Swimming is a form of exercise that has many benefits. If you want to find an overall healthy way to lose weight and get fitter, you need to find a pool and get wet! Swimming several times a week is a great way to burn off some significant calories. But how many calories are burned when swimming? Well it really comes down to 4 factors.
- Career. Freestyle is the most common swimming style and it is not the most difficult, but it generally allows you to accelerate faster in the water. At its maximum speed, it can easily burn more than 700 calories per hour. The butterfly stroke will be much slower, but it is difficult and requires more energy, so more calories are burned in a shorter distance. Hard to sustain, but again you can burn over 700 calories per hour. If you like to slow down with a long backstroke or a slower freestyle or crawl stroke, you can burn about 500 calories per hour. Can anyone paddle for dogs? Hey, even this will burn you about 400 calories per hour.
- Speed and efficiency. A faster and more efficient swimmer will burn more calories than a slower or average swimmer. That’s more calories per minute or hour, not per lap. Why make that distinction? Well, a somewhat out of control swimmer like me will definitely expend more energy and calories fighting in the water towards that first lap, but how many laps will actually happen? The fastest swimmer will do many more laps and eventually burn more calories.
- Effort. You will burn calories simply by playing in the pool. About 400 calories per hour if you weigh 150 pounds and don’t take it too seriously. It can burn more than 700 calories an hour when you push it with fast freestyle laps or harder butterfly strokes.
- Your weight The heavier you are, the more calories you will burn because more weight automatically means more effort required as you move through the water.
So it varies quite a bit in the number of calories burned, but does it matter? Swimming is fun for everyone, and did you know that you still burn calories after getting out of the pool? Yes, because there are types of exercise that will increase your metabolism and keep it elevated once you are done exercising. Very cool. Metabolism is the keyword here.
Are you serious about burning calories and losing weight? Did you know that each of us is unique in terms of which foods will boost our metabolism to burn calories? This is true and now there is a simple and powerful software tool that will teach you how to know what those foods are for you.
