Andrea Contents
Martial arts and combat sports are definitely one of the most energy-intensive and calorie-burned sports.
The training methods and the involvement of the whole body in large, explosive, discontinuous and complex movements results in a wide energy use.
This consumes a lot of calories and that’s why the fitness world has been interested and has created surrogates that mimic certain movements to allow people to use this approach to keep fit and lose weight.
My advice is why not really do a combat sport or a martial art so you also learn something apart from moving?
But now aside from the premise what the calories are and how many are consumed by doing combat sports and martial arts.
What are calories
Among friends with the word “calories” we generally mean the kilo calories of a food, a bar of chocolate, a drink, a pound of bread where for example it is said that there are 250 calories even if in reality we want to say 250 kilo calories (or 250,000 calories properly said), but in common language it is simplified.
In biology and nutrition, the kilo calorie (kcalsymbol), or large calorie (Calsymbol)
[2]
, is the energy needed to raise the temperature of one kg of pressure distilled water by 1 atm,and therefore corresponds to 1000 small calories. It is used to indicate the average energy intake of a certain specified amount of food (e.g. one gram, 100 grams or one serving). (Wikipedia)
The determination of caloric intake was initially made for the simplest sugar, that is, glucose, the easiest food assimilation.
Taking into account that 1 g of carbohydrates develops 3.8 kcal, 1 g of protein 4 kcal and 1 g of lipids 9.3 kcal, each food can determine the average energy intake based on the 3 components said.
On the packaging of almost all foods is indicated the average caloric intake, typically expressed in kcal/100 g.
Martial arts training is a great way to burn calories and lose weight.
This post gives you some information and reasoning insights on the number of calories burned during various martial arts and related workouts.
Below are the average calories burned by a person of 72 kg in an hour of activity.
As you know most weight loss programs, participants must eat less (consume fewer calories) and/or do more physical activity (burn more calories).
Be aware that an average person must burn about 3,500 calories (without adding calories) in order to lose 0.5 kg.
However, this level of calories varies depending on a person’s weight, physical activity, etc.
For more information on diet and fitness for martial arts you can find several articles in the blog.
Calories burned for daily activities
- Gardening – 330 calories
- Read (sitting) – 80
- Sleeping – 50
- Walking (3 km) – 204
- Watch TV – 55
- Etc.
Now as you can see even if you sleep you consume calories but if you do some activities such as vegetable gardening or gardening you consume more calories than walking for 3 km.
So it is important to know in your habits the basal calorie consumption related to your work activity, your habits, etc.
- Boxing (sparring) – 670 calories
- Resistance training –365
- Running (8 km) – 606
- Taekwondo – 752
- Tai Chi – 291
- Wrestling – 445
- Yoga, power – 292
Calories burned for martial arts in general
690.00 Kcal every 60 minutes (Estimate of calories consumed – Values expressed assuming a body weight of 70 kg)
- 5 minutes: 57.50 calories
- 30 minutes: 345.00 Calories
- 45 minutes: 517.50 calories
- 1 hour: 690.00 Calories
- 2 hours: 1380.00 Calories
- 3 hours: 2070.00 Calories
- 4 hours: 2760.00 Calories
Calories “Equivalent”
The 700 calories burned by an entire one-hour boxing lesson are roughly the same as the following foods/drinks:
- 7-9 small chocolate chip cookies,
- 4-5 glasses of beer,
- 2-3 slices of salami pizza
- Less than a Big Mac, large fries and average Coke (which equates to about 1,250 calories)
So eating cookies, drinking beer, and eating at Mc Donald’s after workouts during the week while watching TV or eating something fast means weeks of extra martial arts classes to burn the accumulated calories.
It means that even if you work out you accumulate excess calories and you get fat.
Conclusions
The sweat you did drip during training if your goal is also to get fit will be totally useless!!
For this reason, the martial art and sports in general teach proper nutrition because if you want to have a “light” physique for that type of sport the percentage of body fat must be adequate to express your performance to the maximum and also feel good health clearly.
Proper nutrition is always essential beyond sport.
Attention I say it by talking to you in the first person because personally I struggle to follow a correct diet but I believe that it is an important goal to pursue for yourself without ending up in the obsession of not being able to have a lunch with friends but at the base it is necessary a study and knowledge of nutrition, or to be followed by a specialist or follow a proven nutrition system for a certain sport.
Always consider that the balance between your daily activity, your basal metabolic rate and the workouts you support must always be balanced by proper nutrition and adequate recoveries because the risk is to train always discharged energy.
In a young man weighing 70 kg the basal metabolism equates to about 70 calories per hour, equal to about 1,700 calories per day.
So if we do not provide our body every day at least basal energy, it will slowly consume all its fat reserves and, eventually, it will shut down!
Nutrition is a science that must be studied and that must be applied above all on yourself because although it is true that there are common general rules but each has its own specificities that should not be underestimated.
Good study!
Stay Tuned!
Street Fight Mentality & Fight Sport
Andrea
