How Many Calories Does Paddle Boarding Burn?

You can have fun while burning calories too. Find out how many calories paddle boarding burns and how to see more results in this area.

While your actual results may vary, the average person will burn around 354 to 610 calories while paddle boarding for an hour.

Details like your body weight will influence what end of this estimation range applies to you.

The 354 calories are the estimation for 125-pound (56 kg) people whereas the 610 calories are the prediction for 215-pound (97 kg) individuals.

This article will also show more in-depth estimations for different body weights, what details will influence your actual results, and ways to increase the number of calories you burn while paddle boarding.

Big factors in calories burned with paddle boarding

Unfortunately, it is hard to make accurate predictions about how many calories a person will burn with an activity like paddle boarding. This makes certain methods like calories in calories out even less optimal.

At the same time, you can still make your predictions about the number of calories burned during paddle boarding somewhat more accurate.

One way to do this is by considering more factors that influence your results a lot. Knowing about these factors can also help you make your paddle boarding workouts more effective in this area.

Some examples of factors that play big roles in how many calories you burn with paddle boarding are:

• Weight: Heavier bodies tend to require more calories to keep alive and move. This applies to the movements in paddle boarding too.
• Body composition: Someone can weigh the same amount as you but have less muscle mass. This is relevant because muscle mass tends to burn more calories during paddle boarding than the same weight in body fat.
• Paddle boarding intensity: There is a big intensity difference between paddle boarding as a sightseeing method and really pedaling at a racing tempo. Intenser movements tend to burn more calories.

Chart of paddle boarding calorie-burning estimations

There are numbers called MET values which are estimations (and sometimes measurements) about how intense certain activities are.

You can then use these METs in the formula below to get a rough idea of how many calories activities like paddle boarding burn.

Formula: METs x 3.5 x (your body weight in kilograms) / 200 = calories burned per minute

It should be clear that this formula is oversimplified. The estimations can still give you some idea but you should not take them too precisely either.

That being said, one source mentions an MET of 6 for stand-up paddle boarding (1). You can find the results of applying this MET to different body weights and amounts of time below.

If you want to know what these numbers mean in terms of food, a medium chocolate chip cookie (30 grams) contains about 148 calories (2).

Ways to burn more calories with paddle boarding

The estimations above may imply differently but you can actually influence how many calories you burn with paddle boarding to a nice extent.

For example, by picking up your speed and pedaling faster, you will typically burn more calories. You can even get an afterburn effect at some intensity levels.

Next, you can add resistance training workouts to build muscle to your routine. The extra healthy mass you build will make you burn more calories during your pedal boarding sessions and the rest of your day.

Lastly, you can consider paddle boarding for longer amounts of time. As long as you avoid overtraining, this tends to increase the number of calories you burn.

How long does it take to lose weight with paddle boarding?

Burning all these calories with paddle boarding sounds nice but you are likely more interested in the weight and more specifically body fat this can help you lose.

An important thing to note is that your weight loss results from paddle boarding will depend a lot on details like the things you eat. Burning more calories is no guarantee for losing weight.

That aside, to get some rough estimations, you can temporarily assume all the calories you burn with paddle boarding come from body fat (even though this will likely not be the case).

A 185-pound (84 kg) person paddle boarding for 45 minutes two times a week will burn an extra 786 calories or about 0.23 pounds (0.1 kg) of body fat.

If this person does the same paddle boarding sessions at the same frequency for a month (4 weeks), they will burn an extra 3144 calories or about 0.9 pounds (0.39 kg) of body fat.

Over time, the weight loss will make it so the person (and you) has to make more positive changes to see the same results.

Is paddle boarding good for burning calories?

Paddle boarding is a decent/good exercise for burning calories.

One downside is that it is harder to really push yourself in paddle boarding than in something like running due to the extra balance requirements.

In turn, it is fair to say there are definitely also more effective alternatives to paddle boarding for burning calories.

On the flip side, paddle boarding does have the fun aspect and extra sunlight exposure which can be helpful (if you don’t overdo it).

If you find it easy to stay consistent with paddle boarding workouts, you could consider this activity to burn calories anyway.

Related posts:

• Calories Burned In 30 Minutes Of Exercise
• Is Working Out 3 Days A Week Enough?