When we talk about losing fat, there’s one debate that dieters and strength trainers have all the time: whether to cut up using cardio or use strength workouts instead. Sure, every workout has its own benefits, but when you’re trying to cut that extra flab and pounds, what is best? Let’s talk about the science of both and find out once and for all which one is best for your weight-loss goals.
What is Cardio Training?
Cardiovascular exercise (or ‘cardio’) refers to all those exercises that strengthen your heart and build up your overall stamina. The exercises usually include running, cycling, swimming and walking, in fact, any type of exercise you can sustain over a period of time that will raise your heart rate. Cardio is obviously popular for its calorie-blasting and heart health benefits.
What is Strength Training?
Strength training or resistance training means using weights, resistance bands or doing bodyweight exercises to help support your muscles. Strength training may be thought of as a means to build muscle and gain strength, but it is also important to the weight-loss process because muscle burns more calories at rest than fat.
Which is Better For Weight Loss?
Calorie Burn
When you’re aiming for instant calorie burning, cardio usually wins the prize. Running or cycling at a high intensity gives you a good calorie burn during exercise. To give this some context, a 155-pound person will burn about 298 calories per 30 minutes running at a moderate pace, and just about 112 calories over that same time period lifting weights.
But we want to lose weight, not just calories. Even though cardio burns more calories up front while you exercise, resistance training burns more even after you’re done exercising. What’s important here is what’s known as the afterburn effect, or EPOC (excess post-exercise oxygen consumption). Your body continues burning calories for hours after a high-intensity strength training workout, as it’ll take time to repair and rebuild your muscles.
This is how strength training could result in a greater long-term calorie burn.
Muscle Mass vs Fat Loss
When it comes to body composition, strength work is especially beneficial. And the more muscle mass you have from performing strength-training exercises, the more calories you’ll burn at rest. Muscle tissues are designed to burn more calories per pound than fat, which means having greater muscle mass leads to a higher resting metabolic rate (RMR).
Muscle hypertrophy is great for long-term fat burning. Muscle building gives your body shape, helps you stand tall and look toned, and yet your muscle tissue is always burning a certain number of calories to simply exist, even when you’re not working out.
Cardio also burns away both muscle and fat, especially when done in excess without adequate strength training to build back the muscle, but it encourages the body to store more fat. When you do only cardio, sure, you’ll lose fat, but you’ll also lose a lot of muscle, and your metabolism will decrease as a result.
You would derive the greatest benefits from including both cardio and resistance training in your workout plan. If you are new to exercising, then signing up for in home personal training services can be extremely beneficial for you. They will help you develop personalized programs that suit your weight loss needs.
Benefits of Strength Training
Strength training provides additional benefits for weight loss:
More muscle mass: Strength training particularly targets helping you build more muscle mass. We’ve already established that more muscle = a higher metabolism, so you’ll burn more calories even when at rest.
Better body composition: Cardio can help you lose body fat, but strength training helps change your body composition so you have less fat and more muscle.
Increased functional strength: More muscles mean you’ll be strong enough to do heavy lifting and move your body with increased confidence.
Better Posture: Your muscles are what hold you up, and good posture can make you appear more lean.
All in all, strength training is not only the most efficient workout, but it also helps you maintain lost fat while improving your body’s metabolism and functionality.
How To Couple Cardio & Strength Training on the Same Day
The best way for weight loss isn’t one or the other, but a combination of both cardio and strength training.
Use the Alternative Day Method: Do cardio and strength training on alternative days. For instance, if you’re training four days a week, perform cardio workouts on two of the days and then do strength sessions on the other two.
Combine the two: One session could be a circuit training workout that features both strength and cardio. Many of us fitness trainers agree that a wonderful template is 5 minutes of strength, followed by 5 minutes of cardio.
Focus on Full-body Strength: Compound movements such as squats, deadlifts and push-ups can be included in your workout to target several muscle groups at once. It makes you burn more calories.
Final Thoughts
The bottom of the line for debate on cardio vs. strength training for weight loss is… well, there really isn’t a one-size-fits-all answer to this question. A treadmill may burn more calories, but strength training exercises develop muscle mass and increase metabolism and long-term body composition.
The best argument that all fitness professionals agree upon is to combine both in your workout program to gain benefits in the long term.