Calories Burned From Lacrosse

You’ve got to possess both anaerobic and aerobic fitness in order to excel at lacrosse. The intense sport requires you to consistently be moving, whether you’re jogging, sprinting, cutting, passing, checking your defender or shooting. Because of its intensity, lacrosse has the potential for burning a relatively high number of calories. However, how many you’ll actually burn will depend on a few factors.

  1. Competing at Lacrosse

    • A lacrosse match is split up into 15-minute quarters, which means competition lasts a total of 60-minutes. Although you’re not maintaining a constant jog for 60-minutes, as Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist Dr. Peter Koeniges points out, players are often required to sprint distances of 20 to 50-yards and in between those times they’re hustling to their defensive or offensive position. A lacrosse field is 110-yards long and 60-yards wide, so maneuvering around the field constantly is challenging. This type of physical demand is similar to circuit training workouts, which shuffle between low and high intensity exercise bouts, and as a result, the activity will cause you to burn a high number of calories.

    Calories Burned

    • The number of calories you’ll burn during lacrosse partly depends on how much you currently weigh. A person who is heavier requires more energy to sprint 50-yards than someone lighter and therefore will burn more calories. According to Health Status, a person weighing 150-pounds will burn about 576 calories during 60-minutes of lacrosse. A person who weights 200-pounds will chalk up about 768 calories in a 60-minute lacrosse competition.

    Other Factors

    • The calories burned estimations provided by Health Status don’t take into account fluctuations in intensity that occurs during a lacrosse match. You’ll likely be working significantly harder and thus burning more calories when you’re up against bigger and faster competition. In addition, you may not participate in a full match without periodically being subbed out. Periods of resting on the bench will obviously decrease the total number of calories you burn.

    After Lacrosse

    • Because of the high intensity of lacrosse, you’ll continue to burn calories even after you’re finished with practice or competition. According to Dr. Koeniges, interval workouts such as you undergo during lacrosse effectively increase EPOC, which stands for exercise post oxygen consumption. A greater EPOC means that after you’re finished with lacrosse, your body continues to burn calories as it works to recover from the activity. This will increase the number of overall calories you’ll burn.