How to calculate calories burned during 30 day squat challenge?

[Naomi94]

Hi Everyone,

In addition to working out at the gym, I embared on the 30 squat program. I am currently on day 7 - and loving it. 

I want to know how many calories I am burning when doing squats. This is the formula I found online, but I do not know if it is correct?

"To calculate the amount of calories you burn while doing squats without additional weights, multiply your weight by .096. Take the answer and multiply it by the amount of minutes you perform the exercise. For instance, if you weigh 160 lbs. and you take 15 minutes to complete your squats, you will burn approximately 230 calories."

Does the above equation sound right to you all?

[gerrymcd]

As I see it, there is a fundamental problem with this calculation -- it doesn't require the number of squats completed in 15 mins.  Which means it would give you the same calorie burn if you did 20 or 200 in that time period.

[gerrymcd]

A more accurate version of the calculation is something like 

Calories per squat = 0.0013 x weight [lbs] x height [ft]

where height is the height difference you squat, not your body height (probably 2 ft)

[au4all]

If you have a fitbit it's already counting your BMR. Since the slower you're doing it, the more calories they're giving you, you'd be double-counting your calories.

To burn 920 calories an hour you'd have to be running about 8 or 9 mph continuous

If it takes you about 5 seconds to do a squat (assuming you go down as far as possible) and you do 50 reps that's 4 minutes and 10 seconds of exercise. At a very generous 500 calories an hour (equal to a good run) that's 35 calories.

p.s. I think almost everyone's calorie estimates are far too high.

[Mary]

That estimate looks too high to me.  If you're not obese, you probably don't burn much more than 10 calories a minute at anything short of full-out sprinting.  If you're working hard doing the squats, I'd use 10 calories a minute.  If you're obese, more. 

[slysam]

Well, the tricky thing is also that you would only want to log your work time not rests between sets of squats. I would probably just log the time squatting as "calisthenics, vigorous" from the database. Maybe see how that formula compares. I usually use my heart rate monitor for strength exercises even though it is said not to be accurate--the number it gives me is always lower than the fitibt exercise database gives so it feels "safest" to me (though it may be estimating low--inaccurate can be either high or low). Squats probably do burn a lot of calories since they use several of the larger muscle groups. I am not sure how much it matters if fast or slow--I find slow squats harder. When I do isometric squats where I hold the low position for a period of time or "chair pose" in yoga, etc it engages my core and back muscles in addition to the glutes and thigh muscles and everything trembles. I guess I would just log it by duration spent squatting--that is what the database does anyway as it doesn't ask the reps per exercise. 230 calories for 15 minutes and a 160 pound person sounds high though.

[slysam]

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@gerrymcd wrote:

A more accurate version of the calculation is something like 

Calories per squat = 0.0013 x weight [lbs] x height [ft]

where height is the height difference you squat, not your body height (probably 2 ft)

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Interesting, where did you get this formula? I just ran it with my stats, assuming 25 squats and 2 feet and it credited: 9.42 calories per set of 25. Though sometimes I go quite low--more like 3 feet probably (not that I measured). Sometimes I'll need to compare it to my HRM with intervals of squats as a little experiement. On the surface it doesn't seem too inflated.