I first decided to get a heart rate monitor after reading Marty Gallagher’s book the Purposeful Primitive. I have been using it a lot in my training lately, this video details a little bit on how.
A common question I get is “how many calories do you burn using kettlebells?”
Obviously there are a lot of factors involved, but in the, I show you how many calories i burned in a singles session of Hardstyle Kettlebell Swings.
1607 in one hour and three and a half minutes.
This rate of burn is TYPICAL for me. I do this 4-5 times each week from 20-75 minutes and the number of calories oxidized is consistently between 24 and 28 per minute.
20 Comments
July 3rd, 2011 at 2:28 pm
Boss!
That’s tons of work, Dave, and the focus you’ve put in this year really shows on you. Keep up the great work and the great info for the rest of us.
July 3rd, 2011 at 3:53 pm
This is inaccurate, as heart rate monitor’s calculation of calories burned is a joke. You should know this.
Not even lance Armstrong, while using the best doping that the world has ever seen could generate 445w for an hour. And that’s what the math says 1600cal an hour is.
July 3rd, 2011 at 4:43 pm
Doing swings with a HRM is very valuable. Doing swing intervals (30:30) with an HRM is very interesting because you can watch your recovery rate improve, which is one quick indicator of cardio health. I’m curious what your work:rest ratio is or how you spaced out the rest over an hour of swings?
July 3rd, 2011 at 5:01 pm
Maybe Dave can team up with a local lab to establish some heart rate to kcal correlations for kettlebell exercises?
July 3rd, 2011 at 5:37 pm
Chief….Power Output is different from Calories Burned. Calories Burned is energy input. The human machine is not very efficient, which is why calories burned >> work done. This is why if you want to get an accurate measure of calories burned, measuring work is the wrong way to go.
July 3rd, 2011 at 5:46 pm
Great video! Congrats on your 35pds!
July 3rd, 2011 at 6:27 pm
I got my heart rate montior same time I got in to kettlebells. I feel naked if I train without it. (Feburary of 2007 btw). Two of the greatest tools I got into. I just need to get better at training.
One thing I have noticed, I’ll do around 30 minutes of kettlebell training one night, and Couch to 5k the next night (jog walk for 30 minutes) and the Kettlbell training is usually 2 to 2.5 times more cals than the running.
July 3rd, 2011 at 6:51 pm
You should try a body bugg … http://www.bodybugg.com … it’s considered the most accurate – they use them on Biggest Loser.
July 3rd, 2011 at 7:30 pm
Burning calories at that rate I imagine you’ll be rocking a 6 pack in no time! How goes the fatloss/strength gaining game?
July 4th, 2011 at 2:46 am
Dave,
Great work!
Shawn
July 4th, 2011 at 4:54 am
I’ve got a ton of books & DVDs on sports training with an emphasis on kettlebells. The Purposeful Primitive, though it only briefly mentions KBs, is easily #1 on my list. I’m on my 3rd read of this insightful book. I highly recommend it for any athlete regardless of their sport.
The HRM is also a must-have. A lifter always knows how many pounds are on the bar. A runner always has a watch to track pace. How can you monitor how effective your cardio training is without some way to monitor the muscle you are specifically trying to train. Without a HRM, you have no way to determine whether you are under/over training.
July 4th, 2011 at 5:16 am
Faisal, even if that’s true, which it is not, burning 1600calories per hour requires a vo2max exceeding a doped up tour de France champion, performing an exercise ideally suited to allow a continuous high intensity.
Using a heart rate monitor to establish caloric burn is for entertainment purposes only.
I’m not saying swings aren’t hard, don’t jack the heart rate.
July 4th, 2011 at 7:44 am
You are the man! You are one of the reasons i decided to do the RKC. Awesome stuff!
July 4th, 2011 at 1:06 pm
HR numbers are at best a very crude indicator of work done, unless they are calibrated to you via metabolic cart (indirect calorimetry). Even then, if anything changes, they are off again. Plus, even indirect calorimetry has a list of assumptions that go into it also. All depends on how accurate you need it to be.
From what I have seen, the body bug sucks. I will save a whole tyrant on why total calories is a flawed method.
HR monitors do work to help tell you the “intensity” of your training sessions though.
For athletes that I work with who are more focused on endurance, I use peak and average HR as an intensity indicator.
So, for KB snatch, I have them record
Exercise, start time, end time, volume (wt x reps x sets), avg HR and peak HR.
I then calculate an overall density number (volume/ time) and a HR density (volume/ avg HR). The lower your HR for the SAME work done is progress. This is what we really want to track. Are you getting better or worse?
For those that want to go a level deeper (more pro athletes) I have them monitor HRV (heart rate variability). The AVERAGE HR may be the same, but HRV scores can be different; so this is another layer deeper to get more info when needed. Again, more info is not always better, only go after it when needed.
I personally use Kubios to run the HRV numbers from the RR intervals, but ithlete makes a great app you can use on your iphone to do all of it for you. It is a great app and Simon did an awesome job on it. Droid version will be out soon (I don’t make any money off it). http://www.myithlete.com
I’m at a coffee shop and the video won’t run, so I apologize if this is a repeat of what Dave said in the video.
Rock on
Mike T Nelson PhD(c)
July 4th, 2011 at 6:18 pm
Sounds great David. Were you using one hand, two hand or a combination?
Which heart rate monitor did you use and did it factor in your weight? I have lost 45 lbs with the kettlebell, indirectly influenced by you, but need another 15 lbs.
Thanks
Calvin Poole
July 6th, 2011 at 12:34 am
so in a nutshell…swings make you awesome
July 6th, 2011 at 12:20 pm
Chief, If what you are saying is correct, we wouldn’t get hot when we workout. If calories burned was about equal to energy output, all of the calories burned would be converted to mechanical work and nothing would be left to make us hot.
You might want to take a HS physics class. This is why you can sweat during planks, and you are doing ZERO mechanical work.
July 6th, 2011 at 5:00 pm
Dave, thats a hell of a post my man. Great work! I like how you changed your tactic from going on the feel or power reduction of your swings to just taking the green light to start again when the HR monitor went off. No doubt those are grueling sets! Nice post.
July 6th, 2011 at 5:33 pm
Thanks guys.
July 7th, 2011 at 10:58 am
Totally agree with the point above. Not feasible to burn 1600 cals per hour!
Heart rate monitors are great for just that, heart rate monitoring. Of course, you can compare like for like within your own sessions. If you burnt through 1200 cals in one session and 1400 the next in the same time, then clearly you worked harder in that session.
I use mine to track average HR, peak HR and recovery HR between sets. For this, they are an invaluable tool. Just forget the calorie count.