You don’t strength train to burn calories. 

You do burn a few calories to strength train. But it’s not primary metric to measure progress or value for what is being achieved. 

But measuring calories burnt while strength training is akin to enjoying silence in a library. You primarily went there to read a book, not for silence. 

Here are ten more useful things than burning calories that you do in a gym :
1. Make your heart more efficient
2. increase your muscle mass
3. Increase the amount of force a muscle can produce 
4. Improve the resilience of all the connective tissue : tendons, ligaments, cartilage. All of it benefits. 
5. Improve your bone density. 
6. Practice a very specific pattern to get better at it in a very controlled setting. Jumping, punching, rotating. All benefit from deliberate practice in a gym. 
7. Improve your brains capacity to communicate with your body to produce movement. 
8. Makes you more physically resilient. 
9. Daily tasks get a lot easier. A 3 kg bag of groceries is a lot lighter when you can carry 25-30 kgs in each arm. 
10. Fosters a lot more confidence and physical independence. 


There’s more. Better body composition, better general health, slower cognitive decline. Things that saying 200 calories burnt in 40 minutes cannot begin to capture.