Cardio vs Weight Training

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Morgaen73
Morgaen73 Posts: 2,817 Member
in Fitness and Exercise
Hi :)

I'd like some input. Ive been gymming for the last year and I can feel my body getting stronger and fitter. I think I'm at the poin where I need to decide if am going to do less cardio and more weight training, or continue doing what I am doing now. My goals are weight loss, fitness and building strength, not necessarily in that order.

My typical workout now is:

15 Minutes crosstrainer (heart rate average at 150 bpm)

3 sets of -
- 1 minute stepping
- 1 minute pressups
- 1 minute squats (no weights)
- 1 munite stepping

then 3 sets of -
- 1minute stepping
- 30 crunches (with legs raised)
- 20 bicep curls (13kg weights, 10 curls per arm)
- 1 minute stepping

then I do 15 to 20 minutes boxing on a punching bag.

Any advice would be appreciated. Between weght training and cardio, which will help me to lose weight better and what are the pro's and con's of each?

'Scuse the ignorance.

Replies

  • kdeaux1959
    kdeaux1959 Posts: 2,675 Member
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    Heavy lifting will do quite a bit of good. Focus on full body exercises more than the bicep curls. Some great exercises that work larger muscle groups are squats (just add the weights), Deadlifts, pull ups, dips, bench press. There are others and I'm sure others will chime in on specifics. My best suggestion is to spend a little investment in a personal trainer to help you meet your goals. You don't have to commit long term but they can guide you in the proper techniques and exercises for YOU.. By working large muscle groups, you are expending maximum energy and getting more bang for the buck. There is a time to really add the smaller muscle groups but in the beginning the larger muscle groups will do you better.

    Studies show that the maximum after burn of cardio is about 4-6 hours or so while you will gain some benefit from the weight training up to 72 hours later. Likewise, by building muscle, you increase lean body mass which is more efficient in caloric burn. By all means continue with some cardio but a focus on heavy lifting should really help you long term.
  • Spocky
    Spocky Posts: 62 Member
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    I am not a trainer just like to read about these questions a lot. My opinion is strength training is more important, you should do cardio if you have time doing that besides doing weight training.
  • RECowgill
    RECowgill Posts: 881 Member
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    I think you need to clarify for yourself whether your goal is weight loss or fat loss. A lot of people say they want to lose weight when what they really mean is they want to lose fat. I'm guessing what you mean is you want to lose fat because you also say you want to build strength.

    With the twin goals of building strength and losing fat what you want to do is focus on weight training and eating at a slight deficit.

    If you only cared about the number on the scale and just wanted to lose weight at any cost then I would say focus on cardio. Doing that you would eliminate fat, muscle and a little bit of everything else. But this wouldn't help you build strength, and overall it wouldn't improve your health, in fact it may make it worse.

    With weight training you will burn calories the same as cardio but you will do a much better job of preserving lean mass and muscle in the process. Eating at a deficit you will see weight loss in the form of fat reduction. You may not actually build much new muscle but you won't lose much either. You may in fact gain some strength from a process known as neuromuscular adaptation, where your muscles and central nervous system develop a stronger bond, effectively making you stronger.

    The best fat burning and strength building weight training that I know of is compound exercises with barbell. It's the only piece of equipment you need, along with the squat rack and bench. Realistically any weight training will do, but in my experience that's your best option. Just make sure it's actual resistance training and not cardio, and make sure you are putting in real effort. Along with deficit eating it will pay off.
  • Morgaen73
    Morgaen73 Posts: 2,817 Member
    edited December 2014
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    Thank you very much :)

    I currently (try to) eat 1800 kcal per day. I cant really find anything that consistsantly indicates how much I should eat but I take it that it should be somewhere between 2400 - 2600 per day and yes, I want to lose fat, not weight.

    Thank you again for your inputs. I do have a personal training but we have been focussing on fitness. I think my priorities have changed so i wanted to get some background and more information before I approached him.
  • Morgaen73
    Morgaen73 Posts: 2,817 Member
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    A follow-up question would then be how much should I train per week? I currently do 3-4 sessions of about 90-100 minutes each.
  • PeterSedesse
    PeterSedesse Posts: 124
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    It is a good question. In my opinion it should be answered by how close you are to your target weight.

    The further you are from your target weight, the more you should just do the things you enjoy doing because those are the things you are going to end up doing more of. At that point, anything you do is going to benefit you greatly, so the more you do, the more you benefit.

    As you get closer to your target weight (maybe within 20 lbs), then you start micromanaging a bit more and decide if you want to go for strength gain, muscle gain or fat loss.

    But IMHO, there isn´t a reason to get that detailed yet. Do the things you love doing, and do more of them.
  • PeterSedesse
    PeterSedesse Posts: 124
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    Morgaen73 wrote: »
    A follow-up question would then be how much should I train per week? I currently do 3-4 sessions of about 90-100 minutes each.

    For cardio, do as much as you can. For strength or muscle gain, skip at least a day with each muscle group and try not to work a muscle group that feels fatigued. You can do 6days per week of strength training if you rotate muscle groups and only work 2 muscle groups each day. For instance. Monday and Thursday are Chest Biceps, Tuesday and Friday are Back and Triceps, Wednesday and Saturday are Shoulder and Legs.

  • Morgaen73
    Morgaen73 Posts: 2,817 Member
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    Thank you very much :)
  • 999tigger
    999tigger Posts: 5,235 Member
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    I would read up on both. They both have merit and advantages Because they are different, so what Peter said. It depends where you are as to the balance between the two. I do both because they complement each other. As described you arent doing much weight training.
  • Morgaen73
    Morgaen73 Posts: 2,817 Member
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    I must admit I dont really enjoy cardio lol I do see the need for it though, which is why I do at least 30minutes per session. I would rather concentrate on strength training though, but you are right, balance is important.
  • 999tigger
    999tigger Posts: 5,235 Member
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    Im not sure you appreciate what you want and why. If you want to do weights then do them properly and get one of the trainers to design you a program or ask advice for one on here. Its a hotly debated topic. Just google it . Sorry cant help more am writing a report then heading for the gym.

    It might help if you left you age height and weight plus target weight.
    Are you in a gym?
  • icrushit
    icrushit Posts: 773 Member
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    I like to do resistance training (strength-biassed bodyweight) 3 days a week, and low-intensity cardio (walking) on the other days, as well as a little walking on my resistance training days too.

    I find it works quite well for me, and don't find the walking hampers the recovery from the resistance training I do, and find it a nice combo. The walking lets me add a couple hundred extra calories to my intake every day, and the resistance training to me is part-insurance policy and part-strength building in terms of the benefits to me.

    I think if you were doing moderate/ higher intensity cardio or HIIT, you might face recovery issues when it came to your resistance training, and would probably require more attentive marrying of the two so they were not countering each other.

    Just my thoughts :smile:
  • MeanderingMammal
    MeanderingMammal Posts: 7,866 Member
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    Morgaen73 wrote: »
    I must admit I dont really enjoy cardio lol I do see the need for it though, which is why I do at least 30minutes per session. I would rather concentrate on strength training though, but you are right, balance is important.

    I'd suggest being clear about what you want, but from what you describe I can see why you don't enjoy the hamster wheeling.

    Personally I'm more interested in running and cycling performance, currently at half marathon distance. So my resistance training is about being complementary to that and helping mitigate injury risk as a result of the CV work. I'll do a couple of bodyweight sessions per week. I find training in a gym incredibly dull though.

    If you find indoor work more interesting then focus on that, but finding the best approach really depend on being clear about what you want from your training.
  • icrushit
    icrushit Posts: 773 Member
    edited December 2014
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    Morgaen73 wrote: »
    I cant really find anything that consistsantly indicates how much I should eat but I take it that it should be somewhere between 2400 - 2600 per day

    If you've been losing for any length of time, and it seems you have, a good thing I find is to track things. I use an excel spreadsheet where I record things, and with a little info from a few months losing, I was able to work out my maintenance calories handily enough. Much better than any of the guesstimate online calculators (at least if you have a little personal data to work with, and are comfortable enough playing around with things in a spredsheet :smile: ).

    In my own case, I was able to discern that my maintenance calories were equivalent to 15.8 times my bodyweight in lbs. So for example, I'm 167lbs currently, and and what I maintain on is 2638 calorie every day (167 x 15.8). For others it will be a different number, but you will discover that individual number easily enough if you know how many calories you maintain on.

    So, if you calculated you maintain on 2800 calories a day and weighed 200lbs, you would need to eat 14 calories per lb of bodyweight each day to maintain your weight level. Once you know that magic number, you can easily recalculate your intake when your weight changes, so if you maintained at 2800 cals at 200lbs, you would maintain at 2520 cals if you weighed 180lbs.

    The online calculators can be good to provide a starting point if you have none, but once you have a little data from your own weight loss, you should be able to figure out quite accurately what your own individual maintenance needs are :smile:

    Of course the above suits me, as I tend to be the analytical type, but you could just as easily adjust your calorie intake up/ down a little, as you see what you're losing. ie if you want to lose 1lb a week, and you are only losing about 1/2 lb a week at your net calorie level, you know you need to cut your calories by about 250 a day to get to the 1lb a week rate.

  • Morgaen73
    Morgaen73 Posts: 2,817 Member
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    @999tigger I guess I dont really know what I want lol. I want to loose fat. Whether I want to gain strength or get fit, are they mutually exclusive?

    I'm 41 years old, i.62m tall and I weigh 133kg.

    @ilosityes thanks for the advice. I think I will start monitoring.
  • MeanderingMammal
    MeanderingMammal Posts: 7,866 Member
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    Morgaen73 wrote: »
    I want to loose fat. Whether I want to gain strength or get fit, are they mutually exclusive?

    It's a question of what you mean by "get fit", as that could mean a number of things and different types of training will have different effects.

    For me, fitness is about endurance running and cycling. So predominantly weight training and sprint intervals wouldn't support by objectives. Equally the training I do isn't going to lead to any significant increase in muscle mass.

    Losing fat is about eating in deficit whilst doing training that helps you to retain lean muscle mass; resistance training and weight bearing CV.

    From a calorie deficit perspective, just set up your MFP account to determine and track your calorie intake, that's what the service is for.


  • icrushit
    icrushit Posts: 773 Member
    edited December 2014
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    Morgaen73 wrote: »
    @ilosityes thanks for the advice. I think I will start monitoring.

    No worries, and I believe there are ways to export your diary data from MFP by the way, which might give you access to a rich pool of data that's already there for you to take a peak at, if you're so inclined :smile:

    Re: fitness, the important thing to remember, as MeanderingMammal refers to, is that it tends to fall into a number of categories.

    With resistance training for example, those categories tend to be strength, muscle, and endurance, with each being something you can train specifically towards.

    There will be overlap between the three, ie as you gain strength you will also gain muscle and endurance, and you can't gain muscle without also gaining strength and endurance, so the benefits from focusing on one type of training does not mean you will only make gains in that area.
  • Morgaen73
    Morgaen73 Posts: 2,817 Member
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    @Meanderingmammal OK I want to lose fat and build muscle mass but I want to be able to walk up stairs without feeling like I am dying lol Running and cycling is not such an issue for me but stamina is.

    @ilosityes I will investigate further :)

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