Kayaking burns the same calories per hour compared to walking. You can burn up to 350 calories an hour kayaking at a moderate pace, depending on your weight. Walking at a speed of 3 mph burns between 200 to 360 calories in an hour, again depending on your weight.
Even though kayaking and walking both burn calories and help you lose weight, walking offers more benefits for your legs and kayaking offers more benefits for your arms and back. Combining kayaking and walking is an excellent way to combine the benefits of both exercises while preventing you from getting bored.
How Many Calories Do You Burn Kayaking?
Although kayaking burns significantly fewer calories than running, it still offers many benefits. According to Harvard Health Publications a 125 lb person will burn over 280 calories per hour and a 150 lb person will burn almost 350 calories per hour. A 200 lb person would burn over 450 calories per hour.
Note that these are given by weight instead of by sex. The study didn’t dive deeper into whether men or women burn more calories. You can assume you’ll burn the same as the above based on your current weight.
How Many Calories Do You Burn Kayaking For 30 Minutes?
For a 150-pound person, kayaking for 30 minutes at 3.5 mph burns about 175 calories. This works out to almost 6 calories per hour or 100 calories per mile. If you did this daily, you can burn nearly 1,300 calories kayaking per week. That translates into losing an extra 1.6 lbs per month on top of the other dieting and exercise you may be doing.
For a 200-pound person, the number is slightly higher at 225 calories burned in 30 minutes or about 7.5 calories per minute or 129 calories per mile at 3.5 mph. In other words, a 200 lb person can lose 2 pounds in one month by kayaking every day for half an hour.
To lose weight at this rate, you need to be consistent with your kayaking routine every day for six days a week.
How Many Calories Do You Burn Kayaking A Mile?
When kayaking a mile, a 150 lb person will burn 6 calories per minute or 100 calories for every mile going 3.5 miles per hour.
If you weigh 200 pounds, the number is slightly higher at 7.5 calories per mile going the same rate. This is actually the same as you can expect to burn just walking (i.e. 100 calories per mile).
How Can You Burn More Calories While Kayaking?
If you want to burn more calories while kayaking, make sure you paddle faster and aim for 4 to 4.5 mph. Use MapMyFitness or a similar tracking app to check your speed and your total distance.
You’ll burn more calories going a longer distance as well. At a faster rate this will take you less time. Be careful on your body though as too much kayaking can eventually lead to shoulder issues.
Lastly, you can burn more by combining kayaking with walking. Walk at a fast 4 mph pace for 30 minutes before or after your kayaking to burn more and balance the arm workout of kayaking with a leg workout of walking.
Is Kayaking A Good Way To Lose Weight?
Although kayaking is an effective activity for weight loss, it’s still about the same as walking. Most people will want to burn calories faster than 100 per mile (only 300 per hour compared to much higher numbers from jogging, running, or HIIT).
This means that even though kayaking is fun gives many other benefits, to lose weight, you will need to combine it with other activities like proper diet, weight lifting, and HIIT.
Will Kayaking Burn Fat?
Kayaking not only burns calories but also helps you burn fat. Your body is always burning a mix of fat and carbs for energy. You burn more stored carbs (glycogen) when doing intense activies like HIIT, running, or fast kayaking.
You burn more fat for energy when doing low-impact activities like walking or slow kayaking (3 – 3.5 mph). Whether fast or slow you’re always burning fat!
So what should you do to burn more fat while kayaking? The answer – whichever gets you kayaking every week! But let’s break that down into real examples.
- Fat Burned Fast Kayaking (6 mph) – 600 calories per hour (70% glycogen calories/30% fat)
- 420 calories glycogen
- 180 calories fat
- Fat Burned Slow Kayaking (3.5 mph) – 350 calories per hour (50% glycogen calories/50% fat)
- 175 calories glycogen
- 175 calories fat
Even though fast kayaking burns slightly more fat it burns a lot more calories so you’ll lose more weight overall if you keep it up consistently every week.
How Many Calories Do You Burn Walking?
Walking at 3 mph for half an hour can yield about 105 to 180 calories burned depending on your weight. This is one of the lowest numbers among calorie-burning exercises but still excellent for weight loss and general fitness. You can also walk 10,000 steps over the course of a day, which is another way you burn calories without running and at a lower risk for injuries.
How Many Calories Do You Burn Walking For 30 Minutes?
To burn 150 calories in 30 minutes, you need to walk at 1.5 miles which is about 3 mph. This is easy and most people can accomplish this with no training.
You’ll want to use a tracker app like MapMyFitness to confirm how far you’ve walked and the pace.
In the end, calories burned walking will be a function of distance not pace. Work, in physics, is defined as force multiplied by distance. The benefit there is that you can walk a nice leisurely pace and no matter how long it takes you’ll be burning about 100 calories per mile.
How Many Calories Do You Burn Walking A Mile?
Walking at a speed of 3 mph burns nearly 300 calories per hour for a 150 lb person (male or female). You’ll burn more if you weigh more and less if you weigh less.
Increase your speed to 4 mph will increase the burn to 400 calories per hour. Decrease the speed to a leisurely 2 mph will decrease the burn to 200 calories per hour.
Adding elevation changes things. Hiking on steep terrain increases the burn rate to 300 to 600 calories per hour (depending on your weight) even though you’re only walking 2 mph on average.
Which Is Better For Your Legs – Kayaking Or Walking?
Even though kayaking and walking both burn calories and help you lose weight, walking offers more benefits for your legs. This is because paddling only helps the muscles in your upper body work while your legs mainly sit there in the kayak.
Whitewater kayaking can be great for your core as you’ll use a lot of hip movement to stabilize the kayak but still, don’t expect much tone going on in your legs.
How Can You Combine Kayaking and Walking To Make the Perfect Workout?
Combining kayaking and walking is an excellent way to increase your upper body strength and tone your legs. To achieve this, you need to walk for at least half an hour every time you paddle.
Since both kayaking and walking burn the same, you can change the duration depending on which you enjoy more.
For instance, go for a quick 30-minute walk followed by a nice leisurely 1.5 hour kayak. Combined you’ll burn 675 calories (150 walking 1.5 miles and 525 calorie kayaking).
Which Is Better For Your Back – Kayaking Or Walking?
In general, kayaking is better for your back than walking because it involves a lot of twisting and turning to paddle against the water’s resistance. This maintains the health of your spine, which may deteriorate when you do a lot of sitting at the office.
Walking on even paved sidewalks or hard ground can also exacerbate existing back problems while kayaking can help strengthen your back and reduce back pain.
Which Is Better For Your Arms – Kayaking Or Walking?
Kayaking is better for your arms than walking because it involves using a lot of the major muscles in your arms, back and core while padding against the water’s resistance. This helps you tone your upper body without straining as kayaking is a low-impact exercise like walking.
In addition, carrying your kayak a long distance from the car to the lake or river will help strengthen both your arms and your legs.
How Many Times A Week Can You Walk vs Kayak?
You can kayak about three or four times a week and still derive the same health benefits from it as you would from walking.
Both walking and kayaking are low impact activities which means they don’t tear up your joints over the long run as much as HIIT, running, and other intense activities would.
However, if you want to lose weight faster with kayaking, then you’ll want to combine kayaking with walking. Repeating the example above, if you go for a quick 30-minute walk followed by a nice leisurely 1.5-hour kayak you’ll burn 675 calories (150 walking 1.5 miles and 525 calorie kayaking).
