How many calories do crunches burn?

Crunches are a classic exercise, long regarded as an indicator of overall fitness and the standard when it comes to shaping your midsection or abs. You probably know that burning excess calories is the key to losing weight, no matter what exercises you choose. So how many calories do crunches burn?

The Truth: How Many Calories Do Crunches Burn?

The simple answer to the question is “not many”. An accurate determination of the calories burned by any exercise can only be determined by taking into account a number of variables, including: weight, age, intensity, and current fitness levels, among others. So to give you a very rough estimate of the direct calories you could expect to burn doing sit-ups, it’s about 10 calories per minute of sit-ups. Considering that a pound of fat contains about 3,500 calories, it’s pretty easy to say that the calorie burn from this exercise won’t make much of a difference in your fat-loss effort.

Do you want to see your abs?

I’m going to assume that since you were asking about burning calories and abs, chances are you’re looking to firm your tummy, trim your waist a bit, or see your abs…

Since you’re considering calorie burning along with exercise, it means you’re at least on the right track. In order to see your abs, flatten your stomach, or make a real difference in the appearance of your body, you’ll need to lose some body fat. And, simply put, the only way to do that is to burn more calories than you consume.

The abs, however, are not the answer. Basically, you could do crunches all day long and that alone will do very little to make any significant progress toward actually displaying your abs.

Bigger muscles burn more calories.

No, I’m not talking about big “bodybuilder” muscles (although they do require a lot of calories to maintain). I’m referring to the larger muscle groups in your body that, when activated, burn far more calories than smaller muscle groups, such as those activated by doing more specific ab exercises.

So by focusing your training and exercise efforts on exercises that use the larger muscle groups, like your legs and back, you’ll reap a much greater reward for every minute you spend exercising.