claries burned swimming vs. running?

I know for a fact that swimming burns more calories because your immune system is working hard to fight of all of the germs from other people's piss, sweat, and other emanations in the water.

As a triathlete, I have done quite a bit of research on the comparison between swimming and running, including calories burned by the two. Time is not so much a determinant as is distance. When all factors are considered, 1/4 mile of swimming is about equal to 1 mile of running in terms of calories burned. For a runner and non-swimmer, swimming a quarter mile non-stop would not be easy. Likewise, for a non-running swimmer, running a mile non-stop would not be easy either, even though both may be in good cardivascular shape and be physically able to complete the task.

So if you swim a mile, regardless of how long it takes you, you would burn about the same as if you were to run four miles at any given pace. On average, it takes a person about 30 minutes to swim a mile. Also, on average, it takes a person about 30 minutes to run four miles(again those are averages, obviously ability level in either discipline will affect the time it takes to complete a quarter swim or 4 mi. run)

So a basic rule of thumb for comparison is 1 mi. swim= 4 mi. run

everything you just said in the first sentence is false

just a guest wrote:

One other item about swimming....breathing. When I run (as incredibly slowly as that might be) I can breathe just about any time I want. But when I swim, in order to be more efficient, I will breath every 2-4 strokes (maybe once per 5-10 seconds). This may not bump calories burned but from an oxygen stand-point it is something to keep in mind. How many of the runners hold there breath while running?

You don't hold your breath during swimming, you exhale while your face is submerged and inhale when you bring your face out of the water. That's not breath holding.

Furthermore, at depending on effort, runners typically inhale once every 4-6 strides.

I was on the internet the other day looking for an answer to the same question and stumbled acrossed a site that claimed swimming burned more calories than running for a 150 pound person. I'm not sure if that site was trust worthy but it seemed like it was. And let me say, from a swimmers stand point, it is a great sport and a great work out. I dont think you'll be dissappointed. And you are wishing to work on your abs i would recommend being on your back in stream line possition and do butterfly kick, its a great ab work out!!!

good luck

-swimmer24-7

Many variables appear to be at play

umm... people are we all dumb? When you swim you use pretty much every muscle in your body. You use abbs for flipturns. Neck muscles when you breath. Arms for pull. Legs for kick. Wrists (if you you know what your doing) for a better fly pull, shoulders...so yeah. And a runner uses..their legs and abbs mostly. A swimmer basically uses everything so your soar as f*$(# when ur done.) I\\\\\\\'ve done BOTH track and swim team and hands down. Swimming is harder and burns more calories. Im not saying that running isnt hard and doesn\\\\\\\'t burn a S*** load of calories. But hands down, swimming burns more calories. If you have trully pushed yourself and done a \\\\\\\"real\\\\\\\" workout in a pool. you know what im talking about. And that stuff about the water keeping you cool? Yeah i get hot as **** when i swim cuz the water does practically nothing. Also, the dumb stuff about heartrate isnt true either. If you truly do a hard workout, your heartrate gets just as high as running.

Its common sense people

Im 15 and can do this except i miss the 500 by 10-15seconds.....try this workout and tell me swimming burns less calories than running....

do this 2 times with 45 seconds rest in between the second and first time. this is a set my coach gives me sometimes.

25 on 30seconds

50 on 50seconds

75 on 1:10

100 on 1:15

125 on 1:30

150 on 1:40

200 on 2:30

300 on 3:15

400 on 4:20

500 on 5:45

(go back down doing the same thing

5x 25 on 45seconds(recovery)

repeat....Have fun and enjoy. Its hard for me but if i push myself i can do it.

Go back to swimstat or wherever you came from. Better yet spend less time in the pool and more quality time in an English classroom.

2."But hands down, swimming burns more calories." How did you come to this conclusion? Did you test this scientifically? Some people are more talented (effecient) at swimming and some are more talented runners. That is a decent swim workout, maybe you can pull and Alan Webb and become a runner.

Your a liar that you can make everything but the 500. the 500 is at a 1:09 pace for 100's, but you can make the 300 and 400 at 1:05 pace? Then there's fact that you miss the 500 by 10-15 seconds...so your really swimming the 500 at around a 1:12 pace, if your going to lie to try and sound good, be smart about it. Rookie

In terms of distance, swimming is harder than running. A fast swimmer spend 3 times as much time swimming a mile than a fast runner runs one. (15:00 swimming and 5:00 running) Forget about water cooling you down, "not" sweating when you really do, the fact that your floating/the water's resistance. Calories burned comes from the amount of heat your body gives off, so it correlates more with effort than with distance.

If you needed to put numbers onto it, you have to run 3 times as far as you have to swim to burn the same amount of calories. (But they should take the same amount of time)

1. Using more muscles does not mean you burn more calories. If a team swimmer is smart they are going to use as good of technique as possible to minimize effort needed by their muscles, and use the benefits of the bouyancy to their advantage.

2. You seem to think all the muscles funciton separately. When you run AND swim all your muscles are being used. Muscles do not funciton separately, rather as an entire network that allows one muscle to do one task which allows the other muscle to do another task.

I was on swimteam for two years, and I\'m also a cross country runner. Swimming was a good workout but running has more factors that make the body exert more energy. More oxygen is burned due to the body moving faster, thus meaning more calories are burned as more liters of oxygen are used.

Running outdoors presents weather: cold weather makes your body have to burn MORE energy. Not to mention gravity, uneven ground, hills, mud, and also extream heat. A pool allows a swimmer to have a more stable enviorment for their body to be working out in, and thus their heart rate is lower as less adjustments are needed.

Mainly though, it really depends on how hard you are working... but my roomates say they burn 1,000 calories swimming in an hour, and that\'s total bs. Mainly because they don\'t swim for that long in one period. A runner can run straight for an hour and burn around 800 calories going at a medium to heavy pace.

As far as difficulty goes, I think swimming is easier once the technique is learned, because the technique allows a swimmer to use as less energy as possible to get as fast as possible. Running has important technique as well, but pure cardiovascular and heart strength is more vital in this situation just to keep the legs moving fast enough because of gravity. Running has more factors working against the person, than swimming.

I just wanted to make a comment on a post made earlier on what someone had posted. They said something about how can you compare a swimmer to a runner when in the pool you can push off the wall and cost half the pool and a runner can't just "float" to say on the track. I just want to say that if you are swimming and can coast to the middle of the pool you are wasting your time because I swam all throughout high school and Ive watched the Olympics and no one "coasts" to the middle of the pool they have to kick hard to get there. Run a mile on the track and then swim a mile in the pool. (1650 yards) Then we shall see what the results are. Even if you want to test both sides a swimmer can probably run the mile without stopping and do it in a reasonable time, you put a runner in the pool I'd be surprised if they could swim that far with out struggling.

guest12345 wrote:

In terms of distance, swimming is harder than running. A fast swimmer spend 3 times as much time swimming a mile than a fast runner runs one. (15:00 swimming and 5:00 running) Forget about water cooling you down, "not" sweating when you really do, the fact that your floating/the water's resistance. Calories burned comes from the amount of heat your body gives off, so it correlates more with effort than with distance.

If you needed to put numbers onto it, you have to run 3 times as far as you have to swim to burn the same amount of calories. (But they should take the same amount of time)

How did you get those numbers? Nobody has ever swam a mile in 15:00. The WR for the 1500m is mid 14 mins so you're comparing a mile time that is faster than the WR pace to a 5 minute running mile? The actual conversion is closer to 4:1 as far as times for a given distance. For example, the 200m freestyle WR is 1:42 I believe for swimming and the 800m record for running is 1:41.

I've swam and run competitively and the 2 are hard to compare. I find that on one hand, a lot of my running mileage is done at an easier effort level than most of my swimming, since most swim practices are actually workouts and not recovery efforts. On the other hand, the actual workouts in running stressed my body harder than anything I've done in swimming. I would guess that running burns more calories on average than swimming but not by a lot, assuming you are in the same fitness for both activities.

Somebody else commented that if swimming burned a lot of calories, Michael Phelps wouldn't be as big as he is. I think they're forgetting the article about how a typical daily diet for Phelps included something like 7000 or 11000 (I can't remember but it was a lot) calories. If any runner ate as much as Phelps, even if they ran 200 miles/week, they would pack on the weight pretty quick.

This is a great thread - thanks to all who posted good info. I'm not able to use the ladder to tie myself at the school's pool, but I'm going to try counting my foot turnover and improving my form.

Ratio of distance for top athletes (male) is 3.75 : 1 for running vs. swimming...although I always just use 4:1, since it's simpler (and I'm not a "top athlete").

My training times for running are usually right around an 8 minute mile, and I typically swim a mile between 30-32 minutes...so the above math seems to work for me.

Which uses more energy is an age-old debate, and it has been pretty effectively settled for about 15 years now.

Swimming requires ~25% more energy than running, based on top performers working for the same amount of time. If you want the actual scientific research on the topic, try this link as a starting point:

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F0CEEDC1431F932A15757C0A965958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=2

Swimming uphill burns a LOT more calories!

I felt compelled to add some additional data points:

Heart rate isn't a reliable indicator when comparing the two sports.

Several factors can influence the relationships of heart rate to VO2 max to anaerobic threshold to maximal effort. One key difference is temperature...it has been demonstrated that heart rate is elevated by an average of 26 bpm for athletes performing at 98 deg F compared to 68 deg F. (Stannard and Thompson, 1998: Heart Rate Monitors: Coaches' Friend or Foe? Sports Coach)

The biggest difference between the two sports is temperature, specifically the body's ability to cool itself through evaporation (sweating when you run) vs. direct thermal transfer (pool water acting as a "heat sink" when you swim). One of the primary reasons that your heart rate doesn't elevate as much when swimming (for the same amount of effort put forth), is that your entire body is being cooled through direct contact with the mass of the relatively cooler (usually 78-82 degrees) water. Thermal transfer is simply more efficent than evaporative cooling.

This (lower heart rate for X amount of effort) is quite likely why you burn less fat (but not less calories) swimming than running. We are learning that bursts of activity (for example sprinting repeatedly, fartleks, etc.) are more effective for producing weight loss (fat burn) than more moderate activities (5 miles at a ten-minute mile)...and a key difference is the resultant heartrate. I haven't yet seen studies that explain the "why"...just that it happens.

So in short...

- heart rate isn't only based on energy consumption

- weight loss isn't only based on energy consumption

- the two sports have enough differing variables that direct comparison is a genuine challenge.

Ain't the body a fascinating device?

Cheers...

Of course the best exercise is the one a person will actually consistently do. So if person is 4 times more likely to actually swim than to run, that person will get 4 times the benefit from swimmin!

Okay first off I do run I'm in track for high school, but I swim way better than I run. I just wanted you runner to know that swimming burns more calories because:

1. you uses more mucles

2. YOU KICK AS YOU PUSH OFF THE WALL

3. my heart rate has personally gone up to about 200 spirinting

4. sure the water supports you, but you also have to move through a thicker substance than running

5. flip turns require you to use you abs, legs, arms, and back muscles. therefore you do not just glide

6. you can't breath every time you want to

7. certain strokes (butterfly) require more out of you than running

8. swimming forces you to make new musceles unlike running where you just use muscles you uses everyday, strokes uses very differnt movements than you use everyday