Calories Burned Dancing Calculator

This calculator calculates the calories burned doing many different types of dancing. The average person will burn 300-800 calories dancing depending on what type of dancing they do and how much effort they use.

How to Use Dancing Calculator

To use this calculator all you have to do is put in your weight, and the time spent doing the activity, after that you will find the specific exercise that you spend time doing. Here are the step-by-step instructions.

Choose your unit of measurement – metric (kilograms) or imperial (pounds)
Enter your weight
Select the specific dancing activity, add the number of minutes you spent rowing
Hit Calculate

You should now see approximately how many calories were burned while dancing.

How The Calculator Works

This calculator uses something called the MET formula, which uses what is called MET (metabolic equivalent) values. This formula calculates the approximate calories burned for various physical activities. How many calories you burn will vary because of things like muscle mass, age, sex, or other external factors affecting calorie expenditure.

MET

Met values are values that rate the calories burned doing various activities, and are used in the MET formula.

A MET is the ratio between your resting metabolic rate relative to your active metabolic rate. Your resting metabolic rate (RMR) is the same thing as your basal metabolic rate (BMR), they both measure the energy expended at rest, when your body is not actively digesting. Your active metabolic rate is the energy expended on a daily basis, including your resting metabolic rate.

Activities rated with MET values are typically called tasks, and the higher the MET of a task, the more calories are burned.

A task with a MET of 1 burns as many calories as your resting metabolic rate. A task with a MET of 5 burns 5 times as many calories as a task with a MET of 1, or expends 5 times as much energy as your resting metabolic rate.

Your body uses 3.5 ml of oxygen per minute per kilogram of body weight. This number is used in the MET formula. The amount of oxygen your muscles use can be calculated by yourself by multiplying 3.5 ml by your bodyweight in kilograms.

Formula

Total Calories burned in 1 minute = (3.5 x MET x body weight in kg)/200

Examples

A person weighing 150 pounds will burn 558 calories doing general dancing per hour.

Calories burned (per minute) = (body weight in kg x MET x 3.5) / 200

The formula to calculate the calories a 150-pound person will burn per hour doing general dancing will look like this –

(68.0389kg x 7.8 x 3.5) / 200 = 9.28730985 Calories burned per minute of general dancing

In order to calculate the number of calories that were burned in one hour of dancing, you must multiply the number of calories burned per minute by 60 minutes.

Calories per hour burned = 9.28730985 x 60

So, 558 calories per hour will be burned per hour of dancing.

Results

A 150-pound person will burn 558 calories per hour of doing general dancing. A 150-pound person will also burn 9.3 calories per minute doing general dancing.

What is Dancing?

Dance is a performing art such as drama and music that consists of movements in a sequence to convey elegance or to have aesthetic or symbolic value.

There are several types of dancing, ranging from different cultures and from different historical periods. There are also different types of genres of dancing, such as ballroom, martial, or hip-hop.

Dancing is used in various other performing arts, such as plays that use dancing and musical numbers, which are called musicals, and cheerleading, or martial arts.

Dancing is generally a performance done to music that is practiced by one or many people. A dance routine that is practiced and remembered in a certain way is called a choreographed dance.

Some dance types such as tap dancing and ballroom dancing use music as a compliment instead of as a product of the sound because the dancing is meant to be shared with others, by dancing with partners and performing with them or for them.

Some dance styles like pole dancing and belly dancing are done recreationally to display a romantic gesture, or just as a fun physical activity many men and women take classes to do. This style of dance is also very physically demanding and takes a high level of fitness to be good at.

Does Dancing Burn a Lot of Calories?

Dancing is an excellent way to burn calories. Dancing uses all the muscles in the body and takes a lot of movement with the lower body and hands to do the movements.

Dancing can raise the heart rate and be high intensity and challenging. Dancing can also be slow-paced such as slow dancing and ballroom dancing is.

Slow-paced dancing will take more focus but is less challenging physically and more difficult to do things like balance and develop your own style of dance.

What Type of Dancing Burns the Most Calories?

The style of dancing depicts the calories that you burn while dancing. The styles of dancing that will burn the most calories are hip hop dancing, Samba, Salsa, and Swing.

Hip-hop dancing is very high energy and uses all kinds of flexibility, muscles, and especially strong legs, arms, and core to do hip-hop dances. Especially for hip-hop dances like break dancing.

Hip-hop dancing requires increased flexibility and great physical fitness to do. The entire body is used in hip hop dancing, unlike other types of dancing like tap dancing where only the feet are used to create the rhythm and do the dancing.

The fast-paced nature of hip-hop dancing can burn 200+ calories in as little as just half an hour. If you want to burn extra calories with hip-hop dancing, you can learn extra moves in your free time and use your free time to improve your dancing and burn calories.

Dancing styles such as ballet and swing also burn many calories. Ballet is a difficult dance to get into and uses extremely strong feet and resilience to get good at it. Ballet training is very intensive and is high impact.

You will focus on great form more than anything with ballet dancing, and it requires a large space to practice, just like hip-hop, Salsa dancing, and Swing.

Calories Burned Dancing

Type of Activity	MET	Calories Burned
Ballroom, slow	3	215
Caribbean dance	3.5	251
Ethnic or cultural dancing	4.5	322
Tap	4.8	344
Ballet, modern, or jazz, general, rehearsal or class	5	358
Aerobic, low impact	5	358
Aerobic, step, with 4-inch step	5.5	394
Ballroom, fast	5.5	394
Anishinaabe Jingle Dancing	5.5	394
Ballet, modern, or jazz, performance, vigorous effort	6.8	487
Aerobic, general	7.3	523
Aerobic, high impact	7.3	523
Aerobic, step, with 6 – 8 inch step	7.5	537
General dancing	7.8	558
Bench step class, general	8.5	609
Aerobic, step, with 10 – 12 inch step	9.5	680
Aerobic dance wearing 10-15 lb weights	10	716
Ballroom dancing, competitive, general	11.3	809

How to Increase the Calorie Burn While Dancing

Dancing should be a fun exercise and physical activity that you really enjoy. If you enjoy dancing, you will be less reluctant to practice and improve on a regular basis.

You can increase the calories burned while dancing can be increased by dancing more intensely, or for longer.

If you make dancing a full body workout then you will burn more calories and gain strength to improve your dancing ability. The better you get at dancing, the more calories you will burn in turn.

To do this you must increase the time you spend dancing, which can mean increasing the times per week you go to dance classes, staying for longer, or practicing at home.

More Calorie Calculators

Try out our other calorie-based calculators below.

Conclusion

The average person will burn 300-800 calories dancing depending on what type of dancing they do and how much effort is put in. There are several types of dancing you can do, and they all can contribute to your weight loss if you are consistent with your dancing and your diet.

If you want to get the most out of your weight loss journey, tracking the calories you consume and the calories you burn will help you lose weight faster and healthier.

You can use this calculator to keep track of the calories that you burn and be more accountable for the methods you use to lose weight. Whether you dance, run, or just lift weights, tracking the calories you consume and burn will help you out more than the workout itself, if weight loss and better health are the goals.

References:

What is dancing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dance
What are performing arts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Performing_arts
Can you lose weight with dancing: https://www.healthline.com/health/dancing-to-lose-weight
Jetté, M.; Sidney, K.; Blümchen, G. (1990-08). Metabolic equivalents (METS) in exercise testing, exercise prescription, and evaluation of functional capacity. Clinical Cardiology. 13 (8): 555–565. doi:10.1002/clc.4960130809.
Ainsworth BE, Haskell WL, Herrmann SD, Meckes N, Bassett Jr DR, Tudor-Locke C, Greer JL, Vezina J, Whitt-Glover MC, Leon AS. The Compendium of Physical Activities Tracking Guide. Healthy Lifestyles Research Center, College of Nursing & Health Innovation, Arizona State University.
Recommendations on physical activity for health from the Harvard School of Public Health and WHO global recommendations on physical activity for health (updated): https://www.who.int