If you’ve always wanted to try scuba diving but thought it was too strenuous, rest assured that the sport can be great for your body. Scuba diving can burn calories and keep you fit, but depending on your physical condition and style of diving, you might burn more or less than someone else doing the same activity.
Diving is a great way to stay active and burn calories
- Get your heart rate up.
- Get your blood flowing.
- Get those muscles moving!
How many calories you burn depends on the conditions, your diving style and your own body type
- It depends on your weight.
- On a deeper dive, you’ll burn more calories than on a shallower one.
- The more exertion you use, the more calories you burn.
- Currents increase your energy expenditure and therefore increase the number of calories burned during a dive.
A 150-pound diver can manage up to 1,000 calories during a strenuous day-long dive trip
The amount of calories you burn while scuba diving depends on a number of factors: your weight, the type of dive you’re conducting, and how long you spend underwater. A 150-pound diver can manage up to 1,000 calories during a strenuous day-long dive trip. An increase in body weight means that more energy will be required to move through water at depth. That’s why a 250-pound diver burns up to 1,800 calories while diving because he has more mass—and thus more inertia—to overcome with each kick or fin stroke into the sea.
A slim 100-pound person may be able to go longer than two hours without taking on additional oxygen as compared with his or her larger counterpart (who would need it after about 30 minutes), but this difference pales in comparison with what’s at stake when considering their respective caloric expenditure rates: A 50% reduction in air consumption translates into only a 10% reduction in caloric costs for the smaller diver; meanwhile, his heavier counterpart needs nearly all his initial energy reserve just getting down there!
A 250-pound diver may burn as much as 1,800 calories, while a 100-pound diver burns in the range of 700 calories
If you’re an experienced scuba diver, it’s likely that you’ve already burned more than a few hundred calories during your dives. That said, if you’re new to the sport, don’t be surprised if your first dive burns fewer than 100 calories—and even more experienced divers won’t be as active on their first few dives as they will become over time.
Here are some general guidelines for how many calories you might burn during a typical dive:
- A 100-pound person could burn approximately 700 calories during one hour of scuba diving in warm water at a depth of 30 feet and no current.
- A 250-pound person may burn as much as 1,800 calories during one hour of scuba diving in warm water at a depth of 80 feet and no current.
The most caloric expenditure happens at depth and while exerting yourself against the resistance of currents
- The more strenuous the dive, the more calories you burn.
- The deeper you dive, the more calories you burn.
- The harder you work against the resistance of currents (like swimming against a strong current), the more calories you burn.
You can burn a lot of calories while scuba diving!
How many calories you burn will depend on a few factors:
- The more active you are, the more calories you’ll burn.
- The heavier your gear is, the more calories you’ll burn. For example, if one diver has an 80-pound tank on his back and another has an 80-pound tank on her back, the woman will use almost twice as much energy to carry around that same weight of equipment.
- The longer you spend in the water (and this could include any part of your dive), the more calories you’ll burn.
Conclusion: How many calories can be burned by scuba diving?
Diving is a great way to stay active and burn calories!