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Sit ups are a classic exercise, that have long been thought of as an indicator of overall fitness and the standard when it comes to shaping up one’s midsection or abs. You probably know that burning off excess calories is the key to weight loss regardless of the exercises you choose. So really, how many calories do sit ups burn?
The truth: How many calories do sit ups burn?
The simple answer to the question is “not many”. An accurate determination of the calories burned by any exercise can only be determined by factoring in a number of variables, including: weight, age, intensity and current fitness levels, among others. So to give you a very rough estimate of direct calories you could expect to burn from doing sit ups is about 10 calories per minute of sit ups. Considering that a pound of fat contains about 3500 calories, it’s pretty easy to say that calorie burn from this exercise is not going to make a huge difference in your fat loss effort.
Do you want to see your abs?
I’m going to assume that since you were asking about calorie burn and sit ups, that you are most likely looking to firm up your midsection, reduce your waist size a bit, or actually see you abs…
Given that you are considering calorie burn in conjunction with exercise, means that you are at least on the right track. In order to ever see your abs, flatten your stomach or make a real difference in your body’s appearance you are going to need to lose some body fat. And, simply put the only way to do that is to burn off more calories than you consume.
Sit ups, however, are not the answer. You could basically do sit ups all day long and that alone will do very little to make significant progress toward your actually seeing your abs.
Bigger muscles burn more calories.
No, I’m not talking about big “body builder” muscles (although those require a lot of calories to maintain). I’m talking about the larger muscle groups of your body that when engaged burn a great deal more calories than smaller muscle groups like those engaged when doing more specific ab exercises.
So focusing your training and exercise efforts on exercises that use the larger muscle groups like your legs and back, you will be getting a much greater reward for each and every minute spent exercising.
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Source by Travis Speegle
