How Many Calories Are Burned With 30 Minutes Of Weight Training?

How Many Calories Are Burned With 30 Minutes of Weight Training?

May 26, 2011 | By Colin Linneweber

Calories are essential for your body to have the energy to operate properly. Excess calories are converted to fat and can trigger weight gain; you can burn off these extra calories with physical activity. Weight training, a kind of anaerobic exercise, involves intense exertion that can build muscle mass through tension and resistance. Depending on your body weight, 30 minutes of weight training can burn from 200 calories to 320 or more. Consult your doctor before beginning any new exercise regimen.

Calories

Calorie are a unit of energy, gained from food you eat and drinks you consume. Ingesting more calories than you burn will cause weight gain. Being overweight or obese increases your chances of developing a host of chronic, serious health problems.

Weight Training

You can get a high-intensity weight-training workout by using free weights, like barbells or dumbbells, and strength machines. Free weights allow you to simultaneously work numerous muscles without constrain; strength machines have pulleys or levers and allow you to focus on a specific muscle. A typical weight-training exercise lasts for less than 90 seconds. Your muscles will stretch and subsequently constrict during weight training; this causes microscopic tears in your muscles. Your muscles naturally respond to this stress and become bigger and stronger during the rest and recovery stage that occurs after your workout. Consistent weight training can allow you to reduce body fat, burn calories and enhance lean muscle mass; MayoClinic.com recommends two to three sessions per week, on non-consecutive days.

Calories Burned

Because weight-training exercises raise your heart rate, doing them burns calories --- around 8 to 10 calories per minute, Dr. Wayne Westcott, director of research at the South Shore YMCA in Quincy, Massachusetts, tells "Women's Health" magazine. And the corresponding speed-up in your metabolism will help you burn another 25 percent of your workout total. "If you burned 200 calories lifting weights, it's really closer to 250 overall," Westcott explains, because your body keeps working after a weightlifting session to repair the muscle fibers traumatized during training.

Warning

Consult your doctor before undertaking any new fitness routine. A health professional can design an exercise plan for your needs and goals. Weight training can be intensive and it is not the type of exercise you should start hastily.