How Many Calories Can I Burn Playing Foosball?
Doing anything besides sitting sedately on your couch burns calories in some way, so wondering how many calories your favorite hobby burns is a common thought to have for many people.
Unfortunately, when it comes for foosball, not a whole ton of research has been done in this regard, so all we have to go on is our best guesses.
What is MET?
When it comes to calculating calories burned for any activity, you need to fall back on finding the MET value of that activity, or the Metabolic Equivalent of Task, which compares that activity to the baseline of 1.0 (sitting on a couch doing nothing).
Many games and sports have had research done on these exact values before, so that information is freely available. For example, table tennis is a sport with an MET value of 4; respectable but not extremely strenuous.
However, that information is largely unknown for foosball, with estimates ranging from the same, to a bit more, to a bit less than that figure available for table tennis.
However, going by those estimates we can make a bit of a range of possibilities.
How much Calories can you burn in foosball?
One of the facts about foosball likely has an MET value of somewhere between 2.5 and 4.0, which we can use to figure out how many calories you’re likely to burn while playing for an hour.
Remember, the calories burned here are relative to your own weight, but for the average person (180 lbs., roughly) that would put the calories burned per hour would be somewhere between 214 and 343 calories.
If you ant to do the math for yourself, the formula is fairly simple, though requires a bit of conversion. You need to find your weight in kilograms, first off.
From there, the formula of the MET value times that body weight (in kg) times 3.5, all divided by 200 give you the calories burned per minute. Then just multiply that per 60, and you’re good to go!
Is the Game worth it?
So, we’ve learned that the calories burned playing foosball are nebulous and a bit personalized, but does that make it a waste of time?
Well, no. Any workout activity, no matter the MET value, is better than just sitting around. So while foosball certainly is not a replacement for exercise (doing some comparisons, we can safely assume it doesn’t consume more than that MET value of 4), it makes a great supplement to it.
This is part of the reason why foosball is such a great bar and dorm game. Instead of sitting around drinking or watching tv, or even playing videogames (which actually consumes a few, though not many, calories on its own), you can play foosball instead.
You can even do so while doing all of those things, helping to burn off the calories that beer you drank added to your running daily tally, or even keep up with your favorite shows at the same time as you play.
Obviously, you won’t be at your best multitasking like that (and you’re probably going to slip closer to that 2.5 MET value than the 4.0 one), but you can do it, and it makes a great way to burn a few extra calories while not devoting your full attention to a workout.
Conclusion
There are just simple rules in foosball and there is no shortage of FUN you can get out from it.
Adding an hour of foosball or a similar game to your daily routine is quite nice, and you can actually string together quite a few such activities throughout your day to help make up the difference.
Of course, the more vigorously and the more time you play, the more calories you’ll burn as well. If you play two hours a day, you’ll burn double the calories. And putting your all into it pumps that up even further.
This extra bit of calorie burning per day adds up over time. It might take a really long time to start losing weight just from playing foosball, but if you keep at it every day you can slowly start working off those extra snacks and the hours you might spend sedate at a desk job of some sort.
In short, the calories burned playing foosball aren’t negligible, but honestly knowing how many calories you’re burning while playing it isn’t actually very important. What matters is that it burns a not insignificant amount, and you can use that your advantage no matter what the actual number is.
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