Doing more jumping jacks can offer positive effects in many areas of your health. Find out if they also help you burn belly fat
Something important to know is that it is generally not possible to target fat loss in very significant amounts. That means you have to lose enough weight overall to burn belly fat.
Because jumping jacks can help with overall weight loss, you can say that they can help you burn belly fat at some point in your journey.
At the same time, jumping jacks still don’t target the fat loss in that specific area.
Additionally, while jumping jacks are a decent/good options for losing weight, there are also exercises that are more effective for this fitness goal.
Another thing to keep in mind is that other lifestyle habits like your nutrition influence the fat loss process a lot. You can work out a lot and not see weight loss results due to suboptimal habits in these other areas.
Can jumping jacks make you burn belly fat?
Many people get the impression that they can focus fat burn in specific areas like their bellies by doing certain exercises like jumping jacks.
Unfortunately, it is generally not possible to target fat loss in very significant amounts. To burn belly fat, you have to lose enough fat overall.
To make this happen, you need to make it so your body needs more energy than is coming in from food. When this is the case, it starts using energy stores like body fat.
At some points in this process, your body will “decide” the fat around your stomach will be used.
Since jumping jacks can help weight loss, you can also say they have the ability to help you burn belly fat at some point in your journey.
That being said, this exercise does not target that area specifically.
Something else to keep in mind is that your habits in other lifestyle areas like your diet play a big role in the fat loss process.
If these are suboptimal, you can exercise a lot without seeing any results.
In what order do jumping jacks help you lose fat?
With the information above, you may wonder when you can expect these belly fat results from doing jumping jacks.
There is not one single answer for everyone. Details like your genes influence this a lot.
Additionally, the human body does not switch from burning fat from one area to the next. This is a gradual process where multiple areas can experience fat loss at the same time.
That being said, there are still some general statements that can help you get a better idea.
The human body tends to “like” to store body fat around its waist and hips.
That means the initial fat loss results from jumping jacks that stand out could be in the face, hands, and even feet if these areas had gathered energy stores.
After that, areas like the arms, upper back, and lower legs tend to experience drastic results.
Lastly, the amount of fat around the belly and thighs will likely already have diminished a lot at this point.
However, to lose those last few pounds of “stubborn” belly and thigh fat, people often need to really have a good plan. This plan can include jumping jacks, other workouts, and/or good habits in other areas.
Are jumping jacks a good choice to reduce belly fat?
By now, it should be clear that whether or not an exercise can be considered good for reducing belly fat mainly depends on how good it is for weight loss in general.
How many calories jumping jacks burn exactly will vary due to differences in body weight, body composition, hormone levels, exact intensity, etc.
That being said, here are a few rough estimations about how many calories people with different body weights will burn while doing jumping jacks for 15 minutes:
- 125 pounds (56 kg): 118 calories
- 155 Pounds (70 kg): 146 calories
- 185 Pounds (83 kg): 175 calories
- 215 Pounds (97 kg): 203 calories
There are alternatives to jumping jacks that are even more effective for burning calories. At the same time, this exercise can offer good results too.
One pound (0.45 kg) of body fat is around 3500 calories.
Keep in mind that whether the calories mentioned above come from body fat also depends on lifestyle habits like your diet. As an example, a medium chocolate chip cookie (16 grams) contains around 78 calories (1).
Suboptimal eating habits can undo your calorie-burning efforts from doing jumping jacks.
How many jumping jacks should you do a day to lose belly fat?
You can also look at this exercise from a different perspective. It is possible to make some estimations about how many jumping jacks you should do to burn certain amounts of calories.
To burn the number of calories in one pound (0.45 kg) of body fat, people of different body weights will have to do more or less the following amounts of jumping jacks:
- 125 pounds (56 kg): 17,778 jumping jacks
- 155 Pounds (70 kg): 14,337 jumping jacks
- 185 Pounds (83 kg): 12,012 jumping jacks
- 215 Pounds (97 kg): 10,336 jumping jacks
This should make it clear that not much will happen in terms of fat loss results if you just do 100 jumping jacks every day without other changes in your lifestyle.
Do jumping jacks give you bigger abs?
Losing belly fat is the first step toward visible abs. The second step is growing these muscles.
When looking at the muscles you use in jumping jacks, you may conclude that this exercise could be helpful for the second step.
That being said, jumping jacks are typically not challenging enough to actually grow your muscles. Especially not for secondary muscles like your abs.
In simpler words, jumping jacks generally do not give you bigger abs.
How to lose more belly fat with jumping jacks
You could get to a point where your jumping jack workout routine helps you lose belly fat but want to see more results. In that case, there are a few things you can do.
One of the benefits of jumping jacks is that you can easily do them at different speeds.
Something like a HIIT (high-intensity interval training) workout tends to offer more fat loss results than implementing a slower face for the same number of minutes.
Additionally, you can consider doing jumping jacks with weights like a weighted vest. Moving more weight typically requires more energy from your body.
Next, doing jumping jacks for longer amounts of time tends to benefit your belly fat loss efforts. You do want to keep in mind there is a point where overtraining can have the opposite effect.
Lastly, make sure you pay enough attention to other lifestyle habits like your diet. Changes in these areas can offer a lot of fat loss results.
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