If You Don’t Sweat During Exercise, Is It A Waste Of Time?
Posted: Friday, March 10, 2006
by Jim ONeill
http://mrgymhealth.com
You always hear the old adage, “lets go exercise and work up a good sweat" like sweating is a sign that you’ve had a good, productive workout. But what if you exercise and you don’t really sweat during the workout? Was that workout a lost cause? Does it mean you just didn’t exercise long or hard enough for it to be a productive workout?
Your body is like an engine that never stops running and like all engines, it produces heat. The more your muscles contract, the more heat is produced. If the body didn’t have ways of keeping you cool, you would overheat and collapse within 20 minutes.
The first method is radiation where heat radiates out of the skin if the air around you is cooler than your body. The second method is conduction which is the transfer of heat by direct contact such as swimming in a pool of cold water where the water absorbs your body heat. The third method is convection where moving air cools us down like when you stand in front of a fan or when the wind blows. The last method is evaporation where water from our blood absorbs the heat and rises to the surface of the skin through the sweat glands so it can evaporate creating a cooling effect.
In colder conditions, you will not need to sweat as much due to the body using radiation to keep cool. In hotter conditions, sweating is the primary method of keeping cool due to the air being hotter than your body but if there is humidity present, sweat cannot evaporate as well and that’s why you will see sweat dripping off you. Since in these conditions sweat doesn’t evaporate, radiation and convection (remember the moving air?) are used by your body to keep cool.
Everyone has a different sweating pattern. Gender, age, fitness level and environment contribute to how much you sweat. Women seem to sweat less and start to sweat at higher temperatures than men. People tend to sweat less as they grow old and thus cannot take the heat as well as a younger person but declining fitness levels may have something to do with that. In laboratory experiments where both young and old people were of similar fitness levels, there was no notable difference in their sweating process.
If you exercise in an air-conditioned room or outside when it’s a cooler time of year, you will not sweat as much because the cold air evaporates your sweat faster and also sets your body up to use more of the radiation method meaning your body can deal with the heat created by exercise more easily. It does not mean you are not burning as many calories because the intensity and length of time of your exercise is what determines caloric burn, not how much you sweat. You are sweating all the time but you just can’t see it because it is always evaporating.
If it were true that the more you sweat, the more calories you burn during exercise then it would also be true that you would be burning more calories simply sitting in a hot, humid room so as to build up a sweat but this is obviously not the case as the sweat you would be seeing is due only to the conditions of the room not allowing for evaporation for cooling the body.
Exercise produces heat, heat produces calorie expenditure, and you produce the same amount of heat whether exercising in a cold environment or a hot one so just because you don’t sweat as much in the colder environment does not mean your exercise session was less productive.
Jim O'Neill is a certified personal fitness trainer and also holds a sports nutrition certification. He has been helping people successfully achieve their weight loss and fitness goals for over 15 years by staying on the cutting edge of weight loss and fitness technology. To learn more about how you can benefit from his easy to use weight loss and fitness programs go to: http://www.mrgymfitness.com/minicourse.php
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More commentsYou are an idiot. i cannot believe you are a fitness trainer and have a nutrition certification. simply because of this comment: "If it were true that the more you sweat, the more calories you burn during exercise then it would also be true that you would be burning more calories simply sitting in a hot, humid room so as to build up a sweat but this is obviously not the case as the sweat you would be seeing is due only to the conditions of the room not allowing for evaporation for cooling the body.Exercise produces heat, heat produces calorie expenditure, and you produce the same amount of heat whether exercising in a cold environment or a hot one so just because you don’t sweat as much in the colder environment does not mean your exercise session was less productive."FALSE. you DO burn more calories when you workout in hotter or cold situations. You burn more calories even if you do NOTHING in these conditions because your body has to work that much harder to maintain a core temp in the safe range - around 98.6 degrees F. If you were to sit out in 0 degree weather all day, you can burn up to as much as 3 times more calories than if you sat inside at 70 degrees. Please get your facts straight before writing articles that are meant to inform others.
yes it was and thanks a lot for clearing up with somuch logic it was easy to understand and it makes me feel good now, i like your explanation about if thats what it was that one can lose more weight by sweating then they can simply sit in hot which we know no one loses weight by sitting so thanks for your good explanationtweety :-)
This was very helpful. I went walking today and didnt think i did enough because i didnt sweat as much but it was cooler today. So i thought ill google this question when i got home and i got a good answer. THANKS
Jim,
You didnt quite answer my question. I am a 22 year old female, when I exercise I do not sweat, but my face turns red. For example I played basketball last night for 45mins, the other girls were drentched in sweat. I was perfectly dry but my face was beat red. Why is that?
thanks...this was extremely helpful!!
Great article. My only question is, if sitting and sweating in a hot, humid room does nothing regarding burning calories, what do you make of the information regarding saunas and their tremendous calorie burning effect? :)
This is a great article although I do agree with Paul from Ohio (although he's kind of rude) that you do burn more calories working out in extreme conditions...either hot or cold..if it's cold outside your body is fighting to stay warm, thus burning more calories...in the same regard if it's hot outside your body is fighting to keep cool. I certainly notice a difference on the HR mon. doing roughly the same workout in different weather conditions.
Also..as far as saunas go I don't think they really burn calories. Your body will burn calories just sitting around doing absolutely nothing, this is true regardless of where you are. The body burns calories just living, breathing, etc... in a sauna you sweat...the weight loss is water weight and not "productive" weight less. People are always looking for an "easier" way to lose weight...if weight loss was easy then everyone would be skinny. If it's not difficult then it's probably not worth your time.
Its very useful.. Clarify my doubts..
So, if this is the case, why on earth do I not sweat when riding hard out dressage horse riding in the middle of a hot humid afternoon in summer? All that happens is I swell, bloat and become bright red and have fingers toes and legs and arms like tight sausages, with very little water loss or even sweat on my skin (I get a bit 'sticky). As soon as I stick my arms under cold water, the swelling goes down, so what the heck is happening. I'm mid-40's, not olympic fit but not unfit. But I hate exercising because all I do is go bright red and get really really hot but not 'sweating' .... it's uncomfortable and horrible.
Really nice article to read, It's quite helpful to clarify the doubts...
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