FWIW rope pulling machine not in the list but compared to nine other machines treadmill on top for oxygen consumption (and calculated calories burned) at same perceived level of exertion.
@markn_1 those hoping exercise alone will make them thin are just wrong. But the benefit of exercise on healthspan is very very real even if no weight is lost. And not only for the improved body composition that @Dr_Paprika references (same weight less fat mass) but for the improved cardiorespiratory fitness and greater function that a balanced exercise plan leads to. Nutrition of course also matters lots.
With machines I think there is a value in novelty. Few people do “upper body cardio” but everyone walks. I think this might give a short term advantage, which diminishes as your body grows used to the stimulus. I think running is as good as anything, (though squash is more fun) but skilled marathoners burn far fewer calories for a race than one might guess.
Like strength training, I suspect to continue optimal calorie burning one needs to increase the difficulty in some way over time. Many sprinters are muscular but low fat, possibly this is self selecting. But in the gym, I do intense short sprints in preference to long treadmill sessions at moderate exertion. However, that is also because it is more in line with the muscle fibre ratios I want to have in order to lift heavy.
All the machines at the gym I use either ask for your weight (if you sign in as “guest”) or have your weight from your profile if you are logging in as a “known” user
There are two systems, one is iFit and the other eGym. Both of them use your weight to more accurately calculate caloric expenditure.
I suspect you know I am personally a big fan of exercise variety. Of course yes you get better at something the more you do it. As a weightlifter you make neuromuscular adaptations which help you lift more with the same mass. Runners develop efficient running economy Swimmers use less energy to go faster Completely agreed that progress requires change: more speed, more time, more difficulty, more weight, more reps, more something different than before.
But my suspicion is that the being unfamiliar doesn’t make it burn more calories. Just less produced for the same calories and effort due to relative inefficiency at it And hitting different muscles in different ways
Oh, of course exercise is an extremely important component of good health; I’m not trying to dispute that. But why do exercise machines display a “calorie” reading at all? Why do smart watches and such devices do the same? I think that many, if not most, people who pay attention to these calorie readings are thinking that if they burn sufficient calories via exercise, it will counteract the calories that they eat.
Although even with the very inflated numbers they get a reality check …
We digress from FQ but I continue to argue the position that healthy nutrition and exercise is about much more than what the scale says.
Still if that is a number easier for some to glom onto and get motivated by then a perceived exertion or heart rate zone etc is, then give the consumer what they want!
This study obviously didn’t include any athletes. Otherwise they’d find that athletes expend 2 , 3 or even 4 times as many calories as non-athletes. But that obviously wasn’t the point of the study.
That sounds like the right order of magnitude— but that is not saying much. I happen not to care about the “calories”, but a professional athlete would absolutely want to measure their performance. I wonder, though, if they would not be hooked up to an array of sophisticated sensors during training, in which case they would never need to worry about what a random exercise machine says, either.
OK, on the PreCor elliptical machines I do have the option to input weight and age, at least for some of the pre-programmed workout options.
Wait, the trained athlete would have to expend multiple times the energy to do the exact same thing as the non-athlete? It would make more sense if someone with training could work harder and therefore require more calories, or do more for the same amount of energy.
A few in a few sports? And even then the extreme numbers for limited periods of time.
Apparently there seems to be a “metabolic ceiling” of around 2.5 times BMR that even ultra endurance athletes do not exceed over prolonged training periods. But for those short periods? Wow. Reasonable to use 1700 for an average adult BMR but of course varies with muscle mass gender age … add to that non exercise activity, exercise, even calories burn digesting food, and the total is typically something like 2300 for an average man. The metabolic ceiling seems to be around 4000 for prolonged training even for these extreme athletes.
Athletes need to be concerned about reaching their metabolic ceiling because otherwise they wouldn’t be competitive. But for us normal folks, trying to do that may be counterproductive. It is exhausting to operate at such a high level, which means that you can’t do it for very long. For instance, if you sprint over 100m, you will be so exhausted that you’ll need to take a long break before continuing to run. But if you do a light jog, you can run for several miles with relative ease. So even if sprinting burns the most calories per minute, that may not matter if someone can only do it for a few seconds. For general fitness, it will often be better to work out at an easier pace since that will allow the person to be active for a much longer time and burn many more calories over the course of the workout.
I am not disagreeing per se, but there are definite health advantages and good arguments to be made for both intensity (brief) and duration, … my personal take returns to the bit above - variety is likely to be most likely to hit the sweet spot. Calories are not the prime goal with exercise.
