Jumping jacks are considered as full-body workout and can help with bone strength, cardiovascular health, and muscle toning. Moreover, jumping jacks burn calories, making them ideal for weight loss as well. But how many calories do you burn doing Jumping jacks?
What Influences the Amount of Calories Burnt?
The number of calories broken down during a workout session varies depending on many factors, including individual fitness, height, weight, intensity and duration of the exercise, the workout routine you chose, sex, and age.
Obviously, if its calories you are looking to burn, more intense exercise is better. It speeds up your metabolism may help you burn up to twice as much calories in half the time.
What’s more, the larger the individual, the more metabolism they experience. This applies even when the body is at rest.
As for age and sex, males generally burn more calories compared to females – even when performing similar exercise at uniform intensity. This has been attributed to men having lesser body fat and more muscles.
Also, among the changes in the body that come with ageing is slow-burning of calories due to a drop in muscle volume and a rise in body fat.
Level of fitness, too, may play a role. If you have been working out for a long time, you’ll notice that the rate of change/ progress slows down after some time. This is because your body attains endurance to the physical activity, taking up lesser calories during workout sessions.
Calculating the Number of Calories Burnt Doing Jumping Jacks
Trainers, physical therapists, and exercise physiologists use METs (metabolic equivalents) when calculating the amount of calories burnt.
A single MET is the energy consumed when the body is at rest, which translates to about one calorie per hour for every 2.2 pounds of weight.
Moderate activities have been found to take up approximately 3 - 6 METs. Jumping jacks are more vigorous and require between 8 and 14 METs, depending on the factors described above.
While there are numerous MET tables and apps online, you may calculate the number of calories you burn doing jumping jacks by following these steps:
- Multiply your MET by 3.5. For jumping jacks, you’ll have to pick a number between 8 and 14, roughly basing it on your height, weight, level of fitness, and age
- Multiply the resulting figure by your weight in Kilograms
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Divide the answer by 200
The resulting number represents the amount of calories burnt per minute.
How to Do Jumping Jacks
The steps involved doing jumping jacks are:
- Start standing upright, legs together, and arms hanging down at your sides.
- Jump by bending your knees slightly and springing into the air.
- As you jump, before you land back down, spread your feet apart to approximately shoulder-width while simultaneously stretching your arms out, up, and over your head.
- Jump back up while resetting your limbs to starting position
- Repeat
It is possible to estimate the number of calories you burn doing jumping jacks or any other exercise. However, you can only be accurate to the decimal by hooking up to sophisticated equipment that measures several activities in your body – like heart rate, breathing, and temperature.
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