A rebounder is a piece of fitness equipment that can offer some extra movement. In turn, it can help you burn more calories.
Rebounders are basically a mini-trampoline. Many people find this piece of cardio equipment a fun way to move more which can lead to a variety of health benefits including calorie-burning.
The average person can expect to burn around 133 – 229+ calories per 30 minutes of using a rebounder. This number will vary from individual to individual due to a variety of factors.
For example, a 125-pound (56 kg) individual will burn around 133 calories during 30 minutes of using a rebounder.
On the other hand, a 215-pound (97 kg) individual will burn around 356 calories during the same rebounder session at the same intensity.
This article will also show you a more detailed chart that takes multiple factors into account, how many minutes a day should you rebound to burn certain calorie counts, how rebounding compares to walking and running, and more.
Biggest influences on calories burned
A fact that many people find annoying is that the number of calories you burn while doing something like rebounding is hard to predict and measure correctly.
This fact can make things like weight loss feel like a guessing game when you are trying to balance these numbers with the calories in food.
Even so, good estimations for the number of calories burned while using a rebounder can be a helpful starting point. By taking a few important factors into account you can make your estimations more accurate.
Some of the biggest factors that influence how many calories you burn while rebounding include:
- Weight: To move around your body needs energy, measured in calories. The more you weigh, the more energy your body needs to fuel its movements.
- Body composition: Body composition is how much of your body weight is made up of different tissue. Two people can weigh the same but for one individual most of the weight can come from fat while the second individual has a lot of muscle. The reason that is important is that the same weight of muscle requires more energy than that weight in fat.
- Intensity: If you’re looking at calories burned per minute of using a rebounder this can vary a lot by moving your body at a fast vs slow speed. The difference between leisurely jumping around and an intense workout can be big.
Hidden calorie burning from rebounding
There are many other aspects that make it even harder to put how many calories you burn on a rebounder into an exact number. This includes the fact that the calorie-burning effects of rebounding are not limited to during the workout.
As mentioned, how much you weigh plays a relatively big role in how many calories you burn. This doesn’t just apply to your workout, this is also the case during everyday activities.
Some people also build or preserve some muscle mass by using a rebounder. This amount of muscle mass will definitely not be as much as something like weight lifting but it does help you burn more calories day in, day out.
It is however extremely hard to put this amount into a number since this muscle mass will be so different from person to person. Individuals more experienced with resistance training will likely not build any muscle by rebounding.
Next, doing an activity at high intensities can also cause something called “afterburn”. This is basically having an increased metabolism for a while after you stop doing the exercise.
Lastly, by moving your body more you influence the levels of certain hormones that in turn can benefit your metabolism.
Estimations of the number of calories burned while using a rebounder usually don’t take these effects into account.
Estimations calories burned on a rebounder
The centers for disease control and prevention simplifies the number of calories burned by jumping on a trampoline into between 3.5 – 7 calories per minute (1).
In reality, there are tools to make more precise estimations. To calculate calories burned during certain exercises more specifically you can use a formula with MET values.
A MET value is an exercise-specific value to indicate how intense a specific type of workout is. This number represents how many times more intense the exercise is compared to sitting still.
You can use this in the following formula: METs x 3.5 x (your body weight in kilograms) / 200 = calories burned per minute
An estimation for the MET while using a rebounder (mini-trampoline) is 4.5 (2). The first table will show estimations for the calories burned when using this MET for different body weights and time intervals.
You can look at the number of calories burned while rebounding from different perspectives. You can also find charts that show how many minutes a day should you rebound to burn certain calorie counts and how this exercise compares to walking and running.
Again keep in mind that these are estimations. This formula doesn’t take into account certain important factors that do influence the number of calories burned while using a rebounder.
To put these estimations into perspective, 100 grams of boiled potatoes contains about 87 calories (3).
Calories burned on a rebounder
One of the most convenient ways to see how many calories you burned while rebounding is by looking at how much time you spent doing it.
| Time Weight Person | 1 Minute | 15 Minutes | 30 Minutes | 45 Minutes | 60 Minutes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 125 Pounds (56 kg) | 4 calories | 66 calories | 133 calories | 199 calories | 266 calories |
| 155 Pounds (70 kg) | 5 calories | 82 calories | 165 calories | 247 calories | 330 calories |
| 185 Pounds (83 kg) | 7 calories | 98 calories | 197 calories | 295 calories | 393 calories |
| 215 Pounds (97 kg) | 8 calories | 114 calories | 229 calories | 343 calories | 457 calories |
How many minutes a day should you rebound
It is also possible that you have a specific goal in terms of how many calories you want to burn with rebounding. Below you can find estimations for different calorie counts and different weights.
| Calorie Count Weight Person | 50 Calories | 100 Calories | 300 Calories | 500 Calories | 1000 Calories |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 125 Pounds (56 kg) | 11 minutes | 23 minutes | 68 minutes | 113 minutes | 226 minutes |
| 155 Pounds (70 kg) | 9 minutes | 18 minutes | 55 minutes | 91 minutes | 182 minutes |
| 185 Pounds (83 kg) | 8 minutes | 15 minutes | 46 minutes | 76 minutes | 153 minutes |
| 215 Pounds (97 kg) | 7 minutes | 13 minutes | 39 minutes | 66 minutes | 131 minutes |
Calories burned rebounder vs walking vs running
Lastly, jumping on a rebounder is not the only workout out here. Other popular options include walking and running. The numbers in the table below are for doing the activity for 30 minutes.
From these numbers, it looks like rebounding burns about 28.7% more calories than walking at 3 mph (4.8 kmh). In turn, running at 5 mph (8.1 kmh) burns about 121.8% more calories than rebounding.
These are of course estimations, the intensity of a rebounder session can vary a lot.
| Exercise Type Weight Person | Rebounder | Walking (3 mph/4.8 kmh) | Running (5 mph/8.1 kmh) | Running (6 mph/9.7 kmh) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 125 Pounds (56 kg) | 133 calories | 103 calories | 295 calories | 340 calories |
| 155 Pounds (70 kg) | 165 calories | 128 calories | 366 calories | 421 calories |
| 185 Pounds (83 kg) | 197 calories | 153 calories | 437 calories | 503 calories |
| 215 Pounds (97 kg) | 229 calories | 178 calories | 508 calories | 584 calories |
How to burn more calories with rebounding
The number of calories burned while rebounding is certainly not something set in stone. There are a few ways you can increase this amount per time interval.
The challenge for most people is fitting in activities in their busy schedules. They want to burn as many calories in the least amount of time, which means burning more calories per minute on the rebounder.
If you do have more time, spending more time rebounding will generally burn more calories although at some point overtraining may cause the reverse.
A more obvious way to burn more calories with rebounding is by doing more intense workouts where you move your body faster. At some intensity point, you also get the added afterburn effect.
The second way to burn more calories on a rebounder is by making the weight you have to carry around heavier.
You can do this by wearing a weighted vest as long as your rebounder can deal with the extra weight. Another method is building some extra muscle mass with other exercises.
Can you lose weight by rebounding?
Rebounding is an activity that can help you burn a nice amount of extra calories. In combination with good habits in other lifestyle areas, this can lead to weight loss.
One pound of body fat is about 3500 calories (one kg +-8000 calories). How long it takes to see weight loss results from rebounding will also depend on the number of calories in your diet.
One person might eat more than the other. This might make it so they need to exercise longer or more intensely to see the same weight loss results. You can even lose weight without exercising so there are many factors that influence it.
15 minutes of rebounding a day could help you burn an extra 820 calories in 10 days which is about 0.23 pounds of body fat. 30 days 2460 calories (= +- 0.7 pounds of body fat) and so on…
Keep in mind that losing weight too fast can be suboptimal. In general, a 500 calorie deficit per day is considered to be a healthy weight loss rate.
Rebounder weight loss studies
There are a few rebounder studies that investigated what the effects of this calorie-burning could be on participants.
One small study with 18 overweight women observed that 12 weeks of mini-trampoline rebounding exercise was enough to see significant, positive, differences in circumferences, fat mass, lean and muscular mass (4).
Another small study with 12 participants in the intervention group and 10 participants in the control group observed that 8 weeks of rebounding was enough to significantly improve running speed (5).
This same study also estimated that the participants burned around 9.7 kcal per minute during the mini-trampoline training. That is a bit higher than the used MET estimations suggest.
A different study with 18 overweight women estimated that their participants burned around 6.9 kcal per minute during a rebounder session (6).
The last study measured that 24 recreationally active college students burned on average about 10.9 calories per minute of rebounding (7). In this last study, the females burned on average 9.4 calories per minute, the males 12.4 calories per minute.
In short, there are studies that show that rebounding can be good for weight loss. The exact estimations in calories burned vary. Partly because of reasons like the different weights of participants.
What muscles does rebounding work?
Using a rebounder mainly works muscles like your glutes, quadriceps, hamstrings, calves, obliques, abs, erector spinae, and lower back.
If you are relatively inexperienced when it comes to resistance training, rebounding could help you grow and strengthen some of these muscles a small amount.
For individuals more experienced with resistance training, using a rebounder is likely not enough to build a lot of muscle mass.
Both groups of people generally benefit from giving their bodies enough nutrients, rest, and sleep to repair and grow their muscles after an intense session of rebounding.
Should you rebound to burn calories?
As you can see, rebounding is a decent workout that can help you burn a nice amount of calories. That being said, there are definitely also many exercise options that are even more effective in this area.
Whether you should choose rebounding as your main form of workouts also depends on factors like personal preference.
If calorie burning is your main goal, implementing some exercises in your schedule specifically for building muscle can be helpful.
The extra muscle mass will help you burn more calories day in, day out, including during your rebounder sessions.
Also keep in mind that the things you eat stay important no matter what movement routine you’re following. It’s hard to out-exercise a bad diet.
