How Many Calories Do You Burn with Kettlebell Swings?

How Many Calories Do You Burn with Kettlebell Swings?

Jump to the quick answer or read on for the detailed answer and understand more about the variables. Also, check out the how-to kettlebell swing video at the bottom of the page.

“How many calories do you burn with kettlebell swings?”

This is the question that many people want an answer to, after transitioning from the good old cardio treadmill and entering the kettlebell world. Because after all, if 10 minutes of swings don’t burn more than 10 minutes on the treadmill, it’s not worth doing, right? Before I go any further, please note that if you’re after an article that will quickly give you some hocus pocus answer, this is not it, in this article I will go into detail and also explain how to calculate your calorie burn. I will be covering this from the angle of burning calories for fat loss. So sit tight and read on if you really want to know the nitty-gritty of how many calories you burn with kettlebell swings!

This video is a beginner workout that includes the kettlebell swing.

What Kettlebell Swing Variation?

First off, what kettlebell swing are we talking about? Because there are plenty of variations, we all know that the more muscles required to perform an exercise, the more calories you burn. Second, the intensity at which you exercise plays a huge part in how many calories you burn. Third, what weight are you swinging? Because if you’re swinging a 4-kilo kettlebell at a low intensity you might as well stay parked on the sofa with your hand down your pants like Al Bundy, and watch a re-run of Married With Children. My third point is that the amount of weight you’re swinging also plays a huge role in how many calories you burn. And there’s more.

Factors that play a role in how many calories you burn with kettlebell swings:

  1. muscles involved in performing the exercise
  2. intensity at which the swings are performed
  3. the weight that is swung
  4. the pace
  5. the duration

By the way, if you want to burn the maximum amount of calories, perform squat swings. If you perform squat swings with the same weight, same rep scheme, and same duration you will burn more calories than with the conventional hip hinge swing. The Hardstyle swing will burn more calories than the freestyle hip hinge swing under the same conditions.

Let’s get into the details as it puzzles me when I see articles about how many calories you burn with kettlebell swings, and they give the simple answer: kettlebell swings burn 400 calories in 20 minutes.

Here are the main variables that come into play when working out how many calories you’re burning:

  • Basal metabolic rate
  • Thermic effect of food
  • Daily activities (lifestyle)
  • Sex (male/female)
  • Age
  • Weight
  • Height
  • Build (skinny/average/athletic/obese/etc.)

You also need to look at exercise specifics, for example, with the kettlebell swing you can break it down into:

  • Intensity
  • Velocity
  • Resistance (weight used)
  • Type of swing
  • Training style (strength; endurance; interval)

Intensity

Allow me to elaborate on the above a bit more. The intensity is dictated by the velocity at which you’re swinging, you can be swinging slow with no forceful leg drive, or you can be swinging with high intensity at maximum velocity. If you’re swinging hip hinge style, you’re working on your posterior chain muscles, if you’re swinging squat style, the emphasis is on the anterior chain muscles, and if you’re swinging sport style there is the least amount of resistance, hence the least amount of emphasis on any muscles —I’m talking style comparison, not weight. For training styles you could be swinging a heavy (90% 1RM) kettlebell for strength, 2 reps per minute; you can be swinging a medium weight (60% 1RM) for endurance, as many reps for as long as possible; you can be swinging a bell for 20 seconds on and 10 seconds off, Tabata style; or you can swing a bell for other set intervals and so on. All have different effects, but you’re swinging a kettlebell.

Now that you know all that, allow me to be the bearer of bad news, calorie counting is not an exact science, it’s mostly based on guesswork, and unless you’re in a highly advanced and controlled environment, you’re not going to get a 100% correct answer. This is why I’m going into more detail for you, so you can understand what’s going on and make a more informed guess.

Calorie Burn Components

You should know that the sum of your calorie burn consists of four components, namely, basal metabolic rate, thermic effect of food, lifestyle and MET —I’ll cover this last one later. What is a Calorie? A Calorie is a unit of energy that measures how much energy food provides to the body, continually eating more calories than you need will cause your body’s fat stores to expand, resulting in excess fat or obesity.

How exactly are calories burned? Wouldn’t it be great if we could just grab them, light a match and …. The key to burning calories for fat loss is to expend more calories than you consume, you need to create a calorie deficit. The body on its own already burns calories when you’re lying in bed, relaxed and doing nothing, it still uses energy to maintain essential life functions such as pumping blood, vital cell activity, maintaining body temperature, breathing, etc. This is your basal metabolic rate (BMR).

On average your BMR accounts for 60-75% of daily calories burned, that’s quite high, but here’s the thing, the higher your lean body mass is —less fat— the more calories you burn at rest. You might think to yourself, I’ll just take in fewer calories by going on a hunger strike, but this will lower your metabolic rate as well, therefore not a recommended option. For long-term solutions, you should look at a healthy sustainable diet and a good exercise regime.

If you’re as good as me with math, you’ve figured out that we have another 40 to 25% of calories to burn off after taking our MBR into account. The great thing is, we can subtract another 10% (approx) for the thermic effect of food, i.e. digestion, absorption, storage, and use. Great, now we only got 30 to 15% to sort out. This is where your daily activities come into play and how much that accounts for depends on how active your lifestyle is. In other words, if you’re leading a pretty inactive lifestyle and sit in front of the TV or computer all day, you can bet your sweet bippy on it that you’re not expanding more than you’re consuming. That’s not what we want, we want to do the opposite and do way more than the minimum and burn that fat off, don’t we? Of course, otherwise, you wouldn’t need to know how many calories kettlebell swings burn.

To get a rough estimate of how many calories you’re burning during exercise there are two calorie burn equations, we’re going to use the Harris Benedict Method which is a method that is great for the average body type, however it does not take into account lean muscle mass or obesity.

The first step is to calculate your BMR using one of the options below.

Imperial System BMR Formula
Women: BMR = 655 + ( 4.35 x weight in pounds ) + ( 4.7 x height in inches ) – ( 4.7 x age in years )
Men: BMR = 66 + ( 6.23 x weight in pounds ) + ( 12.7 x height in inches ) – ( 6.8 x age in year )

Metric System BMR Formula
Women: BMR = 655 + ( 9.6 x weight in kilos ) + ( 1.8 x height in cm ) – ( 4.7 x age in years)
Men: BMR = 66 + ( 13.7 x weight in kilos ) + ( 5 x height in cm ) – ( 6.8 x age in years )

This BMR calculation gives you an idea of what you would burn doing nothing but laying in bed for 24 hours. Divide the above number by 24 and you have your hourly calorie burn while not lifting a finger.

I’ve mentioned MET earlier on, it stands for Metabolic Equivalent of Task, which is a measurement value of energy expenditure for physical activities. For example, light walking has a MET value of 3.0, jump rope has a MET value of 10.0, and so on. The double-arm kettlebell swing has been assigned a value of 9.8. But if you’ve been following along, you know as well as I do, that this is just a number that doesn’t apply to all cases. The MET value of an exercise is what you multiply your hourly BMR with, so if your daily BMR is 2400 calories, then your hourly BMR would be 100, multiply this by an exercise with a MET value of 7 and you know that you burn 700 calories per hour. These are just examples and don’t represent real numbers. This is the formula to get an approximate number of calories burned during exercise. But you might have noticed that this does not take into account all the factors I previously mentioned, in particular the exact intensity, resistance, etc. and this is understandable, as the formula would become too complicated with all the different variables. What you should know is, if you want maximum calorie burn you should look at building lean muscle mass, and work at the appropriate intensity level using the appropriate amount of resistance for the right duration of time.

Let’s do a real calculation with my own data, my BMR comes to 1880 which is 78 per hour, times the MET value for kettlebell swings, which is 9.8, comes to 768 calories burned per hour. That’s great, but if I only do 30 minutes of Tabata, does that mean that’s it, all that hard work only got me 384 calories burned?! Luckily for us, that’s not it, there is also the afterburn effect (EPOC), I’ve seen many numbers out there, and some even suggest as high as much as 95% of the calorie cost to come after the exercise. Whatever the number, I’m just glad that short intense workouts provide us with this benefit, less time spent, and better results gained!

If you want to calculate your total daily calorie needs then you need to multiply your BMR with one of the following lifestyle values that apply to you:

1. Sedentary = BMR x 1.2
2. Lightly active = BMR x 1.375
3. Moderately active = BMR x 1.55
4. Very active = BMR x 1.725
5. Extremely active = BMR x 1.9

I personally don’t do calorie counting, I understand why you should if you’re a bodybuilder and enter competitions, but to me, it gets too complicated if you want to apply calorie counting for losing fat, you’ll need to keep track of what you consume and apply the formula or use online calculators to work out how to achieve a calorie deficit, too much work for me. My formula is simpler and in my opinion more effective, eat healthily, eat to feed the body not the brain, eat the right portions, and follow the safest, hardest, progressive and most effective training program available. Do the maximum you can do, then you know you don’t need to start measuring things, because no matter what, you’re already doing the best you can. If you train hard, you need to feed the body for recovery, you still don’t need to count what you eat, you need to listen to how you feel and how you look. Put that grey matter to good use.

If you want to know how you can burn the most calories while swinging a kettlebell, then I would recommend using a heavy (but safe) weight and performing an interval-style routine utilizing fast explosive maximum effort swings for 10 to 14 minutes in duration, at intervals of 20 seconds work and 10 seconds rest. If you are conditioned to workout longer, then workout longer.

If you want to learn the kettlebell swing with us online, don’t hesitate to check out our online kettlebell swing course which is extremely detailed and full of value for the price. You can also check out the book on Amazon.

Kettlebell Fundamentals Intro
play-sharp-fill
Kettlebell Fundamentals Intro

Kettlebell Fundamentals Intro

The video can be purchased here.

I know it was a long read, but if you understood everything, I’m sure you got something out of it, if not my point, then at least a formula to calculate how many calories you burn swinging a kettlebell.

References: A Biometric Study of Human Basal Metabolism https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1091498/; Harris–Benedict equation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harris%E2%80%93Benedict_equation; Farrar RE, Mayhew JL, Koch AJ. Oxygen Cost of Kettlebell Swings. Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research. 2010;24(4):1034-1036. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20300022; Calorie Restriction Calculator http://www.scientificpsychic.com/health/cron1.html; Misconceptions about Aerobic and Anaerobic Energy Expenditure https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2129144/

The Quick Answer

Without paying attention to all the variables and just going for a generic answer for how many calories one burns with kettlebell swings, here it is. A 10-minute kettlebell swing workout could burn  200 calories and a 20-minute workout could burn about 400 calories. A 30-minute kettlebell swing workout could burn about 600 calories, however, this is all assuming you’re working unbroken or at intense intervals, so a more realistic figure would be:

  • 200 Calories Ten Minutes
  • 300 Calories Fifteen Minutes
  • 350 Calories Twenty Minutes
  • 450 Calories Thirty Minutes

Depending on your conditioning and weight, the intensity will lower over a longer period of time.

2 thoughts on “How Many Calories Do You Burn with Kettlebell Swings?”

  1. Taco, having just read this article I have now reflected on my own training with regards to how to burn fat. I am fully aware of how to calculate certain exercise to calculate their 1RM. How do you calculate for kettlebells. You mention in your article swinging with 80% of 1RM how is that calculated?
    Dave

    1. Hello Dave, 1RM means one rep max, to find your one rep max, you should have heavy kettlebells, pick the heaviest you think you can only perform one good rep with. If you pick wrong, wait before trying again (otherwise it’s not truly your 1RM). Let’s say you can press a 32kg kb for just once with good form, then that’s your 1RM, divide by 100 x 80 would be your 80% of 1RM.

Leave a Comment

Shopping Basket
Total
18
Share