Coming to a fitness club, beginners ask themselves the question: what is better for weight loss, cardio or strength training? It might seem like spending hours on the treadmill is the best way to get lean, and strength training is just for those who want to have expressive muscles. In fact, the choice is far from obvious.
In the human body, there is a constant complex process of processing proteins, fats and carbohydrates that come with food. With their help, new body cells are built, “fuel” is obtained for daily activity, and the necessary hormones and enzymes are produced. These processes are called metabolism, or metabolism.
Every day, the main amount of calories is spent on maintaining the activity of vital internal organs, regulating body temperature, and breathing. We expend energy even when we sleep and do not move at all.
Additional metabolism is triggered by any physical activity, strength or cardio. Its speed is very important for weight loss: the better the metabolism, the easier it is to deal with extra pounds.
Features of metabolism largely depend on gender, age, genetics, as well as a combination of these factors. Someone is lucky to stay slim at forty without any extra effort, another needs a diet and constant training already at 20. Unfortunately, these static factors cannot be influenced, but you can still try to “disperse” the metabolism. The safest way is to organize a competent diet and rest, introduce additional physical activity into your life.
There are three main options for how to use training (strength or cardio) to lose weight and speed up metabolism.
- Engage only in those programs that you like best. Significantly losing weight with isolated anaerobic (strength) or aerobic (cardio) types of exercise, most likely, will not work, but it will be useful for health in any case.
- Spread cardio and strength training on different days during the week. A good way for those who cannot allocate a lot of time for sports at once.
- In one training, combining cardio and strength for weight loss – is the best option.
Fat burning cardio
Cardio has the best effect on the cardiovascular system. In this regard, you don’t even have to choose between cardio or strength training, the benefits of the former for promoting health have long been proven. But the cardio load gives the effect of fat burning only under certain conditions. For example, a ten-minute warm-up on an ellipse before strength training is definitely not enough to get rid of excess fat reserves.
Aerobic exercise should be long (from 30 minutes) and carried out at a moderate pace with a heart rate of about 120-140 beats per minute (about 60-70% of the maximum heart rate for each age). As a result, the body consumes excess carbohydrates, and after the depletion of these reserves, it begins to burn fat.
High-intensity interval training is the most effective, but it requires physical fitness and is not always suitable for overweight people.
Most often, pure cardio is not enough for significant weight loss. With this weight loss regime, you need to carefully monitor nutrition. On the one hand, the task is to reduce calorie content, on the other hand, not to drive the body into starvation stress, in which, instead of burning fat, it will begin to accumulate it and destroy muscles.
Although the calorie loss in one full session of cardio may be higher than during strength training, this process stops at the end of the session. This is the main difference between cardio and strength training in terms of their effectiveness for weight loss.
Strength training and weight loss
The metabolism of any person is the more active, the more muscle mass in his body. Strength training is characterized by the fact that it “microtrauma” the muscles and thus increases the energy costs for their recovery. You lose weight within a few more hours after you have finished strength training. In addition, energy consumption in everyday life increases, because the “maintenance” of developed muscles requires much more calories.
Once you understand how cardio or strength training works, it’s easy to see that the ideal workout for weight loss combines both. THE BASE fitness club by Adidas creates all the conditions for such training and offers a variety of training programs.
Good Bye Fat! – an intensive program at the Cardio studio, it helps not only to quickly say goodbye to extra pounds but also to carefully work out the muscles. The program includes explosive plyometrics for the whole body, static and strength training, as well as strengthening exercises for ligaments and joints.
Metabolic in The Base x Pro promises even more metabolism boost. Strength training for speed, combined with cardio at a fast pace, forces the body to speed up the metabolism and burn even more calories. The body becomes more resilient, the heart muscle is strengthened, and fat continues to burn even after the end of classes.
Useful tips to improve your athletic performance
- Observe the drinking regime. Lack of fluid slows down metabolism, and the process of losing weight slows down.
- The older you are, the more moderate strength exercises should be in your program, as with age, fat mass actively replaces muscle mass.
- If you’re not doing strength training, be sure to stick to a calorie deficit. Eat less than you spend, focus on the protein component of the menu (1.5-2 g of protein per kilogram of weight), and reduce fats and carbohydrates.
- Change the set of exercises from time to time so that the body does not get used to the training process and the “plateau” effect during weight loss does not drag on.
- If your goal is a slender, toned figure, don’t worry about strength or cardio, just choose programs that combine both types of exercise.
