(UPDATE) Is yo-yoing good for cardio? Let’s do some testing!

General Yo-Yo
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You do you. I understand.

Do you see how you interpreting the intensity of a trick to another, is subjective? If you want an answer to your question, you can’t have subjectivity.

And if it’s up to your feelings, if YoYo is cardio, then you can answer your question right know.
Do you feel YoYo is cardio? But then it’s also pointless to continue to measure anything or putting it in a topic.

If you put your own judgement into the experiment, then it’s not reliable.

I give you a personal example:

I wanted to improve my XC-MTB-ing. I was far from a pro, so I conducted my own baseline measurement, to see, if my training improved my riding.

I went around a 1km long mixed track 10 times, with the maximum hardness I could hold over 10 Rounds. I averaged this out and repeated this baseline measurement/experiment every month for a year.

This way I did not need a reference to any other rider, than myself and I could do it with a simple stopwatch.

This gave me control in an objective graph, on how my times and therefore my performance changed over time.

I never changed the setting. Same track, 10 times, same gear, same method. This gave me reliable data on a simple question: “Am I improving?”.

That’s what you want for your question: “Is YoYo cardio”, or at least for the question “Is my fit-tracker actually able to measure energy expense”. At this moment in time, both are up for debate.

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I think I understand. It seems like our goals are different between our experiments. You wanted to see how your training improved your riding, and answer the question “Am I improving?” I want to know if the data I measured a couple days ago is accurate. I’m not interested in improving my training or tracking my progress, I simply want to burn calories. I guess my question I want answered is “Can I use my tracker to reliably measure calories burned while yoyoing?” I don’t think that repeating tests multiple times will help me answer that question, so I plan on practicing different tricks for my hour long sessions.

I disagree that interpreting the intensity of a trick to another is subjective. If I consistently practice the same trick repeatedly for the whole hour, the heartrate data will show me exactly how intense performing that trick is in objective terms. Assuming the data is accurate, my kamikaze 2 session was objectively less intense than my beefhook and slack bind session.

Now there are a couple factors that lead me to doubt the validity of the data I collected in the first and second session I recorded. Those factors are the amount of caffeine I consumed potentially increasing my heartrate and the tracker being on my wrist somehow factoring in steps in a weird way to fudge the numbers. Once I eliminate those factors and I am able to consistently obtain data from more intense yoyo sessions I will be able to make my verdict on whether or not yoyo is good for cardio.

Btw I appreciate everyone’s thoroughness and skepticism in regard to this topic. I will do my best to answer this question definitively as I definitely don’t want to cheat myself and artificially inflate my calorie expenditure, that is not my intention at all. I also understand that not everyone sees value in what I am doing now but I will push through regardless as I believe there is potential here.

Now today was supposed to be a rest day, but considering the lack of strain from yesterday’s session I will likely perform an hour practice session of kamikaze 2 with my tracker on my wrist to see if that impacts the data at all. My hypothesis is that the data will be the same, and if so then I will be able to move the tracker back to my wrist since it won’t impact the data collection.

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∆t the end of the day, you’re trying some new things to get the body moving and tracking it for fun, and I think that’s awesome.

Looks like we gøt a lot of “scientist” and “health experts” trying to rain on the parade and I feel these kind of replies are just people trying to flex and rain on your achievements.

The way I see it. This is something fun and interesting to try to track, and it’s getting yourself out to do something you normally wouldn’t do. And burning of calories of any kind is a good thing to keep yourself going.

Who cares if you’re not running miles or declaring the accuracy of all the intricate dynamics of true calorie burning, you do you, and I stand for that.

∆̸̯̪͓̺̟͐ ̴̝͖̑͒̅ͅ<̴̖̘̳̑̈́̏̋͜ ̵͙̠̖̌͝†̷̢͝ ̸̨̻͖̞̦͋͆̈́͛Ȋ̶͉̹͙͔̭̝͂̀̕͠ ̷̧̻̻̽͆͝ͅṾ̸̳̭̃ ̵̟̞̯̱̝͊I̷̗͔̫̣͖̋̾̑̋͐̎͜ ̶̛͕̝̻̺̦̯̄́†̵̜̰̮́̿͂̆̍ ̶̢̢͍̻̥͖͂́̎͐̆̕¥̴̹̌̌̒͆̕͝

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Alright! I’ve got some more data for you all. I’m pretty confident in the results here, and hopefully I do a good job explaining why.

So firstly, I recreated my 1 hour kamikaze 2 session from a couple days ago but this time I wore the tracker on my hand instead of my leg to see if it made any difference in the data.

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As you can see there was a small increase in the calories burned, but I attribute that to the fact that I became more proficient with the trick after 2 hours of practicing it, which allowed me to get more reps in than in my first session. Either way it’s a small increase from 108 to 164. My theory is that if the waving of my hand around somehow factored into the calories burned then it would be a much much higher number, but since it was not, I’m going to assume that the location of the tracker does not affect the calorie count.

I also emailed the company that owns my tracker asking them how they calculate the calories, and I received this response:

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TL;DR Whoop actually UNDERESTIMATES calories burned for light to moderate exercises compared to other trackers. So my calorie expenditure could potentially be higher than what is shown.

Anyways today I practiced this Eli hop combo for 1 hour straight:

I kept the tracker on my wrist and I had not recently consumed caffeine before this session. I also updated my body weight which I believe makes the calorie data more accurate, though I only went from 174 to 170lbs so I’m unsure how much that affects the BMR rate. Here is the HR and calorie data for this session.

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As you can see, I spent most of the session in heart rate zone 2 and a little in zone 3, which resulted in 603 calories burned. I’m pretty confident this is the correct amount. This session had me sweating and moving quite vigorously for nearly the full hour, and my arm is still a little sore even now as I type this out. If anyone here thinks that practicing this combo for an hour could not be considered cardio, then I challenge you to try performing that combo at the same speed I did for an hour and tell me how you feel afterwards.

Conclusion: Depending on the tricks you perform and the intensity of the session, yo-yoing can be an excellent way to burn calories. I draw this conclusion based on the evidence I have gathered so far. I welcome anyone with a fitness tracker to join in on this experiment and provide more data so we can further confirm or disprove this claim. And of course I will continue posting my workouts here. Cheers!

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Well I hate to admit it but I was very wrong. I did a lot more testing and found the issue with my tracker. I noticed the ridiculous calorie numbers only happened during an auto-detected activity, and found that when I measured my heart rate manually for those sessions they ended up being half what the tracker showed.

So for my first session and the 771 calorie session, my tracker was detecting my heart rate at 2x what it actually was, leading to the results we saw. My theory is that the tracker detects the crazy movement from my left hand and assumes my heart rate must be higher than it is detecting, leading it to count incorrectly. I’ve emailed the support for whoop and I told them about this glitch because it’s pretty damn inconvenient especially as someone trying to track fitness goals.

The only sessions that were correct were my kamikaze 2 sessions, and maaaaaaybe my Eli hop session though I am extremely skeptical of that as well. Perhaps I will do more testing with that routine

The saying goes “When something is too good to be true, it probably is” and that is extremely relevant here. I let my hunger cloud my judgement, and made a fool of myself. Thanks to everyone who was patient with me and helped me out here in this thread, and I’m sorry for being so argumentative.

Conclusion: Do not yoyo for cardio, it’s not very good. :pensive:

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Take it easy, Andrew. You are obviously a super fit guy and an exellent YoYo-player. And you got a result. Not a really reliable one, but something.

But to me it also looks, like you may have misinterpreted the message from WHOOP.

They say their device tracks calories burnt conservative, in comparison to other divices. So this tells you nothing, because you (we/no one) don’t have a detail overview of all the other divices on the market or the function of them.

Also the claimed method of calculating calories burnt on heartrate and strain on your body: What the hell is “strain”? And how can this be accuratly sensed by a wrist device?

In my eyes, this answer from WHOOP was pure marketing nonsense.
Maybe, it would be wise to only use it as a heartrate-monitor or route-tracker.

Anyways.

I still applaud your investigative spirit!

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Ngl I’m 90% sure that email was AI generated too haha.

I appreciate the kind words!

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i think this is the key takeaway. i know for me, i went from spending all my down time gaming and watching tv to standing and yoyoing for hours on end. is it going to replace going to the gym? no. is it burning calories i would not be burning if engaged in some other recreational/hobby activities? yes, 100%

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