Swimming is an exercise that uses your whole body, and it can be highly effective in burning calories. You should swim continuously to keep your heart rate within the effective calorie burning range. You can estimate your calorie expenditure from reference values, and you can also calculate it from specific factors.
Factors
Your calorie expenditure during a swim depends primarily on the duration of your swim and your average heart rate during that swim. Additional factors that affect your calorie expenditure include your gender, age and weight. This means that you can use the same formula to calculate your calorie expenditure for any exercise.
Data Collection
A heart monitor is typically able to record your heart rate for a specific time interval. This capability will reveal your average heart rate during a swim lasting for one hour. You'll also need to weigh yourself in pounds, and provide your age in years. Each gender uses a specific formula to calculate your calorie expenditure.
Heart Rate Range
The most important consideration in obtaining your calorie expenditure from your heart rate is the need to keep your heart rate within the proper range. Your heart rate bears the strongest correlation with your calorie expenditure rate when your heart rate is greater than 90 beats per minute but less than 150 beats per minute. You should therefore select a swimming pace that will keep your heart rate within this range.
Estimates
The Mayo Clinic has calorie expenditure estimates for an hour of swimming laps. These estimates use body weight only; they do not consider heart rate, age or gender. An hour of swimming laps burns 511 calories if you weigh 160 pounds, 637 calories if you weigh 200 pounds and 763 calories if you weigh 240 pounds.
Formulas
The following equation provides the calories that women burn during an hour of swimming: Calories = [(0.4472 x Average Heart Rate) -- (0.05741 x Weight) + (0.074 x Age) -- 20.4022] x 60 / 4.184. The following equation provides the calories that men burn during an hour of swimming: Calories = [(0.6309 x Average Heart Rate) -- (0.09036 x Weight) + (0.2017 x Age) -- 55.0969] x 60 / 4.184.
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