Cardio Vs Resistance Training - Who Wins?
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It is a long held belief in fitness that if you want to burn fat and lose weight, you should do long bouts of cardio exercise, if you want to gain muscle you should train with resistance. This is a very simplistic view and only tells half of the story.
First of all, to offer definitions -
Cardio Training: ‘Cardio’ is fitness slang for cardiovascular activity (also referred to as aerobic activity). It is any activity that increases heart rate and respiration while using large muscle groups repetitively and rhythmically. Examples include power walking, running and cycling.
Resistance Training: Also referred to as ‘strength training’, is a form of physical activity that is designed to improve muscular fitness by exercising a muscle or a muscle group against external resistance. The external resistance can be dumbbells, exercise tubing, your own body weight, bricks, bottles of water, or any other object.
Unless you are a professional athlete or compete in a particular sport to a high level, decades in the fitness industry has told me that when you ask us ‘mere mortals’ our fitness goals, most of us will say, ‘increase our fitness, tone up and lose some body fat’. These are good goals to have but they are very general. In just that small sentence we are already looking at 3 different elements of training: cardiovascular endurance, strength and fat burning. With these general goals it is important that we undertake different types of training as part of our regime and we don’t limit our exercise to just sitting on a bike churning out miles or doing bicep curls in the gym. When looking at which type of training is most effective, resistance or cardio, the answer is frustratingly, ‘it depends’. There are benefits to both but your goals will dictate which type of training you should be doing more of.
Below are 5 benefits of Cardio Training:
It improves your heart health and lung strength: Your body becomes better at taking oxygen in and, as your heart becomes stronger, it’s ability to pump more blood out each beat, improves. The muscles which need the oxygen therefore receive it faster.
It burns calories: Cardio training is great for burning calories and it can help you to lose weight depending on your calorie intake. To burn calories you don’t have to powerwalk for hours on a treadmill, you just need to raise your heart rate, so it could mean doing some hill runs or a HIIT session.
It can lower your blood pressure: As your heart becomes stronger it can pump more blood with less effort. As a result, the force on your arteries decreases, lowering your blood pressure.
It can improve your sleep: Studies have found that regular cardio exercise for prolonged periods can improve sleep quality and reduce excessive daytime sleepiness for people with insomnia. Research also shows moderate-intensity aerobic activities can decrease the severity of sleep-disordered breathing conditions like obstructive sleep apnea.
It can help relieve depression and anxiety: Scientists have found that regular participation in aerobic exercise has been shown to decrease overall levels of tension, elevate and stabilize mood, improve sleep, and improve self-esteem. About five minutes of aerobic exercise can begin to stimulate anti-anxiety effects.
Below are 5 benefits of Resistance Training:
It makes you physically stronger: Your body will be able to cope better with the physicality of day to day life, carrying shopping, digging in the garden and lifting heavy objects.
It can make you more defined and leaner: As you increase your muscle mass and decrease your body fat percentage, your muscles look more defined and create a stronger, leaner appearance.
It decreases your risk of falls: As you become stronger, you are better able to support your body so your risk of falling reduces. One study has shown a 34% reduction in falls among those who participated in a well-rounded exercise programme including resistance training.
It increases your bone strength: Weight bearing exercises work your muscles which puts temporary stress on your bones, sending a message to bone-building cells to take action and rebuild stronger. This reduces your risk of osteoporosis, fractures, and falls, especially as you age. As women are more at risk of osteoporosis, it is very important for females to undertake some resistance training as part of their fitness programme.
It increases your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR): Your BMR is the number of calories you burn performing life sustaining functions (such as breathing and beating your heart). This means you are burning more calories when at rest.
We should all be undertaking both types of activity as part of our fitness regime so as to maintain a well-rounded fitness level but your goals will dictate which you should be concentrating on. If your goal is to run a half marathon then you will be focusing most of your time on cardio with some resistance training incorporated. If you are looking to get more power into your golf swing then the primary part of your training will be resistance based with smaller amounts of cardio incorporated. The take home message is that both types of training are important for different reasons so we should all be undertaking both in our weekly exercise schedule no matter what age or sex we are or what goals we have.