Do I Need To Do Both Cardio And Strength Training? Custom Tailor Your Exercise Routine For Optimal Results.

Some people strictly jog as their form of exercise while others never leave the weight room at the gym. If you only lift weights maybe someone has asked you “But what do you do for cardio?”. Traditional exercise advice recommends a mix of both strength training and cardio vascular training. Current research is showing that weight lifting and resistance training offers many benefits to the cardio vascular system, with some advocates even claiming that traditional steady state cardio may not be necessary if you hit the weights strategically. 

So what kinda of exercise should we be doing, cardiovascular conditioning, weight lifting, or both?  The short answer is both but the two are not mutually exclusive as we will later see. A general principle is that exercise helps the body work more efficiently. The more efficient the body works, the easier it is to live the lifestyle you want to live, whether it is to improve you energy levels at work, travel with ease, or to take your recreational hobbies to the next level.

Cardio-Respiratory Conditioning

Cardiovascular and respiratory conditioning, also known as cardiorespiratory conditioning, helps our cardiovascular and respiratory systems work better. The cardiovascular system consists of the heart and its circulatory network of arteries and veins. The respiratory system consists of the lungs, bronchial tubes, trachea, nasal cavity, and all the accessory muscles that facilitate breathing.

Cardiorespiratory exercise, sometimes referred to as steady state aerobic exercise, uses continuous repetitive movements with large muscles in the body such as walking, swimming, running, and biking. An important note is that while aerobic exercise is often used to refer to cardiorespiratory exercise, the two are not entirely synonymous. 

Aerobic exercise formally describes exercise that activates the aerobic metabolic systems of the body. The aerobic range is 70-80% of your maximal heart rate where breathing significantly increases. There has been tremendous advancements in the research and understanding of exercise on health.

Current research has broadened it’s scope of cario-respiratory exercise and now indicates that you can exercise for heart-lung health and overall health while working above and below the aerobic range. Depending on your age, health, and goals, you can exercise anywhere within 50 to 93% of your heart rate, 50-70% consisting of moderate intensity exercise and 70-85%, or even up to 93%, consisting of vigorous intensity.

Steady state aerobic exercise implies that you are exercising for an enduring period of 20 minutes or more of non stop movement. Traditionally this was the recommendation for cardio-respiratory health. Research now shows that you can still condition the cardiorespiratory system without sustaining the activity for long uninterrupted durations of time.

For example, taking 4 short 5 minute walks during the day can be as effective as a 20 minute walk. Your cardiovascular endurance won’t necessarily improve doing short walks, but it still counts as beneficial exercise for heart health.

Steady state aerobic exercise that lasts for longer durations of time is great, but not necessary. There is an important distinction between exercising to meet the baseline needs to maintain the bodies health versus challenging it to adapt to optimal performance. Traditional steady state aerobic exercise can be very beneficial to improve performance in sports that require long periods of running such as soccer, basketball, and lacrosse. It is also the training method used to improve performance in marathons, hiking, long distance swimming, or cycling. Aerobic exercise also has a host of other benefits in the body that include improving cognitive function, metabolic health, the immune system, mental stress, and quality of sleep. 

During every moment of our life, our heart beats non stop and are lungs continue respirating, with the exception of holding your breath which temporarily stops the lung’s movement. Therefore cardiorespiratory exercise helps these amazing and relentless systems in our body to work more efficiently. You can also work the cardiorespiratory systems in a very short period of time by increasing the intensity as you would do during a sprint. This is known as anaerobic training.  

Strength Training

On the other hand Strength training helps to make movement easier, it helps to protect our joints, and prevent injury. Some other benefits are that it improves metabolic health, and increases the density of our bones. Strength training can help make daily movements easier like climbing stairs, opening a jar, carrying groceries, and moving furniture. If you are an athlete, strength training can help to optimize your performance and prevent injury. Strength training is beneficial for anyone, irrespective of their level of physical activity. Whether you are sedentary for work or have a very physical job, strength training will be beneficial.

An important note is that strength training for overall health is not contingent on getting “buff” or building maximal muscle mass. It is to build “functional strength” to improve the bodies ability to move efficiently so that your daily tasks feel easier and not strenuous. You certainly can build large muscles through strength training thought it is not necessary to look like a superhero in order to build and maintain functional levels of strength.

If you sit a lot for work, strengthening your core, back, hips, and shoulders will help provide the muscular support for all the desk work you do. If you stand and have a very physical job, strength training will improve the function of your movement muscles to perform tasks easier, to have more endurance on your feet all day, and help to prevent injury. As a side note, beyond the primary functional incentives to do cardiovascular exercise and strength training, each confer a whole host of other benefits as well.

How Much Exercise Each Week

Regarding conventional exercise guidelines for health, the general recommendation is 150 minutes of moderate intensity cardiorespiratory exercise a week (somewhere between 3-5 days) and 2-3 days of resistance training working all major muscle groups in the body. However, there is a twist to this, If you exercise vigorously you can reduce your minimum exercise time from 150 minutes to 75 minutes a week. For example HIIT training (High Intensity Interval Training) also known as anaerobic training, which constitutes of training in vigorous short bursts of 30 to 90 seconds can be done instead of a 30 minute brisk walk or jog, granted that your level of fitness permits. HIIT training has shown to offer many cardio vascular benefits; it is endorsed by the American Heart Association as a training technique for heart health. This training method can significantly shorten the duration of your exercise workouts, especially convenient is you have a busy schedule.

A general principle is that exercise intensity and duration have an inverse relationship; As the intensity of exercise increases, the time duration decreases. The body fatigues faster as the energy output increases.

Also to note, regarding the weekly amount of time for cardiovascular exercise, if you are exercising at a moderate pace aiming to clock in around 150 minutes a week, there’s incredible flexibility when it comes to partitioning this chunk of time.

A conventional breakdown is typically a 30 minute session, like a walk, 5 times a week or an hour session 2 to 3 times a week. However for general health, you could even break this time down into smaller chunks of doing three 10 minute sessions a day, 5 times a week.

You could even do five 6 minute sessions a day 5 times a week. This might look like taking a short brisk stroll down the block six times a day. Or as another example, say you park a few blocks away from your office building and briskly walk there, you briskly walk to lunch and back, you take the stairs instead of the elevator, and you take a quick stroll after dinner, you would get in your exercise for the day. This routine won’t make you a better competitive runner, but it will work the heart enough to keep things functioning.

There’s a lot of flexibility when it comes to exercising for general health. Conclusively, exercise recommendations range between 75-150 minutes per week of cardiovascular exercise depending upon exercise intensity and 2 or more days a week of strength training. 

Exercise that incorporates Stregth and Cardio-Respiratory Health

As mentioned before, these two categories are not always mutually exclusive. There are forms of exercise that condition the cardiovascular system as well as improve the entire bodies strength. Perhaps steady state cardio or even HIIT sprinting or bicycle intervals are not your jam and you love strength training. Are you forever condemned to poor cardio vascular health? Far from it. As mentioned before, there are cardio-vascular benefits to strength training, especially depending upon how you approach it. 

The basic principles of cardiorespiratory conditioning is that anytime a large muscle contracts the heart and lungs must work harder to help supply the muscle with blood and the nutrients it contains. The heart is working harder when walking, or moving furniture than when you are sitting and relaxing. The level of work an exercise places on your cardiorespiratory system is relative to your fitness level. If you work at a moderate intensity you can sustain the work for longer periods and build cardiovascular endurance. If the intensity is higher you will condition the cardiorespiratory system to handle higher demands at any given moment. Both are good for general health.

As a broad brushstroke, for most of us, strength training is beneficial for cardiovascular health. Lifting weights stimulate the muscles to work harder and this in turn stimulates the heart and lungs. So how is strength training similar and different to cardio exercise? There are many overlaps. For example, long distance jogging strengthens the muscular endurance of the lower body and this in turn stimulates cardiovascular endurance. You’re building leg strength but with a focus on endurance and not maximum power.

Sprinting strengthens the explosive and power generating capacity of the lower body and this in turn activates the heart and lungs. Both examples involve strength work and cardiovascular work. The major distinction lies in which aspect is being trained most.

Strength training is designed to improve the strength and power of the muscular system. There are many isolated strength exercises that will not challenge the heart and lungs but will certainly improve muscular strength, for example doing forearm wrist curls with a moderate hand weight. However the heavier a weight becomes and the more muscles you work during a given exercise the heart and lungs begin to kick into gear. For example rack squats, dumbbell lunges, and power lifts will definitely increase the heart rate and respiration. Lifting heavy weights for a shorter number of repetitions will work the cardiovascular and respiratory systems though it won’t improve its endurance. If you’re a soccer player, doing heavy benchpresses and squats with short reps will not give you the cardiovascular endurance to keep running throughout the game. 

Circuit Training

If you love strength training and you want to improve your cardio-respiratory endurance you can do circuit training in which you alternate between a variety of resistance exercises without resting in between. This will allow one muscle group to rest as you move on and work another. This will condition the heart and lungs to work efficiently for longer periods of time. You can also do interval training with your strength exercises, adding enough weight to your lunges, squats, powerlifts, and compound exercises so that after 30-90 seconds you’re fatigued and winded. This method of training is also great for the cardiovascular and respiratory system. The main difference with this method versus doing a strength circuit for cardio endurance is that with intense intervals you will need to rest for a period after the interval to catch your breath and let the body recover, especially if you are doing full body movements like rack squats. 

Exercise for both Strength and Cardio-Respiratory Conditioning

  To return to one of the initial questions posed, “Should we be doing cardiovascular conditioning, weight lifting, or both?”, the answer is both, though with the understanding that some forms of exercise can meet both of these categories at the same time. Cardiorespiratory conditioning will help the heart and lungs work more efficiently and strength training will help the major muscles, joints, and bones in the body move with more ease during your daily life. There are many types of exercise that condition the cardiovascular system and strengthen all the muscles of the body; Some of these include gymnastics, resistance training circuits, dance, wrestling, rock climbing, rugby, calisthenics, yoga, and swimming, especially if you practice a variety of different strokes. 

Examples of exercise that condition the cardiorespiratory system and build full body strength:

-Gymnastics

-Dance

-Wrestling

-Rock Climbing

-Yoga

-Calisthenics

-Rugby

-Resistance training circuits

-Swimming

If you are new to exercise and have been sedentary for years, its best to start with activities or types of exercise that are enjoyable and appropriate for your fitness level. Any movement that recruits the body into a higher energy output than is required when passively sitting down will begin to strengthen the cardiorespiratory and muscular system.

As a baby step, find some type of movement that you enjoy, start with small amounts every day or every other day to build a routine whether it's walking, dancing, jump rope, hula hoop, yoga, swimming, gardening, or weight lifting. The list is inexhaustible!

Most forms of exercise or activities will improve cardiovascular health. Even golf, if you walk the course and minimize your time in the golf cart, is great for your cardio. The next thing you want to consider is if the activities and exercise that you enjoy doing work the whole body. Gardening that involves lots of shoveling and using a pick or hoe works the whole body and can address both your strength and cardio. On the other hand, although walking uses almost every muscle in the body, it places minimal resistance on the upper body.

The same goes for jogging and running. If you love walking, jogging, and running, consider adding in a form of upper body strength training to keep those muscles strong.  For example you could take up rock climbing, paddle boarding, or do body weight exercises such as push ups and pull ups. If you wanted to further strengthen your lower body as a walker or runner, you could incorporate hills and inclines and do body weight exercises like squats and lunges. As for types of exercise that build strength in the entire body, consider dance, wrestling, calisthenics, rugby, swimming, rock climbing, or gymnastics.

The biggest gains and benefits from exercise are long term and come from your sustainability and consistency. Therefore, first and foremost, find activities and types of exercise that you enjoy doing and will keep you motivated and excited to show up. As you continue to improve, new challenges inevitably present themselves that will continue to test both your cardiorespiratory and muscular systems. May you derive many benefits from an active lifestyle!

For further questions on strength training, cardiorespiratory fitness, or finding an optimal exercise routine for your body don’t hesitate to reach out at KaiBodyMindWellness.com

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