Jumping jacks can definitely get you out of breath but you may wonder what results you can expect from doing 500 repetitions a day.
For most people, 500 jumping jacks a day will be healthier than no exercise at all. This workout routine can help you lose some weight, improve muscle endurance, improve cardiovascular health, improve sleep, improve mood, etc.
That being said, there are definitely also better exercise routines for general health and more specific fitness goals like weight loss and improving cardiovascular health.
On top of that, adding some type of resistance training to your routine can offer amazing benefits.
What happens if you do 500 jumping jacks a day
Besides the quick overview, you may also be interested in the specific results 500 jumping jacks a day can offer and how this workout routine causes the benefits mentioned.
Will you lose weight by doing 500 jumping jacks a day?
Losing weight is one of the most popular fitness goals out there. To do this you have to make it so your body requires more energy than is coming in from food.
This will make it so your body starts using body fat, potentially including belly fat, which is basically stored energy to make up for the difference.
One way to try and make this happen is by moving more intensely than usual with exercises like jumping jacks.
Adding 500 jumping jacks on top of your regular routine should make you use more energy. There is a way to roughly estimate just how many calories you burn with this routine.
Let’s say you do about 50 jumping jacks per minute. In that case, you can use MET values to calculate that different people will burn the amounts of calories in the table below by doing 500 jumping jacks.
| Weight Person | Calories Burned With 500 Vigorous Jumping Jacks |
|---|---|
| 125 Pounds (56 kg) | 59 Calories |
| 155 Pounds (70 kg) | 73 Calories |
| 185 Pounds (83 kg) | 87 Calories |
| 215 Pounds (97 kg) | 102 Calories |
Whether you will lose weight by doing 500 jumping jacks a day will also depend a lot on other lifestyle habits like your nutrition.
To put the numbers above into perspective, one medium-sized (16 grams) chocolate chip cookie contains around 78 calories (1). As you can see, doing 500 jumping jacks is no guarantee for losing weight.
That being said, let’s say you keep your other lifestyle habits the same and just add 500 jumping jacks a day.
In that case, it would take about 48 days for a 155-pound person to lose a pound of body fat which is around 3500 calories.
Something important to note is that as you get lighter and burn fewer calories with jumping jacks, you will have to change up your workout routine or other lifestyle habits to keep seeing weight loss results.
Can improve cardiovascular health
Jumping jacks are mostly a cardio exercise which means this movement will mainly engage your heart, blood vessels, and lungs.
These parts of your body are responsible for taking in oxygen from the air and moving nutrients, oxygen, and waste substances around your body.
By moving your body more intensely with the 500 jumping jacks, these body parts will have to work harder than usual.
Similar to other parts of your body, this can strengthen your cardiovascular system if you do the jumping jacks intensely enough (but not too intense), provide your body with nutrients, and provide your body with rest.
In turn, this can reduce the risk of a variety of conditions related to your cardiovascular system (2, 3, 4).
Your muscles may last longer
Jumping jacks, even if you do 500 repetitions, are generally not challenging enough to see any actual muscle growth in the shoulders, latissimus dorsi, inner thigh, outer thigh, glute, hamstring, and calf muscles you work.
That being said, you could still see positive results in your muscles from this routine. More specifically, you could slow down muscle degeneration, make the muscles healthier, and improve muscle endurance.
If you actually want to grow the muscles mentioned above you do want to turn to resistance training instead.
You could sleep better
Most people know that enough quality sleep is important for their health but it is not always clear how to actually achieve these things.
Good quality sleep starts during the day. As soon as you wake up, your actions can influence sleep in one way or another.
One of the things that tend to benefit sleep quality and duration positively is exercise (5, 6, 7).
Other workout routines could be more effective in this area but going from no exercise to 500 jumping jacks a day should make you sleep better. Especially if you don’t do it right before bedtime.
Your mood may improve
Mood may sometimes feel random but the health of your body actually influences this a lot.
Doing 500 jumping jacks a day does not just reduce the risk of conditions that would make your mood worse.
Moving more intensely during the actual session also promotes the release of endorphins which are so-called feel-good hormones (8, 9, 10).
Additionally, setting a healthy challenge for yourself and actually achieving the 500 repetitions each day will likely make you feel better too.
Is 500 jumping jacks a day good?
It is clear that jumping jacks offer many benefits over doing nothing. Some questions you may still have include whether doing 500 of them a day is a good workout and/or whether they are enough as an exercise routine.
While doing 500 jumping jacks a day will be helpful and better than nothing for many people, I would not describe this as a good workout routine.
500 jumping jacks will only take around 10 minutes if you do them at a vigorous pace. This is relatively short compared to a typical workout.
The Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion currently recommends at least 150 to 300 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic activity or 75 to 150 minutes of vigorous-intensity aerobic activity a week (11).
Additionally, it is recommended to implement muscle-strengthening workouts too.
That means 500 jumping jacks a day would barely help you hit the lower limits of the recommendations. And as long as your body can deal with it, doing more jumping jacks tends to be beneficial (up to a point).
What to add or change
There are a few things you can do to make your routine with 500 jumping jacks a day more effective.
First of all, for cardiovascular health, you can also focus on walking more throughout the day, doing more jumping jacks each day, and/or switching it up with other cardiovascular exercises.
Secondly, you want to add some resistance training if you are trying to achieve optimal health. Even bodyweight exercises like pushups, squats, lunges, and pull-ups can already offer amazing results.
Lastly, you don’t want to forget about other lifestyle areas like nutrition. These not only play a big role in goals like losing weight but also in building muscle and general health.
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