If you’ve ever wondered about other uses for your backyard trampoline other than the 30-minute jumping session that your kids have once a week, look no further. Trampolines are incredibly popular for recreation. However, as fun as trampolines are for kids, you may find that it’s more for you than you thought it was.
Using a trampoline for either recreation or exercise burns calories, which is a step in the process of weight loss. One can burn 500 calories jumping on a trampoline in at most an hour. This is 20 minutes less than it takes to burn 500 calories walking, and about 10 minutes more than when running.
If you’ve read this far, you’re probably looking for ways you can use your trampoline to help you lose weight more efficiently. Or perhaps you’re still not convinced that a trampoline can actually be a weight-loss tool. Keep reading to have your doubts erased and your mind filled with ideas of how to capitalize on your trampoline usage.
What are the best ways to burn calories with trampolines?
Believe it or not, trampolines can actually be a fantastic exercise tool, and many people have found them to be a key asset to their personal weight loss journey and success.
Just JUMP!
Maybe it sounds too good (or fun) to be true, but just jumping on a trampoline, even just recreationally, is a great way to burn calories.
For perspective, you could jump on a trampoline for just 10 minutes and burn the same number of calories as someone who just went on a half-hour run.
Now of course intensity does play a role in burning calories. Obviously, someone jumping around with their kids for fun isn’t going to burn as many calories as someone doing flips for ten minutes straight.
An idea for using a trampoline as a weight-loss assistant that many people find both effective and enjoyable is doing your standard workout on the trampoline. If you normally do jumping jacks and squats, try them on the trampoline. It will increase the challenge in a safe way and will improve your balance immensely.
Safety First! Check out our Should Trampolines Be Anchored Article.
Trampoline workout classes
Trampoline workout classes have become a fitness craze for many. Trampoline workout classes are more popular than you think, and you can likely find one near you if you look.
The benefit to participating in a trampoline workout class is that you get the workout, which can sometimes be 1,000 calories per hour, and you also learn how to properly utilize a trampoline for effective exercise.
Even if you only attend one trampoline workout class, you’ll have a routine you can do on your own at home that will likely be more effective in burning calories than your own routine would be. [Source]
Instructional trampoline workout videos
Similar to trampoline workout classes are instructional videos for trampoline workouts. I recommend youtube as a resource for such videos.
The added benefit to these videos, besides the absence of a cost, is that you can find trampoline workouts tailored to your weight loss goals. If you are looking to burn belly fat, congratulations- there’s a trampoline workout designed just for that!
How Does Burning Calories Help you Lose Weight?
We all have seen labels on food that have the item’s calorie count, but do we actually understand what that means, or why some people “calorie count”? The first step to understanding how we can lose weight is understanding the terms used during the process of weight loss.
What is a calorie?
A calorie is a unit that represents energy. Calories are generally used in terms of energy forms such as heat. Our bodies require energy to function, in fact, every single cell does, so calories are what help fuel our bodies with energy. When we use energy throughout our day, we burn these calories off.
The science behind weight loss
How do you lose weight from burning calories if they’re just energy? Well when you burn all of the energy that you’ve accumulated through eating food that day, your body doesn’t have any additional calories to burn for the energy that it requires.
Since your body has to have energy, it then pulls that energy out of your fat reserves, which burns body fat. This is when you start to lose weight. [Source]
How Many Calories do I Need to Burn a Day to Lose Weight?
Losing weight is an equation that is actually based on how many calories you are consuming every day, not how many you are getting rid of.
How many calories should I be eating every day?
Your recommended daily calorie consumption is based on a few different things, but for the intents and purposes of this article, the focus will be on your gender.
As a very general standard amount to go off of, it is recommended that men consume 2,500 calories and that women consume 2,000 calories daily. [source]
The explanation as to why men need to consume more calories than women is that they, speaking generally, of course, have a greater muscle mass than women, and are generally taller and heavier than women of equivalent height and/or age.
As addressed above, our bodies burn calories for the energy we need to function throughout the day. If someone is bigger than another, their body has more mass to keep working properly, thus requiring more energy or calories.
How many calories should I be burning every day?
First of all, a pound of fat is roughly equivalent to about 3,500 calories. This will help you calculate how many extra calories you need to burn every day in order to reach your weight loss goal. [Source]
For example, if you want to lose one pound a week, you need to burn an extra 500 calories more than you eat. For most people, this requires some type of physical activity, since throughout the day we naturally only burn the same number of calories we are recommended to eat.
If you felt a shiver down your spine when you read the words “physical activity”, scroll back to the beginning of the article, and start incorporating your trampoline into your weight loss journey.
Trampoline workouts will be a different experience for losing weight than anything you’ve tried before. Who knows, when you’re on the trampoline so much, your kids might even get jealous and start using it too. [Source]