Day 1: I walk up 10 flights of stairs all at once, then immediately walk back down 10 flights.
Day 2: Once an hour, I walk up one flight of stairs and back down. I do this 10 different times.
Assuming the same number of steps in each flight, have I burned the same amount of calories on each of these days?
As a first-order approximation, it is. I would bet that it is equivalent within 20%. I am not sure how changes in metabolism (not to mention changes in climbing technique due to fatigue) would change the final total.
Yes. Calories are a measure of energy, which is mass x distance. You’ve moved your mass the same distance.
There could be a small difference in terms of tiredness and efficiency of motion (as you get more tired, you become more efficient in motion - you move the least distance possible to achieve the end line; but in this case the difference would be so small as we’d be talking something like “spring in your step” adding a little extra vertical motion with each step while fresh and unfatigued - a neglibible difference).
^ see post above for the entropy/energy answer
the only other part to the equation is that the body may not treat short-term, high intensity expenditures of energy the same as longer-term, lower intensity expenditures of energy. the body utilizes different sources of energy for each (namely, unconverted carbohydrates and muscle tissue versus fatty stores).
basically, one guy blowing 3500 calories in one exercise is probably going to get a lot fatter than one guy blowing 500 calories per exercise, given the same caloric intakes and a long enough timeframe.
Your body doesn’t stop instantly. It continues to maintain, and even replenish energy by metabolic processes for a while after you exercise. If one flight of stairs increases your heart and respiration, that increase will continue for a while. Ten flights will increase it more, but mostly, the after period will be about the same.
So, a little bit of exercise often will cause a slight increase in your basal metabolic rate for the day. However, if one flight doesn’t even get your heart rate up, that benefit doesn’t occur.
So, when you are fat and out of shape, yeah, ten trips helps more. Once you get into shape, not so much.
Tris
Wouldn’t walking 10 miles in one shot burn more calories than walking 1 mile 10 times with adequate rest in between each mile?
I figure, you’d have a higher heart rate for the 10 mile lap and, therefore, burn slightly more calories.
Heart rate isn’t necessarily a measure of calories burned. Running and walking both burn roughly the same calories per mile because you’re doing the same amount of work, but your heart rate will be much higher if you run. And it’ll take less time. But you burn the same calories.
Burning calories isn’t the only benefit of exercise, however. There may be additional benefits (or costs) to extended exercise sessions.
I’m not so sure that’s true? I thought they have done studies that demonstrate that running is mechanically less efficient than walking, so you actually burn more calories per mile of running (due to the inefficiency)
It’s not uncommon to see recommendations of a minimum of 90 min runs to begin to realize adaptations helpful in long distance running. See “How far is enough?” http://runningtimes.com/Print.aspx?articleID=17270 In those cases three 30 min runs does not give the same benefit of the one 90 minute run though I think the calorie burn would be about the same.
Otherwise I’ve always been lead to believe that a mile is a mile (for a given elevation – going uphill is more work). The work to go the distance is the roughly the same no matter how you get there. Work is work. Of course, may body may burn less (or more) calories to go that mile than you because I weigh less (or more) and require less work to move my body that far. I’ve may also have greater fitness and be slightly more efficient metabolically.
I’m sure there are slight differences, but it’s good to a pretty high degree.
Yes; there’s more “up and down” motion in runhing than in walking, making it less efficient. The difference isn’t much, though; probably not worth worrying about.
Not really, no.
Internally, there’s a lot going on. That makes a huge difference in exactly what kind of effects a calorie-worth of exercise has on you. It’s not a simple energy in = energy out equation. What type of exercise you do shapes your body inside and out.
There are three main metabolic pathways your body utilizes for generation of muscular power, and the extent that each of them is tapped depends upon what you’re doing, how long you’re doing it, how hard you’re doing it, what resistance you’re overcoming, etc. Each pathway preferentially uses different forms of stored energy, which prompts different mechanisms to start replenishing those stores. This in turn affects body composition, cardiovascular adaptations, skeletal and muscular adaptations, and hormonal balance.
Marathon runners and sprinters, for example, can have similar levels of body fat, and they’re obviously doing essentially the same activity, but sprinters will have a lot more muscle mass due to the catabolic effects of distance training on the marathoners and the greater loads sprinters put on their musculoskeletal system with rapid acceleration and short-term high-intensity exercise. Marathoners will have more pronounced cardiovascular adaptations, and will both tend to store and burn fat more readily than runners who train for sprinting events.
If you just look at the work done at a given pace, both athletes would have very similar calorie-burn measurements, but internally, they’re really different. The calories you’d burn raising a 5 kg weight through a 2 m range of motion 100 times does not equal the calories you’d burn doing a 100 kg clean and jerk 5 times. The adaptations you’d get from performing essentially the movement with such vastly different loads and intensities would be very different, and the way your body stores and utilizes the food you take in would be slightly altered as well.
MobiusStripes, on the other hand 6 sprint sessions in a week produced a 100% improvement in recreational-level cyclists (cite). There are several other citations on the FAQ here, as well as the experiences of athletes who have started training using the CrossFit Endurance guidelines that refute the recommendation for more mileage. There are people who are seeing HUGE increases in performance while doing something like 1/3 the volume of work that they used to do when they were doing long slow distance work.
Absolutely. As you point out there are also major adaptations that only occur at certain very hard effort levels. Most training plans have a mix of them all to cover all the areas and maintain a balance (example: http://www.mcmillanrunning.com/training2.htm)
I am fat and out of shape, and I don’t want to be any more.
I don’t have the stamina to do a lot of exercising all at once, so I’m glad this thread is validating my plan to fit in little bursts of activity throughout the day. (I’m trying to eat healthier too.)
Though I’m not so out of shape that a single flight of stairs gets my heart racing, I try to go from my third-floor office to the basement and back at least 3 times a day. We moved here from a one-story building in November, and since then – little by little – I think I have more energy to show for it. But results are slow to manifest; I’ll take all the validation I can get to stay motivated. Thanks, all.
Do you have any cite? I was always under the impression that approximate energy expenditure difference between normal walking and fastest running is on the order of 2x per mile for running. Googling around I am not sure WHY I was under this impression, but I can’t find any references that the energy expenditure would be the same.
First, congrats for trying to get into better shape. All the movement counts. And I think you’re right to start out easy and build up to it. Add a few more trips a day, plus any other exercise you can fit in (eg. park on the far side of the parking lot). The more fit you become the more easily it’ll be to become more fit.
It might amuse that despite running a fair bit (40-50 miles a week) and running races from 5Ks to 50 miles, a brisk walk up the stairs to the third floor causes my heart rate to pick up quite a bit. It’s work! It’s embarrassing to be the athletic guy walking down the hall way huffing and puffing.
here is the source that I’ve seen before - it doesn’t show 2x per mile, but it gives tables 'n numbers 'n stuff (edit: yeah, it actually does show 2x per mile!)
http://www.runnersworld.com/article/0,7120,s6-242-304-311-8402-0,00.html
Some more cites:
http://www.runningplanet.com/training/running-versus-walking.html
It’s certainly less clear than I had thought, and it appears that the 2004 study that was the basis of your link above has changed the science a bit. For most average people, I think the 2x is optimistic, but there clearly appear to be benefits from running vs walking.
I’ve noticed that as my level of fitness changes depending on the time of year and my current acitivity level, it takes less effort to get me breathing hard and perspiring the better shape I am in. This seems counterintuitive, but the way I figure it, when I’m in better shape, I am like a well tuned machine.
The instant my body senses increased activity, all the automatic responses jump into action. When I am out of shape, those natural responses are more sluggish to start.
Quoth Candyman74:
First of all, it’s force times distance, not mass. Second, it’s a dot product, so only the component of motion in the same direction as the force matters. Third, if it were that simple, then walking horizontally any distance at all would burn no Calories whatsoever, since in that case the force and the movement are perpendicular. Essentially, when you’re walking horizontally, all of the Calories burned are going towards overcoming inefficiencies, and I’d therefore expect that in walking up stairs, a significant portion goes towards inefficiencies (which could certainly be different depending on speed and the like).