Who burns more calories? Pro cyclists? Pro marathoners? Pro soccer players?

Distance runners also burn muscle

moanswers wrote:

Pro cyclists can ride 6+ hrs a day during heavy training. No other sport can put in that amount of work without being injured. So no contest on who burns more

Ummm... ever heard of swimming?

Swimmers doing 20k yards per day are going to be up there with the cyclists and xc skiers in their weekly totals, while runners and rowers probably have the highest intensity per hour.

Rowing> skiing/running/cycling/swimming

https://i.imgur.com/UdgtvjL.png

This can’t be more incorrect.

Pro internet trolls.

galenruppisgod wrote:

Rowing> skiing/running/cycling/swimming

https://i.imgur.com/UdgtvjL.png

You don't understand what you're looking at.

100kcal/mi rule of thumb is not really a good rule unless you weigh 132lb.

Blitzkrieg BLITZKRIEG wrote:

Elite runners eat 3000 to 4000 calories a day. Your tour de France level cyclist will eat 5000+ calories a day. Up to 10000 calories in the alps.

Training wise:

Elite distance runners, run about 10 hours a week. Plus cross training.

Your tour de France level cyclist will train 30+ hours a week. Plus cross training.

The time spent is critical....if a runner and cyclist both go for one hour, then the runner burns more.

However, cyclists who are good cycle for more than 3 hours a day so they would burn more.....

If cyclists burn the most why are they all on fancy coritcosteroid fat burners?

"Results indicated that energy costs for rowing ergometry was significantly higher than cycle ergometry at all comparative power outputs including maximum levels."

Sorry bud, rowing is just a superior exercise as it's a more efficient calorie burner than cycling. Cyclists burn more calories TOTAL because they spend eight + hours a day grinding it out? Good for them, really.

"FATox is higher during ROW compared with CYC exercise across a range of exercise intensities matched for energy expenditure, and is likely as a consequence of larger muscle mass recruited during ROW."

In all likelihood, extreme endurance athletes burn the same number of calories over the course of their events. That's how extreme endurance works.

How many calories they apply per day or whatever doesn't mean anything because the upper bound there depends on how much you can eat. 10,000 calories a day is not possible. Even if you get it all down, you will not absorb it all, and competing ensures that you will soon void it anyhow.

You can only have so much glucose in your blood, liver and muscles, especially if you're ate up and skinny. You can only store so much fat and still be at a competitive weight.

Bad Wigins wrote:

In all likelihood, extreme endurance athletes burn the same number of calories over the course of their events. That's how extreme endurance works.

How many calories they apply per day or whatever doesn't mean anything because the upper bound there depends on how much you can eat. 10,000 calories a day is not possible. Even if you get it all down, you will not absorb it all, and competing ensures that you will soon void it anyhow.

You can only have so much glucose in your blood, liver and muscles, especially if you're ate up and skinny. You can only store so much fat and still be at a competitive weight.

The point is, rowing burns more calories per minute than cycling, x-skiing etc.

rr5 wrote:

Blitzkrieg BLITZKRIEG wrote:

Elite runners eat 3000 to 4000 calories a day. Your tour de France level cyclist will eat 5000+ calories a day. Up to 10000 calories in the alps.

Training wise:

Elite distance runners, run about 10 hours a week. Plus cross training.

Your tour de France level cyclist will train 30+ hours a week. Plus cross training.

The time spent is critical....if a runner and cyclist both go for one hour, then the runner burns more.

However, cyclists who are good cycle for more than 3 hours a day so they would burn more.....

No....not necessarily. A big diesel TT tank like a Rohan Dennis or a Dumoulin is looking at between 420w-450w for a 1 hour TT effort. That ends up being about 1500-1700 calories.

A HM guy is going to churn through 13.1 miles in an hour. Or I guess we could say closer to 14 miles if they went for an hour. Using the standard of 100cal/mile for a small runner, that's 1400kcal in an hour. If we use the heavy, 70kg base assumption we would get 120cal/mile for a total of 1680kcal.

Bottom line...the number of calories burned is very similar between the two.

Elite distance runners also run more than 10 hours a week. I think anywhere between 100-150 mpw is quite normal for elite athletes, especially longer distance guys. That's around 10-15 hours a week minimum, possible moving closer to 15+hours depending on what pace they like to run at for most of their general "mileage".

Still...that's far less total volume than elite cyclists are putting in. Calories wise if we use 110 kcal/mile that looks like a typical week being around 15,000kcal for a runner. A pro cyclist probably tends to have average power around 200w-250w for most training rides, with is around 800kcal an hour if we take the middle of that number. Multiplied by 30 hours and of course you get 24,000 kcal. Significantly more for the cyclists.

How that compares to nordic athletes or swimmers...I have no idea.

galenruppisgod wrote:

Bad Wigins wrote:

In all likelihood, extreme endurance athletes burn the same number of calories over the course of their events. That's how extreme endurance works.

The point is, rowing burns more calories per minute than cycling, x-skiing etc.

Rowboats is not a sport. It's just work, like shoveling dirt, which burns tons of calories too.

Bad Wigins wrote:

galenruppisgod wrote:

The point is, rowing burns more calories per minute than cycling, x-skiing etc.

Rowboats is not a sport. It's just work, like shoveling dirt, which burns tons of calories too.

No endurance event is a sport buddy...LOL. At least rowers look the part though, so mad respect. Sprinting might not even be a sport but it's the core skill for REAL sports, which is why I do it.

galenruppisgod wrote:

Bad Wigins wrote:

Rowboats is not a sport. It's just work, like shoveling dirt, which burns tons of calories too.

No endurance event is a sport buddy...LOL. At least rowers look the part though, so mad respect. Sprinting might not even be a sport but it's the core skill for REAL sports, which is why I do it.

False. To be a sport, 2 of the following 3 must be true:

1. Outcome is decided by athletes, not judges

2. The athlete must do the majority of the work (not a horse or a car)

3. You must be able to actively play defense

Endurance Running is a Sport.

it's so painful wrote:

Luv2Run wrote:

you switch between kcal and kj--they are different units.

I'm aware of that. That's why I said 7000kcal ends up being burned give or take on an 8000kj ride. It's not quite a 1:1 ratio.

You still seem hung up on mixing units of measure.

1 kcal = about 4.2 KJ. I think what you are trying to do is use the kJ expended as measured by the SRM (most likely when these studies were done) and then using 25% efficiency to get to how much energy actually goes into the pedals. (If a cyclist puts out 8000 kJ then he liked ended up using 32000 kJ. Then convert that to kcals.

This muddies the water IMHO

numbersaremisleading wrote:

I ran 60 miles this weekend; I expect I burned some calories.

Well, a calorie is a unit of measure of energy. But you "burned" substrates such as glucose, glycogen, protein and fat.

You probably expended in the neighborhood of 6000 kcals.