How Many Push-Ups Burn 100 Calories

Many people set the goal of pumping out a hundred push-ups in a row. Achieving that goal is a major accomplishment that relies on chest, tricep, and front deltoid strength and endurance. However, it will not burn a whole lot of calories. 

An Estimate of Push-Up Calorie Burn

It is impossible to say how many calories you will burn from doing a hundred push-ups. That is because we all burn calories at different rates, depending on our gender, weight, age, genetics, fitness level, and how hard we are working on completing our hundred-rep push-up target. If you are doing all 100 in a row, you will burn more calories than if you broke it up into ten sets of ten push-ups. 

However, we can estimate a general calorie burn from doing high-rep push-ups. Let’s assume that you are going to do four sets of 25 push-ups, with a rest period of 60-90 seconds between sets. 

The best way to do push-ups is in a slow to moderate tempo under control. As a result, it should take 1-2 minutes to do each set of 25 reps. Let’s say it takes two minutes.

That means that your total work time to complete a hundred reps of push-ups will be eight minutes. 

According to Harvard Health Publishing, a 125-pound person may expect to burn roughly 125 calories after a 30-minute bodyweight workout that includes exercises like push-ups and air squats. A 155-pound individual should anticipate burning about 167 calories, while a 185-pound person can expect to burn about 200 calories.

So if we take our 185-pound person and divide 300 calories by 30 minutes, we get 10 calories per minute. Multiply that by eight minutes, and we see that this person will burn around 80 calories from doing 100 pushups. 

Not Ideal For Fat Loss

It’s probably not a good idea to do 100 push-ups every day if losing weight is your main objective. Push-ups won’t be the only thing that finally helps you reach your objective, and repetitive activity is also taxing on your body.

The Mayo Clinic estimates that 3,500 calories make up one pound of body fat. Doing push-ups would make it hard to burn off all of those calories. The optimum approach entails combining exercise with a calorie deficit (when you burn more calories than you consume) and more regular movement throughout the day, such as climbing stairs, performing household duties, etc.

Finding out how many calories your body burns to maintain your present weight will help you develop a sustained calorie deficit (aka your maintenance calories). According to the Mayo Clinic, you can safely reduce your daily calorie intake by 500 to 1,000. Your calorie shortfall builds up throughout the course of the week, resulting in weight reduction. If you can achieve a negative balance of 3500 calories per week, you will lose about a pound of fat each week. 

Benefits of Push Ups

Even though push-ups may not burn many calories, their advantages make them worthwhile to include in your daily exercise regimen. Push-ups work a variety of different muscles. The majority of individuals just consider how pushing themselves strengthens their arm muscles. However, push-ups are also beneficial for the lat, shoulders, chest,  and core muscles.

Push-ups also assist in strengthening the core muscles. Your chest will get an awesome push-up burn after 100 reps. Push-ups can also help a person to improve their posture. 

Push Ups Promote Muscle Growth

Push-ups are still an effective exercise even though they aren’t the primary calorie-burner for weight loss. Since lean muscle mass plays a significant role in your body’s overall calorie expenditure, push-ups are a fantastic strategy to promote extra muscle mass and fat loss.

According to the American Council on Exercise, a body with lean mass and muscle density is more effective at burning calories throughout the day. This is a post-exercise effect that you experience after several weeks or months of training, not a result of the energy used to perform push-ups.

Cardio exercise can help you burn more calories. Cardio is also required to maintain a robust and healthy heart. The Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans recommend engaging in 75 to 150 minutes per week of vigorous-intensity aerobic exercise for weight loss and general health.

Push-Up Variations

There are dozens of different ways to do push-ups, with each one having its own emphasis in terms of target muscles. Here are some variations of push-ups to inject into your routine for variety.

Standard Push Ups

To do the regular push-up, get on the ground and assume the push-up position to perform a push-up. Holding your body in a straight line, you should only have your toes and palms touching the floor. Put your glutes and core to work. Your arms should be just below your shoulders, although a little wider.

Once your chest is close to touching the floor, begin to drop yourself to the ground. Take a little pause before pushing yourself back up. Your upper and lower bodies should remain firm throughout the exercise; don’t allow your hips to drop.

Continue with rep two after pausing at the top.

Incline Push Ups

Once you can do 50 regular pushups, it’s time to increase the difficulty by raising your feet. The difficulty of the workout increases with the height of your feet since you must raise a greater amount of weight.

Many people think that performing pushups on an angle or decline will help you focus on the upper or lower chest. That is not the situation. The origin and insertion locations are the same for all pectoral muscle fibers. This implies that when you exercise your chest, you will be engaging them all at once.

The front deltoid will receive more priority stress from the decline angle, whereas the pectoral muscles will receive slightly less. 

Triple Stop Push-Up

If you’re a more experienced person, do a triple-stop pushup.

The first stop should be at the halfway point, the second should be at the bottom, and the last should be when your elbows are practically locked at the top. Hold each position for two to three seconds.

Don’t expect to complete many reps because this is incredibly difficult. If you’re trying to increase your duration under strain, this is a great bodyweight exercise to do because it will make each push-up last up to 9 or 10 seconds. You’ll have a total time under tension of 90 seconds for the set if you can complete 10 reps. 

HIIT For a Higher Calorie Burn

Adding exercises like HIIT, which may involve push-ups,  to your workout plans can aid in the reduction of belly fat. While it is impossible to target-train a specific area of your body to reduce fat, HIIT workouts can assist create the EPOC effect, which increases the number of calories you burn from fat after exercising.

High-intensity interval training is known as HIIT. When you perform a HIIT workout, your body alternates rapidly between brief bursts of intense physical activity that are a mix of strength training and cardio.

According to studies, HIIT exercise is much more efficient at burning calories and fat than steady-state, moderate-to-low-intensity cardio hours. We recommend adding HIIT training to your daily workout routine 3 times per week. 

Summary

Doing 100 push-ups will only burn 40-80 calories. While there are better ways to burn calories, you will still gain a lot of benefits from doing high-rep push-ups. The best way to burn calories is to perform HIIT training.  

Frequently Asked Questions