Calories Expended?

I, too, like to figure out roughly how many calories I expend- I use this link: www.prevention.com/.../1,4821,2116,00.html Scroll down to the water activities link and take it from there...

Nobody has yet devised an accurate way to easily estimate your caloric expenditure in the pool. One of the biggest factors is how efficient you are - which has two major components: 1) How well do you avoid swimming against unnecessary resistance and 2) How well do you avoid firing off unnecessary muscle cells/fibers as you swim - either because you a) make unnecessary motions or because you b) have not yet practiced a specific motion enough times for your neuromuscular system to have learned exactly which cells need to contract, and which do not, to make that motion happen at its lowest energy consumption rate or because you c) are not as relaxed as you could be, thus large percentages of otherwise unnecessary muscles are continually working against each other throughout your body). This is an EXTREMELY complex mix of variables. I've seen estimates indicating that some people may be using as much as 8 times as much energy as the most efficient swimmers do at any given speed.

Ah, but the question was how many calories per hour, not per distance or per speed. If it is a workout, and the swimmer works hard (say at a threshold pace), no matter how efficiently, the calories expended could very well be the same, at least as similar as different participants in other activities (biking, running, rowing) are to each other.

Here is a site that estimates the number of calories burned for various activities: www.diet-i.com/.../calories-burned.htm I believe the figures are for an average 150 pound woman. For men (and fit women), the figures should be higher due to greater lean tissue percentage. If you really want to get precise, you can do all of the arithmetic yourself. You have to write down exactly what you eat (quantities included), how much you exercise, and what you weigh for a period of time (say, 10 days). Use the charts at http://www.caloriechart.org To convert the food data into calories. Use the fact that 3500 calories = 1 pound body weight to account for any change in weight. You should be able to derive the number of calories that you need per day. Now repeat the process for another 10 days, but no exercise. Subtract, and there's your answer. BTW just because I'm that kind of person, I went through this drill myself, and found that I burn about 480 calories per hour of swimming, and 310 calories per hour of bike. For your reference, I am a 130 pound guy. Most of y'all should have much higher numbers since you're probably in much better shape and exercise more vigorously.

There is a formula that is used to determine your aerobic intensity level. It's is 220 - your age X's(times) .%(Maximum heart rate) Just a few minutes ago, I did a 30-min speed walk. I'm trying to determine just how fast a "Power walk" makes my heart beat. My beats per minute was 141. I'm 32 years old. 220-32 x's .75 = 141 I was training at 75% of my Maximum Heart Rate. This is not nearly as intense as running, where most train at 85% or higher. I don't know why, but at most gyms that I go to, the people who just do endless laps of freestyle look like flabby. Those who include other strokes, seem to look more toned. Freestlyers tend to store fat in their mid-section. The body is using the fat for buoyancy, so it's not going to be burned. I notice

Actually, a person who is very fit, cardiovascularly, for his sport will burn WAY more calories when working his threshold intensity than will a person who is only marginally fit working at his threshold intensity. How fit you are is really a measure of how much oxygen your system can process while engaged in your sport. How much oxygen your body can process ultimately determines how many calories your body is capable of burning during any given period of exercise. So "fitness" is also a big variable that also makes "working at threshold" a huge variable. Of course it IS possible to attain a high level of fitness for swimming very badly - and many people do just that. On the other hand, people who learn excellent stroke technique have a big calorie consumption advantage over those who suck at swimming. Excellent swimming technique involves lots of core muscle mass. Poor swimmers tend to flail arms and lower legs predominantly without involving much core muscle mass. The excellent swimmer might be using as much as 5 times as much muscle mass productively as does the poor swimmer. This allows the excellent swimmer to spread the work over a larger muscle mass, thus avoiding localized fatigue. It is very common in swimming to see an athlete who is limited by localized fatigue such that he cannot sustain the highest level of exertion in swimming that his heart is capable of sustaining in general. An athlete that is not actually at his cardio threshold for an extended period won't burn as many calories as the excellent swimmer that does reach his cardio threshold for an extended period. What all this means is that at slow paces, energy consumption is extremely variable across a population. We've all seen really good swimmers who, when swimming at very slow paces, exert less energy than Homer Simpson eating donuts. We've also seen very poor swimmers that, while swimming, look like a a big splash moving slowly down the pool. These people are burning LOTS of energy at those very slow paces. When we move to the other end of the speed spectrum the corelation between speed, work intensity and calorie consumption gets better. The very fastest swimmers in the world have all developed sufficient skills and conditioning to allow for maximum oxygen (and calorie) consumption when they choose to work at high levels so there are fewer variables and the range of each of those variables is smaller. Of course, since poor swimmers have self selected themselves out of this realm, the population we consider here is a lot smaller than the population we consider at slower paces. A calorie comsumption estimation mechanism for the population of swimmers at slow speeds is fraught with pitfalls. Such a mechanism for swimmers at much higher speeds is much more doable. In swimming we have a continuum of ability levels between these areas. But, I suspect that only at ability levels where: 1) technique is good enough to eliminate localized fatigue as a limiting factor to systemic metabolism and 2) cardiovascular conditioning levels are high enough for the swimmer to actually reach and maintain threshold paces for extended periods, can we begin to count chart estimates or simple equation estimates for calorie consumption as being at least in the right ball park. While such estimates might be usably accurate for elite swimmers, I suspect they are of dubious accuracy for the vast majority of Masters swimmers.

Also, heard that the three other strokes-breastroke,Fly and backstroke consumed more calories than Freestyle. I notice when I first started to train at 3 to 5 days at an hour again, I lost weight faster than I did when I swam several more yardage as a teenager but I was a lot less overweight as a teen. My weight has basically remained the same for almost a year now but I think that we need to change our eating habits if we want to lose more weight.

Freestlyers tend to store fat in their mid-section. The body is using the fat for buoyancy, so it's not going to be burned. All swimmers inescapably use fat for bouyancy - it is there and it floats. If the above quote were true then we'd expect ALL swimmers to gather fat pretty much throughout the body - perhaps a bit more in the legs than anywhere else. And we might see all those elite distance swimmers that swim predominantly freestyle tending to be even fatter than the casual swimmers. But, in fact, there is no metabolic mechanism that selects which fat will be burned or where fat will be stored based on balance in the water (bouyancy) or stroke being swum. Perhaps a more realistic explanation is that people who tend to gather fat around the middle, from the beginning, self select freestyle over the other strokes - perhaps because such a body mass distribution makes those other strokes more cumbersome than freestyle. All swimmers ALSO use AIR (in the lungs) for bouyancy. In fact, this is a much more effective bouy for most swimmers. Alas, MOST swimmers never learn HOW to use their natural air buoy to greatest advantage.

In keeping with the original question posed by Perkunas...let me offer the following possibilities. (1) As I noted above, you can keep a log of how much you exercise, how much you eat, and how much you weigh. With some arithmetic, you can calculate your caloric requirement as a function of your activity level. For you analytical types, this can be an interesting thing to do. or (2) Just assume that you're burning 500 Calories per hour of swimming as a working figure. If you find that you are losing or gaining weight over time, then adjust the figure accordingly. (For you big, fit, powerful swimmers, it might be 800.) 500 Calories can be thought of as: (a) a homemade turkey and cheese sandwich plus banana; or (b) small roasted chicken *** (skin removed), plus medium baked potato, lightly dressed, and a half cup of peas; or (c) 1.5 cups of ice cream. or (3) Forget the arithmetic, and just eat according to your hunger mechanism. Eat when you are hungry. Eat slowly, so that you give your hunger mechanism time to respond. When you are no longer hungry, stop eating. When you are at a buffet, limit your quantities, but enjoy having a taste of everything you like.

"Freestlyers tend to store fat in their mid-section." - seems like quite a sweeping statement. I'd want to know that you'd seen this in thousands of swimmers before citing it as some sort of norm. Don't know what your gym pools are like but in the UK, most aren't longer than around 18 metres, so most 'semi-serious' swimmers stick to pools that are at least 25 metres long - otherwise they'd just get dizzy! Emmett's earlier, eloquent postings sum up what it's all about.