Squats are an excellent resistance exercise for burning calories and building body mass. It is an all-body exercise targeting all the muscles in your lower body. At the same time, it helps you lose weight by burning calories. But how many squats would you need to do?
How many squats should I do a day, you ask? It depends. Numerous factors affect how many squats you need to do a day to burn enough calories that matter to your goal of losing weight. Three of the most crucial factors are your body weight, the number of minutes spent exercising, and the intensity of your session.
Given the benefits that squat offers, it is no wonder you want to add it to your weight loss routine. But before you do that, this article provides you some valuable information on how to make the most of burning calories with squats.
As said before, several factors affect how many squats you should do a day to burn your intended number of calories to lose. You can determine the number of squats you should ideally do every day by first finding out how many calories a squat burn. The calories you burn will be determined by your weight, the intensity, the type of activity, and the minutes you spent exercising.
Your level of effort especially matters in determining how many calories you can burn. The activity’s level of intensity is also known as metabolic equivalent or MET. Knowing this value helps you better understand how many calories you can burn by performing squat. When at rest, the MET value is 1.
If you are doing light to moderate activity, the MET value is 3.5. For intense or vigorous activities, the MET value can be as much as 8. You will need to find out whether the squat you are doing is light/moderate or vigorous to calculate the calories burned. Moderate squats are still light enough if you can continue talking.
On the other hand, it is highly intense if you are breathing heavily and talking takes effort. Knowing the MET value, you can substitute it with the formula 0.175 x MET x WEIGHT in kilograms. If you weigh 65 kg. and does intense squats, then the calories you burn per minute is 9.1. If you perform the activity for 10 minutes, simply multiply it with the calories burned.
Squats is among the most effective exercises you can do, but also tricky. To make the most of it and ensure you don’t sustain injury while doing it, it is critical that you do them right. Start with taking the proper form as explained below:
Doing squats looks easy, but it isn’t. Whether you try doing bodyweight or weighted squats, pushing through your weight up is hard. That being the case, it is best to start at two or three sets of 10 reps, at least at the beginning. As you get used to the movement, you can add more repetitions. Make sure to concentrate on your form first, as it is the key to the exercise’s efficacy.
Besides the basic squat, you can try other variations of the exercise to help get the most out of the activity. The use of added weight especially helps in increasing the intensity of the training, allowing you to burn more calories. On that, below are other types of squats you can do once you mastered the basics.
Using dumbbells with your squat can help you to increase muscle strength. Start with light weights if you are new to this. This way, you can hold the proper form easily, even with the added loads. When it becomes more comfortable for you, you can add more weights later. You can perform the dumbbell squat following the steps below:
If you want, you can do squats with a focus on one leg at a time. This variation is called split squat. It is a little different than the basic squat since you get into lunge position instead of the sitting form. You can perform this squat either with dumbbells or not. Follow the steps below in performing the variation:
Another way to make your lower body movement explosive is by performing jump squat. While you start at the primary squat position, you add a force at the end by jumping as you get back up. It is an excellent exercise that involves both your lower body and entire core. You can perform the jump squat properly with the simple steps below:
Squats is an excellent calisthenics exercise that is easy enough to perform, although a little awkward at the beginning. But when you get used to the motion, they are guaranteed to help you burn more calories. How many calories burned when doing 100 squats? More than the number of squats, it matters more than you perform with increased intensity.
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