What's Better For My Health, Cardio Or Strength Training?

This is a question that comes up a lot.

In fact, the fitness industry often swings in favour of one of these methods of training but what does the science say.

According to Dr Martin Gibala and Professor Stu Phillips of McMasters University, the science suggests the answer is both.  The best thing for your health to ensure that you live a long and healthy life is to regularly perform both strength and cardio training.

They go to say that in one March 2018 study researchers used UK data on about 80,000 unique participants.

Regular people who researchers followed for years to track their health, their cardio and strength fitness, 
whether they died and if so, how? 

Now as you might expect, higher cardio-respiratory fitness was associated with a smaller risk of dying from either all-cause death or cardiovascular disease or cancer. 

The more in shape you were, the longer you live basically. 

Something similar happened to people the stronger they were. 

The strongest people tended to also be the ones least likely to die from all-causes. But the people who were least likely to die from all-causes as well as cardiovascular disease were the ones that were both in shape and strong. 

The point is that strength and cardio fitness both were important. 

The same results have been replicated time and time again in different sorts of studies 
called randomized controlled trials. 

For example, a 2012 Australian study put several groups of overweight and obese people through 12 weeks of training.  One group did all cardio, one did all strength training and the third group did a combination. 

The combined group saw greater benefits for weight loss, fat loss and cardio-respiratory fitness. 

Another Australian study found that combining strength training with aerobic training featured something of a multiplier effect in populations with coronary heart disease. 

Essentially, the finding was, cardio will make you fit and strength training will make you strong and both cardio and straight training together will make you even more fit and strong than either alone. 

Now you might read this and think, "Well John, I am super busy so how do I include both in my routine?"

That is a great question and I will share some tips about how to do this in my next blog.

References.

1. March 2018 study used UK data on about 80,000 unique participants https://academic.oup.com/aje/article/187/5/1102/4582884

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