Treadmill Junkie or Weight Lifter?

Treadmill Junkie or Weight Lifter? – By Stefano Sarge

I get asked all the time, should I just do cardio or should I lift weights too? My answer to you is BOTH!

Cardiovascular exercise helps improve the efficiency of your heart, lungs, blood circulation, and increase the production of hormones that positively affect our bodies. Our heart operates on beats per minute or BPM for short. Barring certain medical conditions, our resting heart rate can range anywhere between 60 and 100bpm. Some athletes dip down into the 40s!

Why is this important Stefano, great question guys! Let’s say we have a resting heart rate of 80bpm. That means our heart pumps blood 80 times a minute, 4,800 times an hour, and 115,200 times a day! And that’s only if we don’t do any activity that raises our heart rate even higher! So if we can bring those numbers down with cardio exercise, your heart can work more efficiently over days, months, and years improving our longevity.

Now there are different styles of cardio as well, low intensity, moderate intensity, and high intensity. I prefer moderate to high intensity cardio because I don’t have much time to purposefully plan out low intensity exercise. Calorie burn is proportional to the amount of time and intensity we spend doing cardio. SO, if I can spend less time exercising, while burning more calories, that’s sounds pretty good to me. But this all depends on your everyday lifestyle and what time you can allot.

Now, onto resistance training. Resistance training targets muscular strength and endurance but also helps lower risks of cardiovascular disease, change body composition (fat vs. muscle), increase or maintain bone density, and lower the risk of all mortality across the board. There are varying forms of resistance training to target your individual goal, whether it be strength, power, muscle size, weight loss, and even cardio as well!

Now let’s talk about goals and what should you do first.

Weight Loss:
Weight Training and Cardio

Strength:
Weight Training and Cardio

Speed:
Cardio and Weight Training

Overall health and fitness:
Either or can come first.

All in all, a mixture between the two will get you to your goals and you can reap the health benefits of both. If you are unsure where to start for a proper and safe resistance training program, please don’t hesitate to reach out to myself or another fitness professional.

Stefano Sarge
stefano@wyofitness.com
www.facebook.com/stefanosarge
www.instagram.com/ssarge94

References:
Liguori, G. (2014). ACSM’s resources for the health fitness specialist. [Indianapolis, IN]: American College of Sports Medicine.