Has anyone got a reliable source for calculating calorie burn while swimming? Wife is now using my Garmin Swim and is keen to see some good data. Have found a couple of sites but curious to see what, if anything, others are using.
Thanks in advance 
Most of the sites put me between 350-420kcal/1600m (I’m 180).
Fitness sites are pretty worthless since they use meaningless terms like “easy” and “vigorous” (the pace that’s easy for you might be hard for me).
In truth these are all going to be estimates, since no calorie calculator can measure your form in the water.
What I have always been told: whilst swimming, you burn calories for 2 parts of the training.
- 1x for the excercise which basically stops as you stop and is only linked to your excerise/motion in the water.
- 1x for the body-heat lost whilst in water of 26-27°C for 1-1,5hrs. This starts as soon as you get out of the water since heat-production from excercise just stopped.
Although you might feel nice and warm and sweaty from the excercise itself, your body-temp is likely to drop. This is what makes you crave for that snack right as soon as you leave the pool. The cooling-effect will be less when you are doing a hard workout, but more if you are doing technique-drills since typically are performed at a lower overall muscular intensity. The good thing is that the last bit (body-temp) continues for some time after the excerise, which makes it hard to give you a decent nr of calories burnt.
That’s interesting - thanks.
You know that on your Garmin Swim if you open History and pick a particular workout, if you then scroll down far enough through the session data it tells you the calories burned?
Obviously it is only an estimate, but probably as good as anything and the device might take a stab at calculating your efficiency using stroke rate/strokes per length vs pace, SWOLF etc. Be interesting to know how the unit calculates calories, it might be a much more simple rule of thumb.
Apologies if you already knew that and were looking for some corroboration, but I wanted to know the same (so I could decide if I was allowed chips with my sandwich after my lunchtime swim…) and took me a minute or two to find that. It will also show you on connect.
Eg…
http://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/674107952
(please ignore swim pace, this pool is all uphill and I haven’t swum in ages).
Yup, well aware of the calorie count on the device, and equally well aware it’s without a lot of basis given there’s no HR measurement involved or FirstBeat, etc. involved. I wanted to know if anyone had a better way of finding a burn - thanks though. I’ve got an RCX5 I might get her to try to see what it comes up with as a comparison.
Gotcha, wondered if you knew that and were after something better.
Looking through my swim sessions I think I am granting Garmin far too much credit by assuming that they somehow look at your swim metrics to calculate efficiency. Do they balls!!!
I’ve got two recent datapoints to look at
- 1750m swim, 350 calories
- 2000m swim, 400 calories
So, 20 calories per 100m is the rule!! Is yours worked out the same? Far too round a number to even take into account age or weight.
Yeah that looks about right in comparison to what I’m seeing.
Gotcha, wondered if you knew that and were after something better.
Looking through my swim sessions I think I am granting Garmin far too much credit by assuming that they somehow look at your swim metrics to calculate efficiency. Do they balls!!!
I’ve got two recent datapoints to look at
- 1750m swim, 350 calories
- 2000m swim, 400 calories
So, 20 calories per 100m is the rule!! Is yours worked out the same? Far too round a number to even take into account age or weight.I usually never look at calories but last week somehow looked at it and noticed the same thing - a very rounded number.
This is a good article that looks at calories burned while swimming and more - http://www.eload.net/nutrition-for-ironman-p136203
.
Based on my calorie counting, everything I’ve seen about assigning calories to my swimming says I’m burning about 150 calories for every 1000 yards I swim.
All the websites I’ve seen and devices I’ve used appear to overestimate the calories I burn.
jaretj
Your weight in lbs * 2.93 per mile. Example 5,166 meters / 1,609 meters per mile * 2.93 * 182.5lbs(oink oink) = 1,717kcals.
I found this formula somewhere probably ST.
Run: weight in lbs * 0.653 per mile.
Bike: weight in lbs * 0.28 per mile
I use it mostly to calculate calories burned per year. Now mostly it slows I am much lazier than I was in 2008.
This is a good article that looks at calories burned while swimming and more - http://www.eload.net/…-for-ironman-p136203
Ben - Thanks for providing this link, this info looks pretty well researched. Tigerchik and I have had an off and on debate on calories burned during swimming so I’ll have to pm her this link. For me, i’ve always figured around 250 cal/1000 yds, or 275 cal/1000 m, which at my weight of 80 kg (176 lbs) is about 3.5 cal/kg/km, which is lower than the cited 4 cal/kg/km, but OTOH I’m prob a bit more efficient than the average swimmer. I do think though that pace matters at least a little bit though, as i definitely feel hungrier after a very hard 5000 than after an easy 5000:)
Also, it is interesting that these caloric burn rates correspond with those cited in the Isoman Triathlon thread, which equated a 26.2 mi run to a 7 mi swim on an energy expended basis and on a relative-to-the-WRs basis.
What I have always been told: whilst swimming, you burn calories for 2 parts of the training.
- 1x for the excercise which basically stops as you stop and is only linked to your excerise/motion in the water.
- 1x for the body-heat lost whilst in water of 26-27°C for 1-1,5hrs. This starts as soon as you get out of the water since heat-production from excercise just stopped.
Although you might feel nice and warm and sweaty from the excercise itself, your body-temp is likely to drop. This is what makes you crave for that snack right as soon as you leave the pool. The cooling-effect will be less when you are doing a hard workout, but more if you are doing technique-drills since typically are performed at a lower overall muscular intensity. The good thing is that the last bit (body-temp) continues for some time after the excerise, which makes it hard to give you a decent nr of calories burnt.
The body heat issue is quite small.
If a 70kg (154lbs) person had to raise their core temperature 1^C (which is actually quite a bit), it would take ~50kcal. This is a best case scenario.
I’d have to check (easy to do…just bring a thermometer to the pool), but I doubt that after a hard swim workout that my core body temp is <98.6^F.