Calories Burned Doing Core Exercises for 10 Minutes

While the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that adults get at least 150 minutes of cardio exercise each week plus two strength-training workouts, not everyone has even 30 minutes a day to work out. You can choose, therefore, to break up your core workout into smaller 10-minute training sessions to burn calories and get fit. The number of calories you burn working your core depends on how much you weigh and how hard your body is working.

There are two types of stomach fat: subcutaneous, or surface, and visceral, or deep. Subcutaneous fat is difficult to budge through diet and exercise, but it doesn't pose as much of a threat to your health as visceral fat, according to Harvard Health Publications. Excess visceral fat increases your risk for metabolic disturbances, cardiovascular disease, Type 2 diabetes and, for women, breast cancer and gallbladder problems. Factors such as genetics, hormone levels and age can make the problem worse, necessitating the need to efficiently and regularly work out your core.

Strength training uses the body's resistance, weights or exercise bands to strengthen and tone muscles. A 168-pound woman, for example, would burn 57 calories doing situps or crunches at a moderate level of intensity for 10 minutes, according to the website HealthStatus, while increasing the intensity level to vigorous almost doubles your calories burned to 102. Working your core with bands or weights burns 44 calories per 10-minute interval, when done at a moderate level of intensity, compare to 77 calories if your workouts are vigorous. Rowing at a moderate intensity burns 89 calories every 10 minutes, compared to 111 calories at a vigorous level of intensity.

Most aerobic exercises engage your core muscles; the number of calories you burn depends on how hard you work. Cycling at a leisurely pace for 10 minutes, for example, burns 50 calories in a 10-minute period, cycling at a rate of 12 to 14 miles per hour burns 111 calories and cycling at a rate of 14 to 15 miles per hour burns 134 calories within the same time frame. Other aerobic exercises that work your core include canoeing, which burns between 57 to 118 calories; calisthenics, which burns 57 to 102 calories; swimming, which burns 77 to 124 calories and aerobics, which burns between 77 to 89 calories per 10-minute period, for a 168-pound woman.

While it's more efficient to work out vigorously, not everyone can sustain this high level of intensity for 10 consecutive minutes. Alternate short bursts of intense activity with longer periods of moderate intensity to burn more calories and improve your overall level of fitness, according to MayoClinic.com. You don't need any special equipment to incorporate intervals into your training, and many people find that intervals keep their workouts interesting. A recommended starter regimen is to increase your intensity after your warm-up for about 30 seconds followed by a return to normal pace for the next two to three minutes. Over time, pick up the pace and increase the duration of your vigorous intervals.