Summer is all about getting rid of your lazy self and joining some fun water activities. One amazingly enjoyable and at the same time great for burning some extra calories activity is kayaking. You may not even realize and a good number of calories will get burned off.
Some people prefer calories burned walking. While a few may dedicate themselves to hardcore workout routines. But to be honest, these are not very often interesting to do and sooner becomes boring. So, involving yourself in a fun activity that will charge up your mood while giving you the fitness benefit can be a deal hard to resist. And kayaking is for sure one of those fantastic options to try.
Now, how many calories do you burn kayaking, and is it actually worthier than working out separately? Let’s find the answers today.
How Many Calories Do You Burn Kayaking & The Way It Targets Your Body.
Apart from giving you a good way to calculate the calories that you’ll be burning with kayaking, it’ll be also great to provide a closer look at how it targets your body parts. That’s what we’ll be doing next. Keep on Reading…
1. A General Calorie Amount.
We all know that paddling down a river can be an effortless upper body workout. This can work onto our back muscles, core, shoulders, and fat loosing. With a leisurely kayak riding, a healthy person can burn around 300 calories every hour. If you are on a weighty side, then this can be up to 400 calories burned every hour. The amount will highly depend on weather conditions, currents, and speed. When you try kayaking on the sea or ocean, you’ll need to fight against water. And this intensive session of the kayak is good enough to burn around 500 calories per hour.
2. Your Weight Has an Impact on The Calorie Count.
No matter what activity you are involved in for burning calories, your current weight will play a good important factor. So, you definitely need some ideas regarding your weight first. Usually, people with less weight burns fewer calories.
If you are someone with 125 pounds weight, then with kayaking you’ll burn around 300 calories. While someone who has a weight of 185 pounds will burn around 400 calories with each hour of kayaking. The more weight you have, harder is going to be kayaking to you. And so, you’ll be using more effort, which eventually means burning higher calories.
3. A More Specified Way to Calculate the Burned Calories.
One formula that you can use for counting how much calories are burned with physical activity is something like this. You need to multiply the MET with your body weight in kilograms. And then multiply the results with 3.5 exactly. Finally divide the outcome with 200. And that should be the burned calories for a specific physical activity every minute.
MET is basically the energy measurement for a specific physical activity in a time unit. You’ll be able to get the numbers from MET chart available online. A MET of 1 task basically means energy spend of a person sitting in a still position within room temperature while not being digesting food actively.
The MET of 2 refers to a task that requires double energy of 1. And that’s how it keeps on increasing. However, not every individual has the same MET values for physical activities. And that’s’ because of the difference in environmental conditions, movement efficacy, adiposity, body mass, sex, and age. So, the true MET may not be always exact with the charts available. But still, it’s a good enough way to get your curiosity fed.
Let’s use an example for you to calculate calories burned per minute by kayaking through this formula. Suppose, Sarah is 175 pounds in weight, which is 79.38 kilograms. She does kayak with moderate effort. This means the MET value is around 5 for every hour.
So, Sarah’s Calories Burned Every Minute with Moderate Kayaking will Be = (5 x 79.38 x3.5)/200 = 6.94 calories.
For Every Hour She’ll Burn Around = 6.94 x 60 = 417 calories.
4. A Closer Look to What Kayaking Does to Your Body.
So now we already got the fact that kayaking is actually one heck of a workout for your body. From your chest, abdomen to hands, and even arms, it targets various parts of body to help you lose extra fat. Let’s have a look at how it can target each part of your body and what consequences can you expect.
- Your Back Muscles.
With each stroke you make with single-arm row, you’ll get the same benefits of doing seated cable row. It’s been comparable with single-arm dumbbell row effects. Paddling with your arm for every stroke is a great way of stretching as well. You row back one arm and this makes a great contraction. So, when you kayak, you’ll get some amazing back workout results. You can follow any tempo and still get good outcomes. Go for narrow or wide grip, sprints, longer sets, and harder pulls to achieve even better effects.
- Chest & Heart.
When you are kayaking, you’ll be using your chest as well. One arm will move backward while the other will counter it. And this will make a forward push. It’s quite similar to your single-arm dumbbell bench press workout. Your pectoral muscles will pull the arm with each row. And at the same time, your shoulders will get stabilized. And through this, your lungs, chest, and heart will receive a healthy workout with each row.
- Works on Your Abs.
When you make rotational movements with kayaking, your abdomen and obliques get involved. And so, you get yourself an effortless core workout through kayaking. You will feel a good burn on your core part with it. And often, that’s a signal of a successful workout. The rotation with a trunk extending towards waist from neck is great for spine stabilization.
- Helps for Grip & Biceps.
When you kayak, your biceps and triceps get a lot of contracts. You will bring your arm for forwarding extension while the other one moves backward. This will hit your biceps on the side. And that’s a great way to make strong biceps plus triceps. At the same time, your forearm and grip also get a good impact from the kayak maneuvering movement with a paddle.
- Strong Shoulders.
With kayaking, you get more shoulder workout results compared to back shaping. When you move the paddle up and around to front, each row helps to transfer weight to your shoulders from lat muscles. And this will focus greatly on your rear deltoids, lateral and anterior.
Conclusion
You should have a clear idea by now about how many calories do you burn kayaking. Even without a very exact number, you should be already able to tell that kayaking is definitely a good calorie-burning activity.
From giving you some excitement on the water to granting your fitness wishes, kayaking is more than just a leisure time activity. Some people burned calories walking while others like to keep themselves steadfast to workouts. But if your wild heart demands for something thrilling and less boring, give a try at kayaking. It’s going to make you feel alive and at the same time, you’ll be enjoying some bonus calorie losing effects.
