How many calories do you burn on your swim?

Very interesting…this new Swimsense watch is giving me swimming information that I’d never really considered before…like I’m not burning ‘swimming’ calories when stopped between Intervals…or those ‘bonus’ 2 minute stops between Interval sets

…whaaaaat?…I said first time that I saw it.

When you you think about it for a moment, of course, it makes sense…swimming calorie burn only applies to the swimming part…of course, without a Swimsense, there’s no real practical way to know exactly how much time you were swimming and how much time…even if it’s a few seconds between intervals…that you were hanging onto the wall.

…but the Swimsense does know…and only gives me ‘calorie burn’ credit for the time that I’m actually swimming…too funny.

Of course, if you’re just swimming continuously for an hour, the numbers would come out the same…if, however, that hour was Intervals of 50-200 yards, with a rest interval in-between, and a maybe a minute or 2 between interval ‘sets’, it all adds up.

Up until now, I’ve just entered my total time on the stopwatch…swimming and rest intervals included…into my online Food Diary …since I’m slow, I’ve used Swimming ~ Freestyle ~ Slow…which happens to calculate the same number of calories burned as Swimming ~ Leisurely…and a lot less than Swimming ~ Crawl ~ Slow (50 yards/min)’…yeah, thanks for that…okay I know I’m slow…I’m working on it

So here’s how the numbers shake out for 1:00:00 as calculated by the Food Diary :
510 Calories:     Swimming ~ Leisurely
510 Calories:     Swimming ~ Freestyle ~ Slow
714 Calories:     Swimming ~ Crawl ~ Slow (50 yards/min)
1020 Calories:  Swimming ~ Crawl ~ Fast (75 yards/min)

And my Swimsense for a 1:00:10 minute interval workout from 50-200 intervals with variable rest interval between:   2050y  avg pace: 2.13 /100y

403 Calories:    it ‘dinged’ me 14.47 minutes for Rest Time…claiming that I was only swimming for 45:23 of the 1:00:10

…whaaat I say…I wasn’t hanging on to the wall for 15 minutes?…

…of course, looking at the data, alas it was true…I was only truly swimming for 45 of the 60 minutes…dang…I _really_ need to tighten those rest intervals…that darn Swimsense is unrelenting…keeps on ticking…doesn’t care…I _could_ hit stop, but then it restarts the interval numbers so that you ‘know’ that you’ve stopped…very tricky

So here’s what I’ve learned…I need to tighten those rest intervals to the ‘plan’…and luckily I now use the Swimsense calorie count instead of my Food Diary.

…without it, if calories are important to you, I’d say whatever you enter into your online calculator, take off 20% of the total time if you’re doing intervals to account for the rest between them to get closer to what you actually burned

…of course, my inefficient stroke, and churning body position must count for something extra…no charts for that, so I’ll always take the lowest calculator number that I can find, and base my day on that

…oh yeah…and reduce that Rest Interval time by picking a lane next to the senior aerobics class, and not next to the tri-bunnies streaking up and down their lane with beautiful-great-to-watch-from-any-angle form…purely academic of course 🙂