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Your Pilates workout is a great way to improve general fitness, core strength and flexibility. Like any activity, it burns some calories. But simply burning calories doesn't mean that an exercise is cardiovascular or should be treated as such.
Studies show that, on average, participants in a 50-minute Pilates mat workout burn between 175 calories (beginners) and 250 calories (advanced). That's considerably fewer calories than traditional aerobic exercises. And it won't provide the same cardiovascular conditioning benefits as aerobics, because it doesn't elevate the heart rate to the same level. Aerobic exercise has heart-healthy effects because of the unique way it forces the cardiovascular system to provide extra oxygen and blood flow to the muscles. So, we encourage people NOT to replace traditional aerobic exercise (running, walking, biking, etc.) with other things that serve different purposes. Better to do both, if possible.
The cardio tracker can't accurately estimate calories burned for things like Pilates and weight training because it's almost impossible to estimate how many calories a given person would be burning due to the many individual variables involved. Since any stock formula is bound to be significantly off for the majority of people who use it, and since overestimating calories burned is just as unhelpful as underestimating calories eaten, we recommend that people just consider the calories burned by these kinds of activity as "extra" calories they are banking for those days when things don't quite go as planned.
If you would like to keep track of the days that you do Pilates, you can enter it manually into the "Quick Track" section of the fitness tracker (enter the number of minutes and the activity you did) OR add it to the Strength Training section of your Fitness Tracker as a "manually entered" exercise. Another option is to track it on the "Other Goals" section of the site.
To learn more about the benefits of Pilates and how to incorporate it into your fitness program, read A Skeptic's Guide to Pilates.
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