STEM Ecosystems Webinar: Calculating Calories and Heart Rate

The Webinar:

On Thursday April 23rd, STEM Sports® was part of STEM Ecosystem’s webinar series that introduces ways to implement STEM from home. STEM Sports®’ Director of Curriculum and Strategy Sean Barton and Curriculum Writer Rachel Kissner led the webinar and introduced a STEM Sports® lesson called Counting Calories and Heart rate and we used our fun Playing Card Fitness program. 

During this difficult and unprecedented time, many people’s lives seem to be at a standstill and most of the day is spent at home. This has changed children’s academics along with everyone’s ability to maintain an active and healthy lifestyle. Playing Card Fitness addresses both of these issues. This easy to implement concept allows the whole family to get their body moving together – all you need is a deck of cards!

During Playing Card Fitness, parents have the opportunity to give their child a lesson on heart rate, caloric burn and calorie intake. This brief STEM lesson will be beneficial to students understanding their body during and after a workout while also getting them off the couch and away from their electronics! 

At STEM Sports®, we believe that keeping children physically active is essential to their success academically. That is why we have combined the two for the perfect family-friendly quarantine exercise program. 

I tried STEM Sports®: Playing Card Fitness

In order to get a better grasp on both the physical and educational side of Playing Card Fitness, I attempted it with my boyfriend Anthony. Prior to beginning Playing Card Fitness, we both checked our resting heart rate which is calculated by seeing how many beats we had in a 30 second period and multiplying that by 2. We then calculated what our maximum heart rate would be: 220 minus our age. 

	Person 1	Person 2
Playing Card Fitness	Lauren	Anthony
Resting heart rate (measured)	57 bpm	67 bpm
Maximum heart rate(calculated)	198 bpm	198 bpm

Playing card fitness consists of push-ups, sit-ups, jumping jacks and squats. These exercises all fall into a MET rate of 8. Comparatively, this is on the higher side, which meant that we were going to burn a decent amount of calories during our workout! 

We filled out a table using the equation “Weight (lbs) ÷ 2 x MET x time spent working out in hours” to estimate our caloric burn:

Lauren: 

	10 minutes (⅙ of an hour)	30 minutes (½ of an hour)	60 minutes(1 hour)	90 minutes (1 and ½ hours)
Calories burned using MET 8.0 (Playing Card Fitness)	64 calories	200 calories	400 calories	600 calories
Calories burned using MET 1.5 (Sitting)	7.2 calories	22.5 calories	45 calories	67.5 calories

Anthony:

	10 minutes (⅙ of an hour)	30 minutes (½ of an hour)	60 minutes(1 hour)	90 minutes (1 and ½ hours)
Calories burned using MET 8.0 (Playing Card Fitness)	112 calories	350 calories	700 calories	1050 calories
Calories burned using MET 1.5 (Sitting)	7.2 calories	22.5 calories	45 calories	67.5 calories

We did the workout for 30 minutes and really enjoyed the fun aspect of the card deciding what workout you will do next! It was surprisingly tiring and made us feel like we had done something productive with our quarantine day. If you want to try this workout too, go to this link.  

Keep reading our weekly blog to continue learning more about STEM, our offerings and for future reviews of my personal experience with the curricula and at-home workouts!