Skip the gym and play some Games for a day

Over at Betway, they took at look at seven popular video games to see if it’s possible to burn as many calories during a gameplay session as it would be if you were to hit the gym. As you might have guessed, most people don’t think gamers hitting the gym is a thing, so the argument here is to see if you can reach elevated cardio fitness levels while gaming.

According to the report, they measured a lot of games that are pretty popular for online multiplayer and due to the competitive nature of these games, they were able to track a notable amount of calories burned while you play this games.

Surprisingly absent from this list are any games that are actually deemed as fitness games, such as VR favorites Beat Saber or Synth Riders, but instead they’ve chosen games like Fortnite and Call of Duty. Betway asked 17 different gamers to play seven of the most popular games for 90 minute play sessions and measured their caloric burn. It turns out you can actually burn up to an average of 538 calories per 90 minute block of gaming.

Fortnite topped the list, with people burning around 194 calories, followed by FIFA at 189, and Call of Duty slightly behind that at 188. Grand Theft Auto V came in last at 164, but that’s still decently comparable to a light workout or doing something lightly physical in your yard.

Which of these games got the heart racing the most? Turns out Call of Duty pulled the highest BPMs as Warzone matches set average heart rates at 119 BPM, while Fortnite lags behind at 89 BPM. Unsurprisingly, Minecraft was the most relaxing of these games, probably because unless you’re playing one of the custom modes, there’s not a lot of high intensity in Minecraft.

Can you believe that you’d need to do 353 squats to burn the same amount of calories as you’d burn playing Fortnite for 90 minutes? That sounds like a lot, but if you’ve ever actually done squats, you’d know you can bang out 353 squats in considerably less than 90 minutes, even if you’re the most out of shape fat globuloid on the planet. While you couldn’t necessarily skip the gym seven days a week in favor of gaming for fitness, you could utilize this information to get a small sweat in on a rest day or in a pinch if you’ve had a busy day and simply need to unwind and don’t feel like busting your ass.

If you’d like to learn more, you can head over to Betway to take a look at their full report.