watches to use METs for strength training, not heartrates, and that's my experience with my Charge2.

It's been infrequently enough I can't even remember which models are doing what now.

Because I did have someone given their detailed numbers like you did - and it did NOT appear to be using the MET method, though they could select Weights as the workout. It was well above, so still HR-based. But I can't recall the model.

But as mutantspicy mentions - perhaps it was a firmware update issue that would take care of it.

I did have someone else with Charge2 confirm what you saw, MET based for lifting. So perhaps it was first model with newer firmware.

What's newer than Charge2 at this point?

And original Charge allowed picking a specific workout too, right?
Seems that could have a firmware update to use same method then.

My Blaze is newer than a charge 2 and the firmware is up to date. After doing more reading. When you set the trackers to weights, they use heart rate spikes to determine when you are lifting and when you are resting. They do use MET score as well but also use the motion detectors. Also track HR thoughout the session. So its a complicated algorithm. Either way I plan to put the fit bit on my right arm and my smart watch on the left for my leg session tonight. I fully expect to get at least 300 cals out of the fitbit and about 450 out of the smart watch.

jseams1234 wrote: »

Very little: https://www.health.harvard.edu/newsweek/Calories-burned-in-30-minutes-of-leisure-and-routine-activities.htm

30-minute strength training session burns an average of 90 calories (180 calories per hour) for a 125-pound person, 112 calories (224 calories per hour) for a 155-pound person and 133 calories (266 calories per hour) for a 185-pound person.

A study in 2014 by ASU tried to show that the calorie burn was higher - they used exercises like crunches, pushups and pullups in their study. However, nobody does these for 5 minutes straight let alone 30 minutes or an hour. These, along with most strength training lifts are done for only a few seconds at a time with much longer rests between those sets. It's like a football game... where the actual game might run over 3 hours the actual ball is only in play for about 10 of those minutes.

That's right around what I'm getting from my Fitbit.