How many calories do you burn swimming?

Swimming is a great whole-body workout that can not only help to improve your cardiovascular fitness, it can also help to burn calories. If you combine swimming with a healthy diet, you'll both eat fewer calories as well as burn more. Doing those things will help you lose weight - if that's your goal.

Here we will look at how swimming burns calories and techniques to do this effectively. But first, it's important to understand what calories are:

What are calories?

A calorie is a unit of energy and is also known as a kilojoule. Food is our nutritional source of calories and therefore a primary energy source for us. However, if you consume more calories than you need or can burn off, this will most likely lead to weight gain. 

According to the latest Australian dietary guidelines, the average Australian adult should consume about 2000 calories (8,700 kilojoules) per day. These calories should include appropriate portions from the five food groups:

1. vegetables and legumes.
2.   fruit
3.   grain
4.   lean meats, poultry, fish eggs, tofu, nuts, seeds and beans
5.   milk, yoghurt and cheese

It’s important to understand that some foods have more calories than others. The best way to keep track of the calories and ingredients within your food is to look at the labels on food where possible.

How swimming burns calories

Metabolism is the term for your body converting food (and drink) into energy. When you do physical exercise (including swimming), your metabolism increases. Different people have different rates of metabolism. 

Your metabolism when you’re swimming can depend on a range of factors, including your:

• age - It slows as we get older
• diet - For example, eating too few calories can actually slow your metabolism, while eating too many can disrupt normal metabolic processes. A good “swimming diet” for weight loss is to consume enough calories to give you the energy to complete your session so that you can burn enough swim calories off to create an appropriate calorie deficit. A calorie deficit of 500 per day is considered to be healthy for weight loss. 
• body type - People with more muscle tend to burn more swim calories than those who don’t. 
• the consistency, length and intensity of your swimming session - The more often you swim, the more calories you will burn and vice versa. Similarly, the longer your session and the more intensely you swim during it, the more calories you will burn (and vice versa)

Common swim sets and techniques that are great for burning calories

Swimming is a healthy lifestyle habit that you can potentially do at almost any age. Common sets and techniques that are great for burning swim calories include:

Swimming faster.

Freestyle is the fastest stroke, so if you want to swim fast to burn calories, freestyle is the stroke for you! Keep in mind it will be an intense session. Alternatively, if freestyle just isn’t for you, try short sprint sets of any of your favourite strokes with only short rests in between. This will really push your workout to the limit!

Swimming for longer.

The length of your session also influences how many swim calories you burn. If you have a favourite stroke that you can do for longer (like breaststroke for example), mix your sessions up so you can incorporate some longer sessions with your more intense ones. The variety will likely make the sessions more interesting and enjoyable. Swimming a longer session of another stroke may burn a similar amount of calories to a shorter, more intense freestyle session. 

Swimming more frequently.

More is always better! Try to get yourself into a consistent routine of swimming a few times each week, choose a time that best suits you and where you think you will be the most motivated to jump into the water. If you’re a morning person and have the spare time before heading to work, take advantage and smash out your daily workout in the morning and free up your afternoons. Varying your intensity levels is also a great way to maintain your enthusiasm levels when working out.  

Alternate between kickboard and swim sets.

Adding a kickboard to your swim will enable you to shift the intensity of your lessons between the upper and lower body. This can also help to reduce the length of breaks you need between sets.

How we can help 

At HBF Stadium in Mount Claremont, we have both indoor and outdoor pools that are open to the public for casual lap swimming or swimming lessons to help you achieve your fitness or weight loss goals. All our pools are heated to 27 degrees, so you can swim all-year round. 

If you’re new to swimming, we also have adult swimming lessons available, as well as our lessons for kids. Contact us today to find out more, or drop in to see our state-of-the art swimming facilities for yourself. We’d love to see you!