Calories burned?

[Lava]

An interesting calculator that adjusts calories based on your weight: http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/calories.htm Caving is not on the list, however!

Wow, 253 calories burned in one hour of guitar playing? Man, I have to start rocking out after work...

[bigalpha]

Sure beats running 3 miles at 8 min/mile.

[Dan Sullivan]

Sure beats running 3 miles at 8 min/mile.

IMO, that depends on if you can play a guitar or not.

[hunter]

Looking at these charts, it is hard to imagine that a rock climber could use 5,000 calories an hour. Even bike racing won't get you close to that.

Hmm, seems like this must be based on what a top climber expends on a really hard short route. The only studies I have heard of were done on some of the strongest climbers in the world. If they used this info it would be like getting your data from an olympic sprinter. Still seems way to high though.

Just my opinion but I don't think you can go by a calorie calculator. These are for continuous workouts where you do not stop. Caving is way to varied for that. You spend some time moving slower or in the case of vertical descending with very little effort.

A quick search shows that riders in the Tour De France burn an average of between 6k-7k calories a day, with an absolute peak of 9k. Seems like very few caving trips would approach even the average for a tour rider.

Hunter

[ian mckenzie]

Armchair cavers usually experience a net gain in calories...

[eyecave]

exercise and calories huh......well, i have worked out regularly for 43 years now so i think i know a thing or two....i did not read everything written but i would just like to say.....bike riding is the most efficient method of human propulsion and should be much less calorie use than the effort of cave exploration...the effort put out by the professional bike racers would bring there calorie use probably very close to the energy expenditure involved in challenging caving.....

caves vary in difficulty, but i am not talking about the rough type of trip where you throw up at the end or just after its over......i am talking about a trip where you are very challenged and it ends a little before the throwing up stage when you can remain comfortably worn out....

a guess of 450-500 cals an hour is a good estimate of a challenging pace....i am also certain that the body spends calories maintaining its temperatures and chemistry...and i am equally certain that it would take more to do that in a cave than it would in the fertile fields of flanders.....so you can add the temp-physio-statis stuff calories to that....

the amount of hydration required and calorie replacement also results in calorie consumption....so more calories....

as cavers we need to carefully design an experiment that would measure the various aspects of excercise physiology in a caving environment (the different ones) where we could accurately resolve this question in a way beneficial to phd candidates......

me?......my guess is 750 calories per hour to maintain the "caving machine" in 85 percent full throttle.....

go on......make my day.......design an experiment punk.....

[Tlaloc]

bike riding is the most efficient method of human propulsion and should be much less calorie use than the effort of cave exploration...the effort put out by the professional bike racers would bring there (SIC) calorie use probably very close to the energy expenditure involved in challenging caving.....

Pro bike racers in a big stage in a bike race burn 1700 - 1800 calories per hour. Energy is stored as glycogen in your muscles and liver. It is only sufficient to exercise strenuously for at most two hours, then you will bonk. You have enough body fat to ride a long distance but it can't be converted into usable energy fast enough to keep you going. To keep exercising at a high level in an endurance event you have to drink a lot of fluid and electrolytes to replace those lost by sweating and to eat. Your stomach can absorb 300 - 400 calories an hour. On a long bike ride someone who weighs as much as I do (190 pounds) must drink at least 24 ounces of an electrolyte and carbohydrate drink and eat two carbohydrate gels per hour to avoid bonking (+/- 350 cal./hr.). Bike racers also eat very high calorie meals before a race.

I am not a bike racer but I do have to do this quite a few times a year for big rides but I've never had to do this while caving. I doubt very much that big wall climbers use up 5000 per hour calories continuously on a climb.

[Grandpa Caver]

[/quote]Just my opinion but I don't think you can go by a calorie calculator. These are for continuous workouts where you do not stop. Caving is way to varied for that. You spend some time moving slower or in the case of vertical descending with very little effort.

Hunter[/quote]

When using the calorie counter (one for sports & one for exercises) I included low impact activities such as backpacking and walking along with more strenuous workouts. I then averaged the results from both sites.

IMO the results should approximate an average cave trip of moderate difficulty. 400-500 calories per hour seems reasonable to me. Then again, I'm 5'7" and have never weighed more than 125lbs. Short of loading up on carbs before a long cave trip, I've never paid much attention to such things.

[kvart]

An interesting calculator that adjusts calories based on your weight: http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/calories.htm Caving is not on the list, however!

Wow, 253 calories burned in one hour of guitar playing? Man, I have to start rocking out after work...

Yeah? Well if you had seen Dangerjudy banging on her guitar Friday nite at the Cave-in, you would swear she was buring at least 2500/hr.........heck, I was burning 253/hr just watching her!

[eyecave]

pro bike racers........i was comparing them to guys dragging ropesand packs for brief periods of time in the absolute worst conditions.....not for 8 hours and where the heck did you come up with the big wall comparison?......big walls are nothing compared to hypothermia inside mother earth........5000 calories????????....you said one sentence 1800 and then 5000.......what????????????.... .......there ain't a caver out there out of 10,000 who can go like lance a can go......(i realizethenumbersaremuchhigher)...

getting back to topic.....i feel that the average cavers in the average trip use the average number of cals per hour i proposed.....whatttadoyathink.....designanexperiment.......