Great question from one of our Physique Camp members last week...
“How many calories do you think we burn during a session? My watch tells me about 200.”
Answer: In short, I have no idea.
Each person will expend a different amount of calories each session compared to the next person.
Each person will expend a different amount of calories themselves than the exact same session they did last week.
Food consumed, food digested, sleep, stress, hydration, hormonal status and menstruation, body composition (fat:muscle) - these will all have an effect on calories expended and can change weekly, daily or even hourly!
If you like to use the ‘calories burned’ feature on tracker, there is nothing wrong with that, but take it with a pinch of salt.
Whether its a spin class, circuit training or traditional strength training, the main thing is that you’re choosing to do it because you enjoy it.
The majority of the calories your body uses daily is spent literally to stay alive.
On average, you require twice the amount of calories to process the food you have consumed that day than you do your 1 hour of exercise.
Triple that amount just moving around - walking, working, fidgeting etc, combined.
I want your main takeaway from this post to be; to not see exercise or different forms of exercise as ‘burning calories’.
You are always going to consume those calories back, regardless of what you do.
We train to get stronger all over, in different ways to improve capabilities.
We train to get fitter to make general life easier and to prolong it.
If you want to achieve long-term success and be an improved version of yourself in months, years, decades…
Yes, turn up to the sessions for those 3 hours per week, but more importantly identify and make improvements on the other 160+ hours, Monday to Sunday.