These Exercises Burn the Most Calories Per Hour

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One of the benefits of exercise is that it burns more calories than a sedentary lifestyle. (I’d argue that these are the least interesting benefits of exercise compared to improving your strength, endurance, heart health, and mental health, but that’s a conversation for another day.) So, if you’re trying to control your weight, you might want to You’ll want to know which types of exercise burn the most calories. Here’s the guide.

Low intensity exercise burns more calories than HIIT

This may seem the opposite. If you’re working hard, sweating, and out of breath, you’ll feel like you’re getting a lot done, right? But after a minute or two you need to sit down and relax. When you rest, calorie burning decreases significantly .

This is why you should be suspicious of anyone who talks about the number of calories burned “in an hour” from an activity you don’t perform within an hour. Chopping wood with an ax “quickly” burns 1,196 calories per hour if you weigh 155 pounds. But who chops wood with an ax quickly, for an hour ?

The same can be said for running at 10 miles per hour. This is the maximum speed on many treadmills. This pace is only a few seconds behind the Olympic marathon qualifying time . Here’s how that adds up to a pace that’s more realistic for us mere mortals to sustain for an hour (based on a 155-pound person):

  • 1126 calories per hour if running at 6 minutes per mile (10 mph)

  • 704 calories per hour at a more realistic pace of 10:00 (6 mph)

  • 563 calories per hour at 12:00 pace (5 mph)

If you’re an average person and not a high-level athlete, running for an hour at 10 mph just won’t cut it. But an hour at 5 mph? It’s completely doable. In fact, if you’re working on your endurance, you can go for an hour-long run at 5 mph several times a week. And that’s what will have a greater impact on burning calories than a few rounds of HIIT, even if you’re doing those bursts at 10 mph sprints.

How different types of activities stack up

I’m going to use the same hypothetical 155-pound person here, not because that’s the ideal weight or anything like that, but because that number is readily available on charts like this one . If you weigh more, you will burn more, and if you weigh less, you will burn less. These figures will help us compare different activities of the same person. Calculate your personal numbers here .

All numbers below are for a “moderate” pace (that you can maintain without much effort for half an hour or more), unless otherwise noted. Here’s the rating:

  1. Running, total (5 mph): 563 calories/hour.

  2. Cycling, moderate speed (12-14 mph): 563 calories/hour.

  3. Rowing machine, moderate: 507 calories/hour.

  4. Stationary cycling, moderate: 493 calories/hour.

  5. Aerobic exercise: 457 calories/hour.

  6. Walking uphill (3.5 mph): 422 calories/hour.

  7. Weight lifting (“bodybuilding, vigorous”), 422 calories/hour.

  8. Hatha Yoga: 281 calories/hour.

  9. Walking (3 mph): 232 calories/hour.

  10. Weight lifting (“light”), 211 calories/hour.

Therefore, if you want to burn as many calories as possible, running is your best choice. This is followed by cycling, then the rowing machine, and then spinning and aerobics classes (though this will of course vary from class to class).

Walking and weight lifting are lower on the scale, but they are still excellent exercises. (Note that calorie burning is not the reason for lifting weights; I recommend not paying attention to calorie burn or heart rate during weight lifting at all.)

How to make any exercise burn more calories

Burning calories isn’t some unspeakable workout property we got from the Fitbit gods. It’s just an indicator of how much work your body is doing.

It is important to note that the amount of work does not correspond to the sensations . Think back to the example of an intense HIIT interval that sounds terrible but ultimately doesn’t mean we’re working hard. As we get better, another interesting thing happens: we can get more work done in the same amount of time without necessarily feeling heavier.

Let’s say every Saturday morning you take an hour-long walk on your feet. At first you can just walk and burn 232 calories. But after some time you start running in parts, and someday soon you will start running in whole. That’s 563 calories per hour.

Time goes by and you get better. Your endurance improves, your heart pumps blood more efficiently, and your legs even become stronger (especially if you do strength training on days when you’re not jogging). When you can run for an hour at 8:00 pace, you will burn 880 calories in that same hour. It may seem like the same effort as the first time, but now you’re doing more work, so more calories are burned.

So, we know two ways to make any exercise burn more calories:

  1. Do it longer (for example, a 45-minute bike ride instead of a 30-minute bike ride).

  2. Improve your fitness so that you can do more work with the same level of effort (for example, driving at 15 mph when previously you could only maintain 10 mph for the same amount of time).

However, burning calories during exercise is only part of the picture. Learn more from me about how many calories we “should” be burning in a day and why you shouldn’t trust your fitness tracker’s exact calorie burn numbers .

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