Workout Routines: Calories Burned During Exercise
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Remember: to lose a pound a week, expend 500 more calories than you’ve taken in. Here’s how to burn 500 calories through workout routines.
Swimming: Whether you're training for your first triathlon or burned out on cardio machines, swimming is an excellent head-to-toe workout (700 calories burned in an hour!). Here's how to get started:
- Find a pool: Try a community center, YMCA, health club, or even a local community college. Many offer weekly times when anyone can swim.
- Start small: Do two full laps (back and forth equals one), pause to catch your breath, and repeat three times. Try to practice two or three times a week.
- Perfect your form: Use every other lap to do a different drill. Hold a kickboard to concentrate on your kicking, or swim with a buoy between your legs to work on your stroke.
- Build it up: When swimming 300 yards feels easy, increase your total distance by up to 10 percent per week. Join a masters team for built-in guidance and motivation (find one at usms.org).
The average calories burned in one day swimming can help you lose a pound - or more - per week.
Winter Sports Workout Routines:
Downhill skiing: Calories burned per hour: 418
Fitness tips: Skiing downhill is not only excellent aerobic exercise, it also builds stamina while strengthening your buttocks, quadriceps, hamstrings, calves and core.
Snowboarding: Calories burned during exercise: 330
Fitness tips: A terrific total-body toner, snowboarding works your core, hamstrings, quads and calves as well as the muscles in your ankles and feet as you twist to steer your board downhill.
Snowshoeing: Calories burned per hour: 557
Fitness tips: Trekking along winter paths in snowshoes, which distribute your weight evenly over the snow so you don't sink through, works the buttocks, hamstrings, quadriceps, calves, core and abs -- offering a more intense workout and calories burned during exercise than you'd get on most warm-weather hikes.
Cross-country skiing: Calorie burn per hour-long workout routine: 557
Fitness tips: One of the best winter cross-training activities for runners and cyclists, cross-country (or Nordic) skiing is easy to learn and an excellent cardiovascular activity. It tones the buttocks, quads, hamstrings, calves, chest, lats, shoulders, biceps, triceps and abs.
*Calorie estimates are based on a 145-pound woman.
