On average, you can burn around 75 calories for every 10 minutes of push-ups. That number goes up or down based on several factors. You’ll burn more calories doing push-ups at a more intense pace. Muscle mass affects it too, as well as, how much you weigh, how old you are, and what gender you are.
Push-ups are considered a strength-training exercise, however, they also help you burn calories. It’s important to know how many if you’re trying to lose weight or you have other fitness goals. Keep reading to find out more about how much calorie burn you can get from your push-ups and important tips for doing them.
Calories burned doing Push-Ups Calculator
How Many Calories Do You Burn Doing Push-Ups?
The calories you burn while doing specific exercises are different than those that your friend or spouse will burn. This is because our bodies burn calories at different rates based on size, age, gender, body composition, and exercise intensity level.
So, with all exercises, we start with a baseline average. Doing push-ups burns 7.5 calories per minute, in general. Typically, people don’t do push-ups in sessions by time. What do we mean? It’s not an exercise that is usually performed for a half hour.
Push-ups are usually performed in sets and counted for repetitions, or reps. So, for that reason, it might be easier to discuss the amount of calories burned per set numbers of reps rather than time.
How Many Calories Do 10 Push-Ups Burn?
You burn about .3 to .6 calories per push-up. That doesn’t sound like much. But remember, push-ups are about more than just burning calories. They’re meant for strength-training and building muscle, too.
The more muscle you build, the more calories you’ll burn per push-up, also. Muscle mass helps your body burn calories faster than fat.
Let’s keep it simple and go with an average of burning .5 calories per push-up. That works out to burning 5 calories per 10 push-ups. It’s calculated like this:
- .5 x 10 = 5
How Many Push-Ups Do I Need to Do to Burn 50 Calories?
Now that you know how many calories are burned per push-up, you can figure out how many you need to do to reach a certain calorie burn.
For this section, we want to calculate how many push-ups to do to burn 50 calories. Here’s how we figure that out:
- 50 ÷ .5 = 100
On average, you need to do 100 push-ups to burn 50 calories.
How Many Push-Ups Do I Need to Do to Burn 100 Calories?
You can figure this number out two ways. First, just do exactly what we did in the section above. Here’s the same calculation but for burning 100 calories:
- 100 ÷ .5 = 200
You can burn 100 calories by doing 200 push-ups. But, since we already knew from the last section that we can burn 50 calories by doing 100 push-ups, we can also figure this out by simply doubling everything. If you double the amount of calories you want to burn, you’ll also need to double the number of push-ups you do.
Can I Lose Weight Doing Push-Ups Every Day?
Doing push-ups every day can help you lose weight. It burns some calories, which added to other exercises you do could help you lose pounds.
The other piece of this is you’ll build muscle mass doing push-ups every day. As your muscle mass increases, your calories burned doing push-ups will also increase leading to even more weight loss.
Can I Boost the Calories Burned Doing Push-Ups?
There are ways you can boost the number of calories burned doing push-ups. The faster you do them, the more calories you’ll burn. You can also do different types of push-ups that take more energy to perform.
Not all push-ups are the same. There are those that target different muscles. But there also those that require more effort. For instance, clapping push-ups require you to boost your hands and upper body up away from the floor. You clap your hands together at the top before dropping back down to support your weight again. Clapping push-ups burn more calories.
You can also do push-ups mixed with other exercises. Some fitness enthusiasts work push-ups in with burpees. At the bottom of the burpee, you perform a push-up of your choosing before hopping back up to finish. Performing push-ups this way also increases your calorie burn per rep.
It’s also important to note that calories burned doing push-ups on your toes is more than what you’ll burn doing them on your knees.
Final Thoughts
Your body is unique. That means there’s no exact number of calories burned doing push-ups that fits everyone. In this article, we gave you a good baseline to work from. It allows you to figure out how many push-ups to do for your workouts, so you can achieve your fitness goals.
