The big question. Cardio or weight training?
Here’s what you need to know about the fat-burning effects of cardio and weight training.
Nowadays when we get all kind of stupid diet things (chocolate diet etc.) it’s hard to believe that exercise professionals could consider any activity or form of exercise useless.
There are some people who believe lower intensity cardio is directly causing weight gain problems. Like long distance running.
This is what happens when weight loss frustration sets in and people are looking for a reason to explain why the scale goes the wrong direction despite plenty of effort.
After all, it becomes easier to understand if you slog away day after day doing cardio and don’t see changes. Naturally, something must be wrong. But that usually that has more to do with why your cardio approach isn't working, than anything “wrong” with cardio.
Running is not the reason you gain weight. But if you wanna see your body the fastest way changing, it’s not necessarily the most efficient approach.
Cardio has many benefits, including many related to weight loss, but also supports your ATP production, what is necessary for energy, helps in recovery, and even can help you relax and sleep better.
But if you’re trying to find the fastest way to dropping a little extra weight putting weight training into first place would be great.
Just for to make it clear again, cardio is not bad. It just doesn’t burn fat quickly.
In an ideal world, you’d combine metabolic and high intensity workouts (think moderate-to-heavy weights combined with short rest periods) with longer, slower, less intense struggles of cardiovascular activity.
The short struggles of training would definitely increase your heart rate, increase metabolic activity, and crush fat cells. The slower cardio would help with recovery and make sure you don’t walk around exhausted, but would also improve your heart efficiency.
Think about it, when you train you become exhausted. Most of the time you only think about how tired your muscles feel, and that’s part of the equation. The other part is your heart just not being able to push harder.
When you perform slower, longer cardio, you actually are able to force more blood into your heart and expand the walls. This renovation means your heart can pump more blood and oxygen with each beat, making you much more efficient.
Rather than becoming gassed as you push harder, you can do a better job of fighting off fatigue and maintaining a higher intensity.
While it is easy to see why it’s ideal to perform both a mix of lower intensity cardio and weight training, the reality is most people are pressed for time and impatient. You want results as fast as possible with the least amount of work needed.
That’s why if you had to choose between weights and cardio, weights would be the more direct approach.
The majority of calories you burn in a day are not through activity, but instead through your resting metabolic rate (RMR).
Weight training is better at preserving your RMR by preserving lean body mass (LBM), which is a significant contributor to RMR, or the calories you burn in a 24-hour period.
Strength training allows you to maintain a better muscle-to-fat ratio, which not only helps with the way you process food, but also ensures that the amount of calories you burn outside the gym are enough to support all the hard work you dedicate inside the gym.
