- Okay Mark, so here's a question for you now.
What do you think the quickest way
for us to burn some calories is,
swimming or going for a run?
- That is a good question.
And I know a lot of other people
are wrestling with that question too.
- Yep.
Now I don't know about you, but I feel famished
when I get out of a proper swim session.
- Yeah, well I guess this is a pretty tricky one for us
given the nature of the two sports.
Swimming and running, particularly the swimming,
because it's fairly hard to give a black and white answer
from that one.
- Yeah you're right.
So armed with our heart rate monitors,
we've popped up here to the University of Bath,
and we're going to do a little bit of detailed analysis
and hopefully that will shed some light
onto this whole question.
(electronic whooshing)
- Now before we delve into the calories,
we probably should take a look quickly
at both the sports, swimming and running,
because both do have their differences,
positives and negatives.
- They do.
Now with running,
well you can do that pretty much anywhere.
All you need is a set of trainers and you're good to go.
Well, pretty much.
Swimming on the other hand, it's a little bit more tricky.
You need to get access to a pool, for a start.
And then once you get into the pool,
lane space availability is not always the easiest.
- Yeah, and with that in mind,
running is more or less free
once you've invested in the kit,
whereas swimming on the other hand
will continually keep costing you
as you have to pay for those facilities.
Unless, of course, you're lucky enough
to be able to go wild swimming
or maybe even have a swimming pool in your back garden.
- Yeah.
And then there's the whole social aspect.
And running is a pretty sociable sport
because you can do that whilst you are havin' a chat
with your fellow runners.
Whereas swimming, well,
you can do that before and after you've swum,
but once you're in the water
it's pretty difficult to have a chat.
- And not forgetting that running is more varied
with more options on run routes.
Whereas swimming, (sighs) you're just following
that black line in the bottom of the pool, aren't you?
(relaxing electronic music)
(water splashing)
- Now, we are starting to sound a little bit biased here,
but swimming does have its pluses as well.
Now, for a starter it is a non-weight bearing sport,
which means that really whatever your weight is,
you can get in the pool and start swimming
without very much stress at all on your bones and joints.
- And let's not forget, also, you can head to the pool
at any point in the year
and you I guess you know what to expect.
You won't be affected by the bad weather outside,
or perhaps the muddy trails.
- Good point.
And also let us not forget
that it is a upper body workout as well,
so we can make use of all those muscles
that running and cycling neglect.
So that's a pretty good positive, I'd say.
- Yeah.
So I think it's fair to say, they are both great sports,
both with their positives.
But what if you just want to lose some weight
and burn some calories?
Well, on average running is four times quicker
than swimming if you're competent at both,
meaning you'd obviously run much further than you'd swim
in a given period of time.
So it's important that we use time rather than distance
in our following experiments into calorie expenditure.
Also not forgetting that running is weight bearing,
and therefore the heavier you are,
the harder running can become.
Then finally, the intensity at which you exercise
will have the greatest impact.
But this goes for both sports.
So with all that in mind,
how on earth can we compare fairly?
- [Fraser] Well to do this we are going to be tracking
our energy expenditure through the unit of calories.
Now, this is actually the unit that you will see
on the back of your food packaging,
and it will often tell you how many calories
that are in that product, but shown as kilocalories.
And it's these kilocalories that you will find displayed
on your sports watches and fitness trackers.
- Yeah, but how we record calorie consumption or expenditure
in the pool is pretty difficult and somewhat limited,
because we can't just do a VO2 max test in the lab,
which is often regarded
as the most accurate way of recording this.
Instead, we have to go for the next best,
recording our heart rate, our speed, or our pace.
And to make things fair, we're also going to do the same
for the running too.
- Now, there are plenty of these smart devices out there
that can record our heart rate,
be that on dry land or in fact, in there in the pool.
But you just need to make sure that you've put
your right height and weight into there
so that it can start doing the appropriate calculation
for figuring out your calorie expenditure.
If you don't have a smart device
but want to estimate your calorie expenditure,
then you can use a calculator such as this.
Now Mark and I have input our details
and have a rough comparison for you here.
- [Mark] Now of course,
we did have to guesstimate a few things here
such as our equivalent pace or effort,
and of course it's limited by only having
a couple of swim paces to choose from.
Still though, we have selected paces
that were in zone one to two for both of us,
and it's given us a rough guide.
Fraser, in theory,
would burn 619 kilocalories for an hour's swim,
compared to 880 kilocalories for the same time running.
Where as I, in theory, would burn 623 kilocalories swimming
compared to 826 kilocalories running over the hour.
Both of us came up as burning more running than swimming.
Fraser, 261, myself, just 203.
- Now to back this up, we're going to do our own experiment
using the Polar Flow app and our own Advantage watches.
Now, these already have our height and our weight,
plus hopefully our fitness level recorded too,
so that means that it will be able to calculate
the calories that we are burning automatically.
- Yeah.
Now to get some fair results,
and within a realistic timeframe,
we're actually going to do both running and swimming
for just 10 minutes each.
And then obviously, multiply that by six
to get 60 minutes, or an hour.
We are also going to do it twice through for each discipline,
so two times running, two times swimming,
at two different paces.
As you can see, we're at the pool
so we're going to start with a swim.
First run, though, is in zone one so a nice, easy pace.
(relaxing music) (water splashing)
We're now time for our second swim.
This is going to hurt a bit more
as we'll be swimming at our zone four pace,
a threshold effort.
(relaxing music) (water splashing)
- [Fraser] Having a quick look at the calculations,
if we carried on swimming for an hour,
I would have burned about 703 calories
working in my zone one, and 910 calories in zone four,
whereas Mark, nice and easy swimming in zone one
burnt 715 calories,
and when he was working harder in zone four,
he burnt a bit more at 936.
So now it's time to head outside and go for a run!
(relaxing music)
- Right, so we're going to be following
the same pattern as before, 10 minutes in zone one
followed by 10 minutes in zone four.
And I reckon, Fraser,
we could probably do this first one together
given that it is going to be
at an easy and conversational pace.
- I would hope so, Mark.
Now I spy the start line over there
so I think we should get going.
(upbeat music)
Now for the tough one,
because we've got pace in zone four to hold, so here goes.
(upbeat music)
So now it's time to do some sums
and reveal our results.
In zone one whilst running, I burnt 732 calories.
When I was running in zone four,
that upped to 1022 calories.
And for Mark, in his zone one he burned 758 calories
and in his zone four, that moved up to 1095 calories.
So what we're seeing here is
over the course of our running zones
an increase of roughly 29 and 43 calories respectively,
whereas in our zone four effort,
then that moved up to 112 calorie difference
and 161 calorie difference respectively.
- All right, well our rather rough test there
has shown that running burns more calories than swimming,
which I'm not all that surprised by.
I was kind of expecting going into this.
But I was by how little it is between the two.
So I guess it does come down to whichever you prefer.
- Yeah it does, Mark.
And I guess you've got to remember
that swimming is a non-weight bearing sport
whereas running is weight bearing.
That can put a lot more stress through your skeleton
leading to more injury possibility,
so you got to be careful of that.
- Yeah, granted.
But then, running is just pretty easy to do.
You just do it from your door.
Not everyone has a swimming pool in their back garden, hey.
- (laughs) That's true.
But I, don't know about you, but I said earlier
that you feel famished
when you come out of a swim very often,
and I think that is something to be mindful
when we're talking about calories,
'cause it's very easy to think
that you have actually burnt more swimming
than you possibly have,
and therefore you can end up overeating
compared to the amount of exercise you've done swimming.
- Yeah, which I guess is an advantage to running,
'cause yeah, you're not feeling that hungry after
and you don't eat as much.
It brings us back to the calories in versus calories out,
making sure that you stay on top of that.
But ultimately, what I would say
is that even if you are looking to lose weight,
just enjoy sport, it is fantastic.
And actually, by enjoying it you could, well,
end up losing weight because you end up doing more sport.
So it's a really important thing to remember.
- Yeah, I think that is a really good way
to finish the video.
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- Yeah, and if you'd like to see a video
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