Wrestlers pay more attention than most athletes to their weight, owing to the fact that wrestling competition is divided into weight classes. Whether you're wrestling to lose weight, or losing weight to wrestle better, the number of calories you'll burn is important information for reaching your goals.
Wrestling Basics
Although it might be interesting to know how many calories you burn in a wrestling match, that's not useful information from a weight-loss standpoint. Wrestling matches last six minutes, not long enough for a significant caloric burn. Rather, wrestlers burn most of their calories during practice --- typically a two-hour session divided between warmups, conditioning drills, skills practice and live sparring.
Calorie Basics
A calorie is a unit of measure for energy. One calorie equals the amount of energy it takes to raise 1 g of water's temperature by 1 degree Celsius. In weight-loss parlance, the word "calorie" actually refers to a unit 1,000 times larger than the scientific "calorie." It takes 3,500 of a nutritionist's calories to account for 1 lb. of fat.
Calorie Burn
The particulars of a wrestler's workout will vary from program to program, but 120 minutes split evenly between light aerobics, vigorous calisthenics, light training and competitive wrestling is a fair example. According to health resource website HealthStatus.com, a 160-lb. wrestler would burn about 1,300 calories in such a workout. Heavier wrestlers will burn more; lighter wrestlers will burn less.
Variables
Calorie counting is not an exact science, especially in cases with as much potential variety as a wrestling workout. Some factors that might increase or decrease the calories burned while wrestling include the intensity of the workout, how recently you ate, the temperature in the room and even your mood at the time. You should consider calorie burn information for your workout approximate guidelines, not hard-and-fast data.
Member Comments