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Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Resistance Training vs. Aerobic Exercise
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Lately, there has been debate on whether you should do resistance training (a.k.a. weight training) or aerobic exercise (a.k.a. cardiovascular exercise) to burn the most calories. There really shouldn’t be a debate as both are equally important. However, if you are avoiding one of these components, it’s usually related to some misconceptions that you may have. Without getting into too much detail, let’s take a look at both of these.
Resistance Training (a.k.a. weight training, anaerobic training)- As explained in one of my weight loss and fitness myths, weight lifting is vital to the improvement of metabolism. As a matter of fact, only through weight training can you improve resting metabolism. Aerobic exercise barely improves resting metabolism compared to weight training. This is easily explained, because weight training helps you build muscle. For every pound of additional muscle, you burn an additional 30-50 calories at rest. This is one of the reasons why you might avoid weight training, as you fear that it will bulk you up. However, you must understand that weight training does not “bulk” you, it makes you leaner. If you don’t lift weights, you also miss out on the benefits of muscle tone, improved muscle and bone strength, improved posture, etc.
Aerobic Exercise (a.k.a. cardiovascular exercise, cardio, endurance training)- The primary purpose of aerobic exercise is for the betterment of cardiovascular health. This means that it improves blood flow and the delivery of oxygen, plus you have stronger heart muscle and associated parts such as the arteries. Cardiovascular exercise also is needed in order to improve endurance, however, this only applies to a small portion of the population (e.g. marathon runners). By doing cardio, you will naturally improve endurance. In regards to weight loss, cardio only helps you burn more calories as you’re doing it. Here’s the beauty of it all. When you do weight training you require more oxygen demand to the muscle tissue that you created. In other words, the more muscle you have while doing cardio, the more calories you’ll burn. (By the way, aerobic stands for “the requirement of oxygen”).
Doing both types of exercise are equally important. Where you may fall into trouble is that you may find them equally confusing as to what to do. Unfortunately, I can’t get into too much detail on this one, however, I will say that you have to change up what your doing on occasion and you must increase intensity too. You can’t do the same thing over and over again expecting different results.
If you have any questions, I’ll see what I can do to help. Your comments are also appreciated.
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