How does swimming burn so many calories (close to higher intensity workouts) even if my heart stays in the warm up zone the whole time?
In: 96
Either you’re ignoring the time component, or you’re well-trained for swimming vs. whatever you’re comparing against, or then the calorie expenditure or your HR is off.
You are expending energy to move your weight. The same effort (work done per weight) will always require the same amount of energy. As someone pointed out, when you train something, your body will adapt to that exercise and you will be able to expend the energy with less strain (and less energy wasted on unnecessary movement) and ultimately your heart rate will be lower than doing the same work when you were less trained. You never spend less energy, though, except for avoiding the waste. Energy expenditure includes the time component, here, because generally the faster you move, the more energy you have to spend to overcome resistance.
That relationship holds in general. The more work you do, the higher your HR. There is an effect where being significantly less trained for one sport than another means that your HR will be higher than what you would assume for the energy spent — for example, if you have good fitness from running but you’re completely new to swimming, your HR will be higher for the same energy cost for moving forward (because it’s effectively the same as being less trained in running, you’re using new, less controlled muscles.)
That means that your heart rate should be roughly similar for any exercise in which you expend that same 800 kcal *in the same amount of time*, adjusted by how well-trained you are in that particular exercise.
Latest Answers