Intervals and calories burned

Posts: 12,406
12/17/12 6:02 P

I agree - interval training is normally about fitness, rather than burning huge numbers of calories. You just can't do intervals long enough to build huge totals.

A rough guide is that you can expect to burn 10-12 calories per minute with sustainable cardio if you were pushing yourself - although at 12 minutes per mile, you are probably under this pace (80 calories in 12 minutes is 6-7 cal minute). For a short interval based workout, you might be looking at 30-40% more than this.

48 seems a bit low. Perhaps 100 in 10 minutes of intervals?

M@L

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12/17/12 4:10 P

As far as I understand, HIIT is not really for burning a lot of calories, but getting the cardiovascular benefits of running. Inevitably one burns quite a bit doing HIIT in the beginning, but eventually the caloric burn reduces as one gets fit. However, the cardiovascular system becomes fit, by spending only a fraction of the time one should spend getting fit by running at a flat pace.

I think precisely for the reason that it does not burn a whole a lot of calories it is recommended for weight lifting, but the flat pace long duration runs are discouraged, because these flat pace long duration runs tend to burn a lot of calories depleting glycogen stores which are much needed for muscle growth/repair.

Edited by: MPLANE37 at: 12/17/2012 (16:15)

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12/17/12 6:30 A

Calories counters are put on treadmills, ellipticals and bikes for one reason only - to sell them.
Usually calories counters just measure how far you've gone and mutlply it by your weight and a scaling factor. This is what you saw.

All CV machines are there to improve the strength of your heart and blood supply system and in the same way that you lift heavy weights to improve strength - you must run fast in order to improve CV capacity.

If you are going to lose weight in a sustainable way then you need strong muscles and a good CV system.

When people are heavily over weight then these crude calorie counters provide a level of emotional support. Once you get within 10 pounds or so of healthy BMI you see that these counters are very very flawed.Your body becomes more efficient, you rest better, you can jog for miles and the calories just don't seem to "burn" etc.

It is easier not to eat the calories than to attempt to burn them off.

One thing you might try is this.

Walk 600 m and wait for 24 hours and see how your body feels.

The following day sprint ( I mean sprint!) for 100m, walk the next 100m, sprint the next (full out!) walk 100m then srping the final 100m.

Technically you have used less calories than during the first "walk"

However see how your body feels the next day. If you have gone full out three times then you may even find it difficult to move. Completely different (and beneficial) process are involved in high intensity training.

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12/17/12 5:54 A

So, I did some intervals this morning. Nothing fancy, just 10 minutes on the treadmill, so about 5 minutes total running, almost all of that at a sprint. I was trying it out, tring not to be too winded as I have been in the past. I burned a whopping 48 calories. If I would've had more time and done 20 minutes, and maybe upped my slowest pace (I did a pyramid on speeds) then I might have gotten to 100 calories. I can run a mile in 12 minutes and burn 70-80 calories, so what gives? Is interval training really better than a flat pace? Do I just need to keep going and build up to faster sprints for longer?

current weight: 127.2

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