Which Exercise Burns the Most Calories? It Depends on You. (Men's Health)

Posted: Jul 26, 2023 in In the News

This article originally appeared in Men's Health on July 26, 2023.

 

Which Exercise Burns the Most Calories? It Depends on You.

By Greg Presto

WHEN YOU'RE TRYING to lose weight, burn belly fat, or pay penance for an epic pile of nachos, you might lace up your gym shoes with one thing in mind: calories. You want to burn them, and lots of them—fast.

But if you’re looking for the absolute, number one calorie-burning move or workout you can do, there’s no single, energy-torching solution, says Brad Schoenfeld, Ph.D., C.S.C.S.*D, professor of exercise science at CUNY Lehman College.

“Ultimately, there is no best exercise. There is no best time,” he says. “There’s an interaction between duration and intensity. If you’re doing high intensity, you won’t be able to do it as long.” And vice versa.

In a meta-analysis of 56 studies published in November 2021, Schoenfeld and other scientists found that whether exercisers chose medium-intensity steady state cardio, high-intensity interval training, or sprinting, they lost the same amount of fat when the work done—the intensity and time—were matched. So lower intensity activities done for longer burned off the same amount of fast as higher-intensity moves done for shorter periods.

So the specific exercises, workout routines, or cardio modalities that will burn the most calories for you, Schoenfeld says, depend on just that: you.

Here’s how Schoenfeld and Men’s Health, fitness director Ebenezer Samuel, C.S.C.S. break down the math on how different types of exercise use calories, dispel some misconceptions about post-workout calorie burning, and suggest four ways you can dial up your energy expenditure when you’re looking for the most bang for your calorie buck.

Of course, certain types of exercise do burn more calories, minute by minute, than others. According to the USDA’s Dietary Guidelines for America, a 154-pound person running or jogging at 5 mph, or bicycling at 10 mph, will burn an average of 590 calories per hour. This is listed as the most vigorous activity on the document’s chart. Other activities, like hiking, burn 370 calories per hour, while walking at 4.5 miles per hour clocks in at 460 calories per hour.

The American Council on Exercise (ACE) provides a tool that includes more than 50 different activities, estimating calorie burn based on your body weight and the duration of the activity. According to this calculator, the same 154-pound person will burn 733 calories in an hour doing vigorous rowing on an erg machine. They’ll burn 698 calories in an hour of vigorous swimming.

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