Best combination of strength and cardio

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  • ChrissieP80
    ChrissieP80 Posts: 112 Member
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    The best thing for weight loss is eating at a deficit and/or cardio to burn calories. It is possible to lose weight (quite rapidly) from eating at a deficit alone. But you are losing lean body mass as well as fat.

    The scale is not the only thing that matters. If you care about shape and 'firmness', you should do strength exercises too. And although they do not burn as many calories at the time of doing the exercise, the after-burn and effects of raising your BMR from building more muscle (muscle = more metabolically active than fat) are not to be discounted.
  • MetilHed
    MetilHed Posts: 101 Member
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    Remember that a great benefit to (and reason for) lifting while losing weight is the preservation of muscle you already have.
  • punkin_p
    punkin_p Posts: 29
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    You're right - slow steady-state cardio (going for a 5 mile run, for example) is very detrimental to strength gains. Take a look at marathon runners then take a look at sprinters. Completely different bodies, right? If you're running for a long time at low intensity, it is beneficial to lose any and all mass, so slow steady state cardio causes you to lose muscle mass as well as fat, and usually doesn't change your percentage body fat much if at all. HIIT, sprints, that kind of thing require you to be stronger in order to get better, and so will help to preserve muscle mass.

    So if you want to do cardio without hurting your gainz, make it intense :)
    But you can skip it altogether if you want. Right now I'm completely focused on strength building, so that's all I do and I'm having great results. But eventually I will add in sprints because it's something I want to be good at.
  • 4mrunner
    4mrunner Posts: 6 Member
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    Do both...continue to mix it up and cross-train. Shock your muscles, they have a lot of memory. Lift one day, do cardio the next. Do some HIIT training, do some endurance training, mix up your lifting exercises, reps and weights. But you do need to lift weight if you want to put on muscle or at least keep what you have. The more muscle you have, the higher your metabolism is.
  • kdiamond
    kdiamond Posts: 3,329 Member
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    From a strictly body composition standpoint you need exactly ZERO cardio.

    Strength training is king. Cardio has benefits for your heart and endurance.

    I wouldn't drop to less than 3x/week of strength training. Add cardio per your preference. Just make sure to feed appropriately.

    I agree with this. I do a little cardio just to keep my heart healthy, but you can bet your *kitten* I'm not spending hours on the dreadmill...20 minutes of HIIT 2x a week will do it...I'd rather spend my time lifting and my body looks better that way anyway. Calories can be controlled through diet.

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