After attending a few Spinning classes, and I wanted to look up the number of Calories I burned while Spinning.

There are plenty of “Spinning Calculators” out there, but here’s the problem – depending on which site I look at, I’m told that I burned anywhere from 600 to 1200 calories in a single spinning class.

Wow, that’s a pretty big difference!

I don’t think that many of these sites know what they’re doing – they’re pretty much just making things up.

So I did a little research to find out exactly how many calories are burned.

Unfortunately, the people at spinning.com don’t have a calculator on their website. They do, however, have an informational PDF file that shares the results of some scientific research.

Their conclusion is: “Caloric expenditure varied from 7.2 to 13.6 kcal per minute and averaged 475 kcal per 40-minute class.”

In that file, they have a chart that shows the actual results from six test subjects.  The results look like this:

Calories Burned Spinning: Actual Research Results


Weight Time HR Max Calories Burned Calories
per Minute
230 45 153 496 11.02
204 45 171 617 13.71
135 45 186 467 10.38
128 45 186 543 12.07
118 45 161 360 8.00
117 45 182 369 8.20

So what can we make of all of this? I would say that, generally speaking, you should figure about 11 Calories burned per minute of Spinning. If you’re a light Spinner, do a little less. A vigorous Spinner, a little more.

Of course, you get more out of Spinning if you work hard. So adjust your number as you see fit.