Question: how many calories are burned when swimming and what does it depend on?

Swimming can be a great workout for burning calories and losing weight. For every kilogram of your body weight, swimming burns between 0.1 and 0.14 calories per minute. If you weigh around 150 pounds, you can expect to burn more than 200 calories in 30 minutes. This is a fairly serious figure when compared even with cycling or running at an average pace, and certainly better than walking. Remember that certain swimming strokes, such as butterfly and breaststroke, burn more calories, so choose wisely.

• Swimming burns more calories
• Swimming is a great full body workout
• You burn 446 calories in an hour of swimming.
• Swim for just 30 minutes a few days a week
• The backstroke burns 298 calories and the butterfly burns 409 calories in 30 minutes.
• Swim Mixed to Burn More Calories
• Let's calculate how many calories are burned if you swim 1000 meters Let's figure it out: how long are you actually swimming?

Swimming burns more calories

Previously, we talked about whether it is possible to lose weight by swimming in the pool, this time we will talk about the effectiveness of this type of training for burning in terms of calorie expenditure.

• You burn 446 calories in an hour of swimming.
• Swim for just 30 minutes a few days a week
• Swimming butterfly burns 409 calories in 30 minutes
• Swim Mixed to Burn More Calories

What if I told you that you can burn 400 or all 500 calories without breaking a sweat? Yes, yes, I'm talking about how many calories are lost when swimming! You can burn several hundred calories in just half an hour in the pool - and even more if you choose a more challenging swimming style or increase your pace. Once you learn about the calorie burn of swimming, you may never want to go back to the sweat-soaked land technique again!

There are many reasons to add this full-body workout to your fitness regimen. The time spent in the pool can be used with maximum efficiency. Read on and find out exactly how.

Crawl, breaststroke or butterfly?

First of all, it should be noted that in order to effectively burn calories, in any case, you should swim in the correct technique, with your head in the water .

This is also important for your health, I wrote about it here and here.

If you go to the pool to lose weight, but have doubts about your swimming technique, take at least a few training sessions from a trainer .

As for which style to choose for weight loss, it is worth noting the following:

1. The crawl and breaststroke are not very different from each other in terms of calorie burning.. If you are more of a breaststroke swimmer in terms of technique, but are not so good with the freestyle, then faster and more correct breaststroke swimming may well give better results in terms of energy consumption.

   
   Breaststroke

2. Not only does it take 30 minutes to swim the butterfly stroke, but even for at least 10 minutes continuously, few people can swim. This is a physically very challenging style and is suitable for professionals and advanced swimmers.
   In this regard, you should not count on the fact that you will be able to swim continuously for an hour or at least half an hour in the butterfly stroke and thereby burn a lot of calories - this is physically impossible for most pool visitors. On the other hand, butterfly goes well with other styles : you can swim along the pool path in one direction with butterfly, return back on your back, or (if you have enough strength) with crawl or breaststroke. Here we also come to the next point.
3. As I have written more than once in articles on this site, if you exercise in the pool for health, strengthening muscles, ligaments, and developing endurance, then it is most optimal to combine all swimming styles during training (focusing on one style makes sense when developing technique or when preparing for competitions).
   This is due to the fact that different muscle groups are involved in different styles (see separate articles about working muscles in crawl, breaststroke, butterfly, backstroke).

   
   By combining styles, you fully work out your body - this is a unique feature of swimming, not typical of most other sports.

   At competitions there is a separate discipline that combines all styles - medley swimming. However, it is usually difficult for a physically unprepared swimmer to swim more than 2-3 complexes in a row (primarily due to the presence of butterfly in their composition). It is more realistic to swim freestyle and breaststroke separately, and combine butterfly (if desired and able) with, for example, backstroke – as indicated in point 2 above.

Swimming is a great full body workout

Swimming is a whole exercise program rolled into one, and it's good for you for a variety of reasons.

• Safe Cardio: Cardio is very important in a training program to raise your heart rate. Swimming helps you do this without stressing your joints the way vigorous aerobics or dance-based exercises do.
• Strength Training: In addition to strengthening your cardiovascular system, swimming tones your muscles and helps build strength just like weight training.
• Increased stamina: It also helps improve stamina.
• Increased Lung Capacity: As your endurance improves, your lung capacity also increases.
• Full Body Workout: A full body workout in the truest sense of the word, swimming works almost every muscle in the body, leaving you invigorated and energized.
• Reduces the risk of diabetes, heart disease and stroke: Regular swimming can reduce the risk of developing chronic diseases such as type 2 diabetes, heart disease and even stroke.
• Better load distribution: The New York Times published an article stating that swimmers' bodies are better able to handle stress than runners' bodies. Unlike runners, whose performance decreases the longer the distance they run, swimmers maintain a steady pace even over long distances. In fact, the statistician and swimmer quoted in this article found that competitive swimmers burn 25 percent more calories than runners for the same amount of training time.
• Weight Loss: If that's not enough to get you thinking about swimming, how about the faster weight loss and mood boost that swimming provides?

Benefits of swimming exercises

As we said earlier, water procedures are useful not only for those who want to get rid of extra calories. Swimming is one of the best ways to improve your health and is often used to prevent various diseases.

The positive effects of swimming are as follows:

• it relieves muscle tension;
• improves blood circulation;
• helps to acquire a slim figure;
• improves body plasticity and flexibility;
• promotes weight normalization;
• increases the body's defenses and immunity;
• strengthens the respiratory and cardiovascular system;
• Gives harmony and relaxation.

If monotonous swimming gets boring, you can combine it with water aerobics classes accompanied by rhythmic music. This way you can not only warm up and relax your muscles, but also lift the mood of yourself and those around you.

You burn 446 calories in an hour of swimming.

Looking to add swimming to your fitness regime? First, figure out how many calories you burn in an hour or even a short 20-minute swim.

Swimming for 30 minutes burns about 223 calories for the average person weighing about 70 kilograms. Thus, in an hour you will burn 446 calories. This is comparable to a very fast dance or walking over rough terrain. And this is only for swimming at an average pace. Switch to butterfly or breaststroke and those numbers increase even more.

Swimming vs. Walking: Walking at 5.5 km/h will burn 149 calories (versus 223 calories for swimming in the same amount of time). Even if you accelerate to 7 km/h, swimming will still remain ahead - in 30 minutes of such walking you will burn just over 180 calories.

Comparison of swimming in terms of energy consumption with other sports

Swimming is the only sport that uses all muscle groups at once. An hour-long workout in the pool, which brings moral pleasure and a sense of self-satisfaction, is in no way inferior, and in some cases even surpasses common sports on land in terms of energy consumption.

Run

Running is considered one of the most popular ways to lose weight; an hour-long session leads to a loss of 300-550 kcal. But this sport has many contraindications and is difficult for people with excess weight, pathologies of the cardiovascular, musculoskeletal and respiratory systems. Swimming is recommended for almost all people; loads in water are much easier to bear than on land.

Bike

Cycling, in addition to improving health, broadens your horizons and promotes weight loss; in an hour of intense training, the body can burn up to 700 kcal. But not all muscles of the body are involved in this sport; cycling is not always convenient for the elderly and people with a lot of weight. Calorie consumption begins only after 30-50 minutes of fast riding, which requires sufficient distance and a lot of training time.

Walking

Walking is recommended for people who are unable to run or go to the gym. Any walk is good for the body, but calorie consumption is observed only when walking quickly for a long time and following a diet so that the amount of energy consumed is greater than the calories consumed. Race walking at a speed of 9 km/h leads to burning from 600 to 900 kcal per hour, depending on body weight. Such a dynamic way to improve health is beyond the power of many people.

Water aerobics

Water aerobics is a close relative of swimming. Depending on weight and rhythm, up to 700 kcal are burned per hour due to the high resistance of water. Heavy rhythmic exercise is made relatively easy by performing all exercises in water. Water aerobics perfectly tones the muscles, most often chosen by the fair half of humanity to give the figure a graceful silhouette.

Gym

Strength training has a huge number of contraindications, which is why exercise in the gym is less popular than water exercise. Simulators train only a certain group of muscles, but when swimming in any style, all muscles are involved. An hour of strength training stimulates the burning of 250-600 kcal, which is equal to an hour of freestyle swimming for fun.

Swimming is not only pleasant and fun, but also very useful for absolutely anyone. With the help of water sports, provided the correct technique and regular visits to the pool, you can achieve good health, an ideal figure and a great mood.

Swim for just 30 minutes a few days a week

You don't need to force yourself to swim for 2 hours per session just to burn more calories. Swimming for just 30 minutes a few days a week will help you reach your physical activity goals. The World Health Organization recommends 150 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity for adults aged 18 to 64 - and swimming does a great job of achieving this. The great thing about it is that due to its softness, it is suitable even for older people.

The backstroke burns 298 calories and the butterfly burns 409 calories in 30 minutes.

Everyone has their own swimming style. Which leads to the question, how many calories does breaststroke (or any other swimming stroke of your choice) burn compared to crawl or freestyle?

Want to calculate the number of calories you burn swimming freestyle compared to breaststroke or other swimming events? Take a look at this excerpt from the Harvard Health Foundation report.

The number of calories burned per 30-minute workout for an adult weighing 70 kilograms:

Which is better: a river or a pool?

In the pool, conditions are always maintained artificially. They are stable. Temperature, the presence of standing chlorinated water, a warm microclimate, safety and the presence of instructors - all this makes visiting the pool safer, and therefore better.

However, the water in the pool is too warm, such comfort does not contribute to burning calories as much as we would like. Fresh air also makes you lose calories faster than the stuffy atmosphere in the pool.

Therefore, swimming in the river is an order of magnitude more effective; in addition to the cool temperature, the depth of the current and the increased requirement for control play a role. The body gets tired more and loses weight, plus additional costs for heating.

Water in the sea has a higher density than in a river, and it is easier to float on sea water. But the waves and deep currents are stronger there, so training at sea is much more effective. Moving with the current is always less effective; additional calories are spent fighting the current.

Swim Mixed to Burn More Calories

As with dryland training, the best results come from mixing styles to tone your muscles and help you burn more calories. Swimming, as a land-based interval workout, can be easily customized to suit your needs, using a variety of styles at different speeds to optimize your time in the pool. One workout program developed by Fitness Magazine aims to burn 270 calories in just 22 minutes and 40 laps by combining exercises such as freestyle swimming, backstroke, paddleboarding, fast and slow laps.

Interval training to burn calories and lose weight

Interval training, the essence of which boils down to alternating the intensity of movements from maximum to minimum, will speed up the process of losing weight and burning calories.

• The duration of interval training usually takes 10-15 minutes and is carried out as follows:
• You should swim for 30 seconds at full strength with maximum energy expenditure, at a level of at least 90% of your own capabilities. The butterfly style is relevant.
• You should swim breaststroke for 15 seconds, focusing on a slow, relaxing pace.
• This alternation of possibilities will occupy one interval. The following interval training can be structured like this:
• 30 seconds – active work, 15 seconds – rest.

This is what the second interval looks like. During your first workout, it is enough to perform 10 similar intervals. Gradually, you can increase the number of intervals to 15.

Alternatively, you can start your interval training by swimming for 5-10 minutes in different strokes at your warm-up pace. You should swim backstroke, freestyle, butterfly and breaststroke.

Calculate how many calories are burned if you swim 1000 meters

As a rule, the length of a regular swimming pool is 25 meters in the short part and 50 meters in the long part. Olympic training pools are typically 50 meters long. Let's take a 50-meter circle as a basis.

Let's figure it out: how long are you actually swimming?

• To swim 1000 meters in a long pool, you need to do 20 laps
• To swim 1000 meters in a short pool, you need to do 40 laps
• To swim 1 mile in a long pool you need to do 32 laps
• To swim 1 mile in a short pool, you need to do 64 laps

Compliance with water safety regulations

Swimming in ponds requires special care, so you need to remember safety precautions. Signs prohibiting swimming, the topography of the bottom, the presence of broken glass and other debris in the water - all this should be in the attention zone of swimmers. It is advisable to choose reservoirs that are not remote, so that in case of trouble, help will come.

You cannot go to exercise on a full stomach, because, firstly, it will be very difficult to move, and, secondly, it is not good for digestion.

You need to remember that river and sea water does not warm up above 25 degrees, so there is a risk of getting a sudden leg cramp. This happens especially often when swimming in a lake, since lake water is much colder than river water. If seizures occur, it is better not to swim in the lake, or to swim accompanied.

Number of calories burned

So how many calories will you burn if you swim 20 laps? Remember that this depends on what stroke you are using and how fast you are swimming. In other words, to calculate the number of calories burned in 1000 meters or 20 laps, track the time it took you. Now look at the value in the table in the “number of calories” column next to your chosen swimming style, and you will have the required figure.

• Number of calories burned in X laps = X * time spent on 1 lap (in minutes) * Number of calories burned per minute for the chosen swimming style

To figure out how many calories you'll burn swimming a mile or half a mile, do the same, assuming 32 laps equals a mile in an Olympic-size pool.

• Calories burned in 1 mile = Calories burned in 32 laps = 32 * time taken for 1 lap (minutes) * Calories burned per minute for selected swimming style

How does temperature affect

Water temperature has a direct impact on losing extra pounds. The pools are mostly heated, so the water temperature reaches up to 29 degrees. This is very comfortable, but not as effective for weight loss as we would like. After all, such comfortable water will not require any extra expenditure of energy; it will relax and unwind. Therefore, it is worth remembering that the effectiveness of weight loss exercises is achieved at 26-27 degrees. Unplanned expenditure of energy to maintain temperature forces the body to waste fat resources, and it simply “melts”.