“Doing cardio will reduce all of your ‘gains’!” How many have heard that by doing any type of cardio will cancel out any muscle that has been gained through resistance training? Many of us have heard this statement, which turns a lot away from aerobic training. In reality, both cardio and strength training can be done together to reach maximal results. A few ways where you can combine strength training and cardio training is to do them together or perform cardio on your “off” days from strength training. Athletes are notorious for this type of training. One day they might be training in the weight room where they next they are training on the field doing drills and performance exercises.
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Cardio is a great way to increase endurance and your cardiovascular system overall, but it needs to be balanced just as resistance training needs to be balanced. If an individual is looking to gain muscle but is over training with cardio, then muscle will start to be depleted due to it being used as “energy”. Having a good balance of both is good for the body and your training program. This is where variety and individualization needs to happen based on your current body type and long term goal.
Athletes are a very good example of when this individualization and specificity is necessary. If you have a football player and a sprinter, each will have either more strength training or more aerobic training in their program and benefit from both. Football players are going to need more resistance training especially based on position, and sprinters/runners will need more endurance training / aerobic exercise. This is true for any sport, even swimmers. They need both aerobic exercise for endurance but weight training/ dry land workouts for the resistance and strength to pull themselves through the water. As a CT Personal Trainer, we work with athletes on both power and endurance. We train based on sport and ensure they will have both the aerobic training and resistance training to improve.
Cardio helps in reducing fat percentage and increases endurance which is also needed during resistance training. Resistance training helps build muscle which in turn burns more fat naturally and can help put on mass or lose inches depending on your goal. Timing of these exercises are also important. If you are training lower body and using resistance training, you might want to perform the aerobic exercise prior to the resistance training so you are not burnt out from the weights. The same goes for upper body; when training with weights it is more realistic to do cardio before the weight training to save your energy.
