Have you ever felt like you’re putting in the hard work at the gym but aren't seeing the results you want? If so, you’re not alone. Many struggle with losing weight or toning up, even after months of consistent exercise. Understanding how different exercises impact calorie burn can help you maximize your workouts for better results. For instance, push-ups are a common bodyweight exercise that can help you build strength and endurance. But how many calories do push-ups burn? This article will help you answer that question and introduce effective tips with the best app to track macros.
Cal AI's calorie tracker can help you reach your goals by providing personalized insights as you work to understand how many calories push-ups burn and learn effective tips to enhance your workout for maximum fat-burning results.
Most people think push-ups are exercises that are only used to exercise the chest. This is a far cry from the truth. Push-ups are strength training exercises. This means their main aim is to build strength and muscles in a person. Push-ups work out many muscles at a go. Push-ups mostly work the upper body. This is good as most people work out their lower bodies more.
This is mainly through involuntary exercises like taking a stroll, climbing a flight of stairs, standing, etc. Push-ups help work out your:
Push-ups are body weight exercises. This means that they do not need any equipment and use the body's weight as the source of resistance. Since they do not need any equipment, adapting them to your workout routine becomes easy. This is quite an advantage, especially during this pandemic, as you can work out right in the comfort of your home anytime. There are so many variations of push-ups. This means you can always enjoy doing push-ups.
Besides building muscles and strength, push-ups are also said to help with weight loss. A characteristic of a good fat-loss exercise is the number of muscles it engages simultaneously. As you have seen, push-ups engage the chest, shoulder, triceps, and core muscles, making them a good fat-loss exercise.
The best part about push-ups is that almost anyone can do them. If your goal is to build strength and keep fit, then push-ups can be incorporated into your workout session. Other people should not do push-ups. Pregnant people, for example, should not be doing push-ups, especially during the last trimester. People who suffer from shoulder impingement should also not do push-ups.
If you are about to try an exercise you have never done before, it is advisable to consult an expert about it, and you should do the first try of the exercise under the supervision of an expert. This helps prevent you from doing the exercise wrongly and prevents me from injuring myself. With that said, is there a right way to do push-ups?
There is one assured way to ensure that an exercise works for you, and that is by doing it correctly. When you do the exercise correctly, you can get all or almost all the benefits associated with that exercise. When it comes to push-ups, maintaining your form is very important. How to do it:
Push-ups are quite effective when it comes to building muscles. The same cannot be said when it comes to helping one lose weight. Although they are good exercise, they do not trigger a quick fat burn. This is because push-ups do not cause a significantly elevated heart rate. That said, it does not mean they do not help in weight loss. Push-ups aid in burning fat by increasing a person’s metabolism. Push-ups are known to help one build muscles and strength easily.
Lean muscles are quite helpful when it comes to weight loss. This is because muscles have a higher resting metabolism compared to fat mass. This means that muscles burn more calories at rest than fat mass. The more muscles you have, the higher your resting metabolic rate. Gaining 3 pounds of muscle mass can help you burn over 600 extra calories weekly. This is how push-ups mainly help people burn fat. They help build muscles, and muscles help increase a person’s metabolism.
Another way you can use push-ups to lose those extra pounds is by including them as part of your circuit training. Circuit training is a training that involves doing many different exercises in quick succession. The key is to devote as little time as possible to every exercise. For your circuit training, you can do the following:
Circuit training adds a cardiovascular element to the exercise. This is still the case even if your circuit training comprises strength training exercises. The quick succession of exercises brings up the cardiovascular element, which helps burn more calories compared to doing the exercises slowly. That is another way push-ups can aid in burning fat.
Yet another way this particular type of exercise can help burn fat. You don’t have to always settle for the standard push-up; try to make it more challenging. You can do this by adding resistance or changing the elevation. Making push-ups more challenging makes your body work even harder, adding a slight cardiovascular element to the workout.
The number of calories you burn doing push-ups isn’t the same for everyone. The CDC suggests that a person burns about seven calories per minute doing vigorous push-ups. This number fluctuates greatly based on several factors, including:
Push-ups are a strength-training exercise primarily targeting the:
They also engage the core and lower body to stabilize the body, making them an effective total-body workout. As with most forms of exercise, the more muscle you have, the more calories you burn during and after your workout. People who are larger or have more muscle burn more calories while working out and at rest than people who are lighter and have less muscle. So, if you weigh more, you’ll likely burn more calories doing push-ups than someone who weighs less.
As you age, muscle mass decreases, slowing down calorie burning. This means that your push-up performance can decline over time, and you may burn fewer calories doing them than you did when you were younger.
Typically, men have less fat and more muscle than women of the same age and weight, which increases their calorie-burning potential. This means that males and females of the same age and weight will likely burn different amounts of calories doing push-ups.
The intensity of your workout session also influences how many calories you burn. For example, you will burn more calories if you do 50 push-ups in 60 seconds than if you do 15 push-ups in the same amount of time. Push-ups can be performed at different intensity levels, making them versatile exercises for any fitness program.
If you're wondering why it's so tricky to predict how many calories you'll burn doing push-ups, look no further than the mysteries of metabolism, the chemical reactions in your body that break down the food you eat into energy. "Metabolism varies a lot between people, and we don't exactly understand why," says Seema Sarin, MD, Director of Lifestyle Medicine at EHE Health. "There are so many factors playing into it, and it can change day-to-day like if you're fighting a cold or on your menstrual cycle."
If your metabolism is faster, you'll burn calories quicker than someone with a slower metabolism. If your metabolism is slower, your body burns fewer calories, meaning more calories are stored as body fat. It's commonly believed that strength training exercises like push-ups can raise your metabolism and increase your basal metabolic rate (BMR).
While this is partially true, your metabolism is less susceptible to manipulation than you might think. Metabolism is mainly determined by genetics. According to the CDC, people who exercise regularly might gain a few pounds of muscle, but it's not enough to significantly change their BMR. Still, Sarin says regularly participating in strength training, like consistently doing push-ups, will help increase muscle mass and slightly increase resting metabolism. "When you increase your muscle mass, it's true that your resting metabolism goes up because your muscles are using more calories in order to function," Sarin says. "That's why physicians will say adding weight training to an exercise program is important."
Performing 100 push-ups in a single workout is no small feat. Even getting through a few sets of 10 chest-to-floor push-ups is impressive. Even though your muscles work extra hard when doing 100 push-ups, the calorie burn won't be too high. Instead of performing your push-ups with a calorie goal, use this exercise to build total-body muscle and focus on creating a calorie deficit for fat loss.
It’s tricky to pinpoint precisely how many calories you burn while doing push-ups. According to the Mayo Clinic, your calorie burn during any exercise depends on several factors, including height, weight, gender, and age. Plus, the intensity with which you exercise makes a difference, too. According to Harvard Health Publishing, a 125-pound person can expect to burn about 125 calories for a 30-minute, moderate-intensity calisthenics workout that includes push-ups, lunges, and dips. Meanwhile, a 155-pound person can expect to burn approximately 167 calories, and a 185-pound person can burn around 200 calories.
The total calories you burn during 100 push-ups vary depending on how vigorously you do your reps and how long they take. Push-ups are a pretty strenuous move (and 100 reps is quite a lot), so you'll want to keep your speed moderate and split up your sets. For instance, do 4 sets of 25 push-ups. So, if doing one set of 25 push-ups takes you about two minutes, that means it will take eight minutes of work total to finish all 100 repetitions. Assuming you fall within the middle weight range above, you can expect to burn around 44 calories for 100 push-ups.
If weight loss is your ultimate goal, performing 100 push-ups daily isn't the best idea. Not only is repetitive motion strenuous on your body, but push-ups aren't going to be the one thing that ultimately gets you to your goal. According to the Mayo Clinic, one pound of body fat contains about 3,500 calories. Burning all of those calories through exercise is nearly impossible and probably unsafe. The best route is to combine exercise with a calorie deficit (when you burn more calories than you consume) and more general movement in your day, like walking up stairs, doing chores, etc.
You can create a sustainable calorie deficit by figuring out how many calories your body burns to maintain your current weight (aka your maintenance calories). From there, you can safely cut between 500 to 1,000 calories each day, per the Mayo Clinic. Throughout the week, your calorie deficit accumulates, leading to weight loss.
Just because push-ups aren't the big calorie-burning solution to help you lose weight, it doesn't mean you should neglect the exercise. After all, push-ups are a great way to build lean muscle mass, a key part of your body's total calorie burn.
According to the American Council on Exercise, a body with a greater lean mass is more efficient at burning calories all day. This isn't due to the energy expended with pushing-ups; it’s a post-exercise effect you experience after several weeks or months of training.
Incorporating cardio exercise into your workout routine also helps increase your calorie expenditure. Cardio is necessary to keep your heart healthy and strong. For weight loss and overall health, the Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans suggest you do at least 75 to 150 minutes of vigorous-intensity aerobic exercise weekly. For example, HIIT workouts, including push-ups, can help you lose belly fat. While you can’t spot-train a certain area of your body to lose fat, HIIT workouts can help produce the EPOC effect, which helps increase the calories you burn from fat post-workout.
Push-ups are one of the most common bodyweight exercises. They're great for your upper body and core strength and can be done anywhere. Push-ups target the chest, shoulders, and triceps while working the abs and stabilizing muscles.
Proper push-up form engages the core and helps maintain balance throughout the movement. If you're new to fitness or push-ups, performing them on an elevated surface (like a bench) can help build strength and power.
To do a standard push-up:
The basic push-up is a powerful move. With a few simple tweaks, you can make it easier or harder. To increase the intensity, fitness trainer Mat Forzaglia says to add a plyometric aspect. “As you push away from the ground, explode off the ground, softly returning back into the bottom of the pushup,” he says. You can also elevate your feet and make it a decline push-up or add weight to make the push-up harder.
Another great way to make a push-up more challenging is to add a deficit, such as performing the push-up with your hands on a set of dumbbells, Forzaglia adds. “This will allow for a deeper range of motion, making it harder to push all the way up,” he explains. To lower the intensity, try kneeling on a mat and performing the upper-body portion of the exercise. Master this form before progressing to extending your legs.
With modifications, the push-up can be a safe exercise appropriate for most fitness levels. Just keep your rib cage tucked down so there’s no arching in your lower back. “You want to protect the shoulders as much as possible, so keeping them tucked into your side is the best bet,” Forzaglia says. Exercise is good for your body and soul.
Too much can have adverse consequences that may lead to:
Some of the warning signs of compulsive exercise include:
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