Doing jumping jacks is a popular aerobic exercise, practised in many fitness-related settings, such as martial arts, military training, and personal cardio workouts. Star jumps are highly effective at raising your heart rate, because they require movement in both your upper and lower body. A proper jumping jack involves the full range of motion, with your arms extended all the way above your head, and your feet shoulder width apart. The exercise can be performed at variable speeds, depending on fitness levels and coordination.
There are some variations to the traditional jumping jack. One basic alteration is to land with your legs crossed in different directions upon landing. This will increase your spatial awareness and dexterity. Jumping jacks can also be performed as a subset of a larger group of exercises. You can combine them with squats, lunges and push ups for an effective and rigorous total-body workout.
So how many calories do you burn by doing jumping jacks? If you weigh 150 pounds, you will burn approximately 530-560 kcal/hour. If you weigh 200 pounds, your burn rate will average around 750-780 calories per hour.
If you are interested in how many calories you burn per jumping jack, rather than per unit of time, we can estimate as follows: One complete star jump, i.e. starting and ending in a resting position, should take you about 0.7 seconds to complete. This is considered to be an effective and sustainable pace for fat loss purposes. Using the values above, this means that each jumping jack burns around 0.11 calories if you weigh 150 pounds, and 0.15 kcal if you weight 200 pounds.
We can then use this as a basis for working out the calories burnt for different numbers of jumping jacks:
How many calories you burn doing 10 jumping jacks will be around 1.1 kcal and 1.5 kcal if you weigh 150 or 200 pounds, respectively.
How many calories you burn doing 50 jumping jacks will be around 5.5 kcal and 7.5 kcal if you weigh 150 or 200 pounds, respectively.
How many calories you burn doing 100 jumping jacks will be around 10 kcal and 15 kcal if you weigh 150 or 200 pounds, respectively.
Finally, how many calories you burn doing 200 jumping jacks will be around 20 kcal and 30 kcal if you weigh 150 or 200 pounds, respectively.
