Sit-ups are a classic exercise, long considered an indicator of overall fitness and the gold standard when it comes to shaping your midsection or abs. You probably know that burning off 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 sit-ups burn?
The simple answer to the question is “not many”. An accurate determination of 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 crunches, it’s about 10 calories per minute of crunches. Considering that a pound of fat contains around 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 calorie burning and abs, you’re most likely looking to firm up your abs, reduce your waist size a bit, or see your abs…
Since you’re considering burning calories 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 way your body looks, you’ll need to lose some body fat. And, simply put, the only way to do that is to burn more calories than you take in.
Sit-ups, however, are not the answer. Basically, you could do sit-ups 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 “bodybuilding” muscles (although they do require a lot of calories to maintain). I am referring to the larger muscle groups in your body that, when activated, burn many more calories than smaller muscle groups, such as those activated by doing more specific abdominal exercises.
So by focusing your training and exercise efforts on exercises that use the larger muscle groups, such as your legs and back, you’ll reap a much greater reward for every minute you spend exercising.
