Most people wouldn’t tend to think of skydiving as a form of exercise.
It’s more of a thrill ride, something you do for fun as a hobby, and not with any ulterior motive in mind.
But many are coming to ask more and more if skydiving can in fact burn calories—so can it?
Yes, skydiving can indeed burn calories. For a 150-pound person, skydiving can burn as much as 230 calories per hour. It can also strengthen arms and core muscles, especially when done with steering parachutes. So, yes, skydiving does burn calories.
While it may not necessarily be the easiest or most convenient form of exercise, the fact is that even a small amount of skydiving can be beneficial for your health.
There are, also, weight limits on skydiving in the first place, which many would suggest motivates people to get to the correct weight needed.
Let’s look further into this.
Does skydiving make you lose weight?
Over a long period of time, it can certainly contribute to weight loss.
The actual act itself, as we’ve said, does burn calories.
The burn rate is given in hours, though, and most people do not do skydiving for hours on end.
An individual skydive will burn much fewer calories than 230, so you can see that it is certainly not the fastest weight loss method out there.
But professional skydivers certainly can lose a lot of weight through their skydiving, in conjunction with other exercises.
Anything that burns calories will be of help in losing weight, but you’ve got to be realistic about the rate at which you can lose weight with skydiving.
Skydiving alone, as an occasional hobby, will not help you lose weight terribly fast.
Again, it can be a big help in conjunction with other exercises, but the bulk of the work will be done elsewhere.
You won’t lose weight from skydiving alone.
You’ll put it back on at a faster rate than you lose it if you don’t eat carefully.
But all this said, is skydiving good exercise?
Is skydiving good exercise?
Yes, skydiving is definitely good exercise.
It not only burns the calories, as we’ve said, but it also helps to work the core and arm muscles if you are steering your parachute.
Steering the parachute is hard work and tricky to get the hang of.
Doing it even a moderate amount over a period of time can really increase strength and definition in the arms and core.
It can also massively improve your sense of balance.
This is due to a combination of factors.
But good exercise should always have an impact on your balance.
So, this is another reason skydiving is good exercise.
As I said, though, it’s not something that most of us can do with much regularity.
It’s a once-in-a-while experience and not something that even professional skydivers do every day.
So, it’s not a particularly good form of exercise from that point of view—you just can’t do it regularly enough.
Or, at least, compared with other kinds of exercise, it is less convenient.
So, what actually happens to your body when skydiving?
What happens to your body when skydiving?
There are a few important things that are going on when you skydive that lead to calories being burned.
It is mostly about how your body reacts to the thrill.
One thing it does is release adrenaline.
This adrenaline has massive physical effects on the body, and the release of it requires calories to be burned.
Your heart rate will increase, and this will lead to increased blood flow.
Your pupils will dilate, and your airways will relax.
Your breathing will be a lot shallower.
All of this requires calories to achieve, so it’s almost just your body’s reaction to the shock that causes the calories to be burned.
This leads us to the question of why skydiving tires us out.
Why do you get tired after skydiving?
The simple answer is that, despite the fact it may not feel like you’re doing anything, skydiving uses a lot of your body’s energy.
As I said, you need to generate adrenaline to deal with the thrill, and this requires calories.
If you’ve ever experienced an adrenaline rush before, you will know it is usually followed by intense fatigue.
Your body gets tired because it has to do a lot of things that you don’t even notice to be able to deal with the experience.
What muscles does skydiving use?
It really uses virtually all of your muscles.
Your entire body will be engaged, though particularly your core.
Even if you are just in tandem, you’ll still be using your core and your legs to a degree.
When you are using a steerable parachute, your arms and your core will be even more intensely worked.
Pulling the steering chords can be difficult and definitely requires a good deal of strength.
But your entire body will be active in any skydive, to varying degrees.
Skydiving definitely does burn calories—there is no two-ways about that.
At the same time, though, it is quite difficult to get enough in to make a real noticeable difference to your weight.
You would have to do it at affectively a professional frequency for it to be an effective form of weight loss.
That said, any kind of exercise is good exercise, and skydiving is certainly that!
