How including both aerobic training and strength training improves different areas of your health and fitness (and how to go about it).
Do you love the long walks, runs, swims, hopping on the bike or treadmill for 30 minutes plus? (Aerobic Training or ‘Cardio’)
Or do you love lifting weights? (Strength Training)
Do you love to focus on one but not the other?
What should you be doing more of, and what’s better!?
Both have their own strengths, but it’s even better when both are incorporated.
They work synergistically to enhance different areas of your health and fitness.
First, what are their strengths?
In short, aerobic training leads to improvements in how efficiently and effectively your heart and the surrounding ‘transport structures’ can move blood around the body. It also improves the tissue’s ability (where the blood is being sent to) to use what’s delivered to it (oxygen, nutrients etc.).
Strength training helps with some of those things too, but in a slightly different way and not to the same extent (which is why it’s still important to include aerobic training). Strength training shines in its ability to add muscle mass and different types of strength (among all of the other things I rave on about).
Let’s have a look at different areas of your health and fitness, and why it’s better if you include a bit of both in your weekly exercise routines:
Cutting some fat and/or building some more muscle generally helps improve your body composition and the way you look.
Strength training is the most effective method for building muscle. Aerobic training can help with ‘burning calories’, but you get a huge return on your efforts by focusing on growing and keeping more muscle. Here’s why muscle mass is important when you’re losing weight:
When you’re in a calorie deficit with the goal to lose more weight, you don’t only get a reduction in fat but also in muscle mass.
So, if you’re eating in less food (calorie deficit) for an extended period of time, there’s a good chance you’re losing a fair amount of muscle mass alongside your fat loss.
Why’s this an issue? Muscle mass loss = negative effect on your metabolic processes = harder time managing your weight!
So it doesn’t help you sustain the body you’ve been working towards.
With this reduction in muscle mass there are further negative effects on your health and wellness (as you’re about to see) that go far beyond having a hard time managing your weight. The last thing you want to be doing is losing muscle.
What helps?
A few papers mentioned the statistic that diet-induced weight loss resulted in 75% loss in fat tissue and a 25% loss in muscle mass! (1) (2)
Now, when combined with exercise, it went from a 25% loss, to a 12% loss (2).
This was combining it with aerobic training (so that helps) but it makes sense that you would see even less of a loss (or potentially a small gain in muscle) if it’s combined with strength training too! *A very high protein diet also helps preserve muscle.
So, by including strength training in your weight loss pursuit, you’ll be better able to manage your weight, you’ll have more favourable changes in how you end up looking, and you’ll maintain as much muscle mass as possible (important for not putting the weight back on, and all of the following health benefits that come with having more muscle mass.)
As mentioned earlier, aerobic training is very effective at improving on areas that help blood (and consequently oxygen, nutrients, hormones etc.) to be transported around the body to different tissues. This means that your muscles will receive more nutrients to grow and stay healthy, they’ll better be able to create/use energy, and you’re more likely to experience less fatigue and be able to recover quicker from, and during, your strength training sessions.
A bit of both (aerobic and strength training) ticks all the boxes if you’re looking to make a change in your body composition.
Besides losing muscle when you’re trying to lose weight, you also have to be aware of sarcopenia, especially as you age!
Sarcopenia is the age-related loss in your muscle mass, functioning, and strength.
Think you’re not old enough to experience this? It can begin as early as your 30’s (3).
Strength training is the main treatment for sarcopenia, and it needs to be treated because sarcopenia and the resulting loss of muscle mass, functioning, and strength is inversely related to illness, disease, and death. (4)
In other words, you’re more likely to get sick or die if you’re losing muscle and muscle functioning/strength.
Reducing your chance of falls as you age is also very important:
The CDC reported that “Falls among adults 65 and older caused over 34,000 deaths in 2019.” and “The emergency department recorded 3 million visits for older adults’ falls.”
What helps the most? A combination of balance training and strength training (5).
A big part of this age-related loss in strength and power is losing muscle power, so explosive movements when strength training is also an important part of the equation.
To age gracefully, and to stay functional and independent, strength training is the most effective intervention.
“In general, as compared with aerobic training, resistance training in older adults is more favourable due to its broader benefits on muscle, bone, balance, and fall risk.” (5)
You get more bang for your buck from strength training, but another decline that comes as you age is a loss in cardiorespiratory fitness. This is where the strength’s of aerobic training come in:
Aerobic training is the best at counteracting this decline as it’s the most effective modality for improving cardiorespiratory fitness.
When strength training is combined with aerobic training, this results in an even further reduced risk of many illnesses and diseases! (13)
More muscle mass can be a great buffer for many of the side effects that occur with illnesses and can even result in you bouncing back from the illness better and with less chance of recurrence.
For example, if you injure your knee and have to immobilise your leg and/or have surgery, this can accelerate the speed at which you lose muscle and strength. This creates more barriers to a successful recovery and can also negatively impact areas like your metabolic health and mobility. (4)
If you start with higher levels of muscle mass, there is more of a buffer which means it can prevent some of these negative impacts and result in a smoother/healthier recovery.
With something like cancer, starting with more muscle mass results in less toxicities and better outcomes. While if you have lower levels of muscle mass, there is an association with a higher risk of recurrence, illness, complications, and toxicities. (4)
Cardiorespiratory fitness (improved through aerobic training) is also associated with better outcomes after sickness. For example, middle-aged cancer patients who had higher levels of cardiorespiratory fitness had better survival. (16)
If you’re incorporating a bit of both on a weekly basis, you can be rest assured you’ll be better prepared for whatever life throws at you.
There’s a lot of research and data on the benefits of aerobic training for your cognitive ability and for preventing the loss of volume/size in key areas of the brain, increased blood flow to the brain, the release of BDNF growth factors for the brain, ‘functional connectivity’, and the resulting improvements in things like cognitive reasoning, processing speed, attention, executive function, and memory. (5) (6)
More research/data has been coming out on strength training’s contribution to cognitive/brain health, and similar benefits have been found.
A paper was published concluding that a combination of aerobic and strength training was more beneficial than just aerobic alone. (7)
So, by combining both aerobic and strength training, it’s going to be more beneficial for your brain.
In my previous blog post (“Will Strength Training Help My Mental Health?"), I discussed how strength training (and aerobic training) have been shown to be extremely effective at improving your mental health.
More specifically, both depression and anxiety can be improved to an impressive degree!
The paper by Singh et al., demonstrated that high-intensity strength training was more effective (61%) than low-intensity strength training (29%) for reducing depression symptoms. (8)
Lower intensity strength training, and aerobic training may be a little better when it comes to improving anxiety symptoms. (9)
Another paper discussed how aerobic training and strength training had different (but both positive) outcomes for various symptoms of anxiety-related disorders. The participants’ perception of, or levels of self-efficacy concerning the type of exercise may have contributed (which relates to being able to engage in one according to preference). (15)
So, again, there’s probably a lot of value in performing both when it comes to improving your mental health.
An even bigger factor is what someone prefers! If you’re struggling with a mental health issue, it’s going to be difficult enough to engage in any physical activity. If you have a preference (be it strength training or aerobic training), knowing that you get an improvement in mental health from both modalities means that you can choose what you’re most likely to engage in more. Once you’ve built up a habit doing one modality, then you can add in the other for even more benefits.
Both aerobic training and strength training have their own benefits when it comes to heart health.
As discussed, the cardiorespiratory fitness benefits are extremely important for heart health, and aerobic training is the most effective way of taking care of that. For example, compared to strength training, you’re probably going to see more benefits in areas like resting heart rate, vessel architecture changes, stroke volume, systolic blood pressure and vo2 max (all of which contribute to good heart health) (14) (17)
But …
Muscle mass, body composition, bone density etc. are also areas that contribute to good heart health. For example, increased muscle mass is associated with a reduced risk of cardiovascular disease. Even if weight is gained, the benefits on your heart health of having increased muscle mass stay! (15)
So by combining the benefits of aerobic training with the benefits of strength training, you end up with a more well-rounded improvement in areas that contribute to good heart health.
As Schroeder et al., concluded, when it comes to training for middle-aged adults with an elevated risk for heart health issues:
“… combination training may be of better value than either aerobic or resistance training alone, as it appeared to have the most beneficial effect on the composite of CVD risk factors.”. (2019) (11)
They’re better together!
A great paper by Momma et al., (2022) summarised why aerobic training and strength training are better together, statistically. This is why:
- Muscle-strengthening activities were associated with a 15% lower risk of all-cause mortality. When combined with aerobic activities, this was boosted to a 40% lower risk. (18)
- Muscle-strengthening activities were associated with a 17% lower risk of cardiovascular disease. When combined with aerobic activities, this was boosted to a 46% lower risk. (18)
- Muscle-strengthening activities were associated with a 12% lower risk of total cancer mortality. When combined with aerobic activities, this was boosted to a 28% lower risk. (18)
Hopefully I’ve shown why it’s worthwhile including both aerobic training and strength training into your weekly exercise routines.
I personally emphasise strength training, and then fill in the gaps with aerobic training (off days/recovery days etc.)
An easy way to structure it is to get at least two to three strength training sessions in, and at least two aerobic sessions in each week.
If you’re just starting out, try to get at least 20 minutes of aerobic training at a heart rate of between 120 and 150 beats per minute. As you progress, add some time each session to the point that you’re able to continue this for more than 30 minutes.
I won’t be able to work out what my heart rate is at? If you don’t have a way of measuring your heart rate, you can use the ‘talk test’ to see roughly what your intensity is. To be at a low-moderate or moderate intensity (for effective aerobic training), you should still be able to hold a conversation but there should also be a little bit of challenge or difficulty. If you can’t hold a conversation anymore, back off a little bit so that you can return to an appropriate intensity. If you feel like you could sing a song, ramp it up a little bit.
What should I be doing? Choose your favourite exercise modality! This could be riding your bike, going for a light jog, going for a long hike, using the treadmill or stairmaster at the gym. If all of those sound too boring, there are ways you can do it while you’re strength training.
When should I do it? Ideally, If you get the opportunity, a great time to do it would be on the days you aren’t strength training. If there’s no way you’re able to separate your training sessions, you can always throw in 20 to 30 minutes at the end of a strength training session.
You can find some general guidelines in this article: “Will Strength Training Help My Mental Health?"
Some guidelines (in more depth) in this article: “More Muscle, More Health?”
Don’t know what exercises to do? See this article: “Must-Do Exercises!”
And you can even start at home with an easy to follow bodyweight/introductory program (with videos) I included in this article: “Will Strength Training Prevent Injuries?”.
If you have any further questions, I would love to hear from you!
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