Firstly, what is the reason for you wanting to do cardio?
Most of the time clients say that it is for their heart health, others tell me it’s for their fat loss.
Ok fine but we also need to define what you mean by ‘cardio’ to better answer this great question.
I tend to refer to cardio being the traditional run on a treadmill, elliptical trainer, stationary bike etc…
Let’s say that you’re doing this traditional cardio for 20, 30 or 40 mins at a more or less continuous effort. Meaning that you’re not doing any type of specific interval training.
Yes, you’ll burn some calories which is important for fat loss. However, if you’re melting body fat without body sculpting from lifting weights, then you may end up looking like a melted candle at the end of your fat loss process. I cannot call this a physical transformation at this point since you will probably have lost a significant amount of muscle mass. Loose skin and no muscle tone isn’t what most people would consider sexy. At the end of the day – who doesn’t want to look better naked?
Consider this; weight training like our clients do at Elite Coaching will increase your resting metabolism for up to 36 hours after your workout as opposed to 4 to 6 hours from doing the traditional cardio. An increased resting metabolism means that you’re burning more fat at rest – which is part of my equation for making you a fat burning machine.
Can I do my weight training and then do my cardio workout?
Ok fine, but now your workout is going to take way over an hour to complete. Did you know that if you train for more than 60 mins it becomes counterproductive? You’ll produce too much stress hormone (cortisol). Sometimes less is more. It’s all about optimizing your time and efforts. Unless you’re a high-level competing athlete without a stressful full-time job then forget about it.
Did you know that the 2 factors that determine longevity of life are the amount of muscle mass and physical strength that you have?
Do you really think you can get that from doing cardio?
At Elite Coaching we will incorporate your cardio into your weight training. That’s one of the reasons I have turf in my gym. It allows our clients to do exercises that will strength train their muscles as well as work their cardiovascular system at the same time.
Another great trick we use is that we pair up lower body and upper body exercises by alternating them during your workout. For example; we could pair a squat with a pulldown. Your body will pull a lot of blood into the legs for your squat, and then you’ll do your pulldown after a short break. Your heart will have to pump hard to get your blood from your legs to your upper body and vice versa. I guarantee you won’t be able to speak a whole sentence during this type of combination because you’ll be gasping for air. This type of exercise combination is great for fat loss as we get the large muscle groups (legs) producing ample lactate combined with a smaller exercise like a pulldown, allowing one muscle group to recover whilst working another. It also makes the workout less physically exhausting than doing all legs in one workout and then doing the upper body workout which can be too easy in comparison.
Weight training is essentially a type of interval training, as the body works for a few seconds, followed by another few seconds of rest. This is what has the greatest impact on fat loss and the metabolism. Cardio with interval training is also great for this in comparison to traditional cardio as explained earlier. So why would you bother to do both? Weights, then cardio after when you don’t have time to do it and you don’t have too?
I prefer you spend the rest of your time sleeping, meal prepping, or doing other things with your remaining time such as relaxing or going out for a walk.
Related post:
Putting together The Workout