The Benefits of Focusing on Resistance Training Over Cardio
Apr 1, 2022 mindpumpWhen people jump into fitness they usually default to cardio because it requires no equipment, or experience to begin. It’s also been associated with burning a ton of calories and “losing weight” but the reality is weight training is way better over a long enough timeline.
Boost Your Metabolism
Sure, within a given session, cardio will burn more calories, but that’s where it ends. Not only that, your body becomes more efficient at burning calories, and as a result will burn less and less the more you do it. Resistance training on the other hand, burn MORE calories the more you do it. The more muscle a person has on their body, the more calories they burn just living their lives. Muscle is calorically expensive to hold onto, and the body has to burn a lot of calories just to keep it. With that said, make sure you are eating enough food so it doesn’t have to start eating away at your muscles.
Cardio Doesn’t Build Muscle
The other issue with cardio is it doesn’t build muscle. Even if you don’t want to have a bodybuilder size physique, I’m sure you’d like SOME sort of shape or tone on your muscles. That will only be achieved by consistent resistance training. Doing cardio day in and day out is the opposite signal of building muscle. It’s an endurance signal, meant to improve your cardiac output. Resistance training, on the other hand, is progressively adding more and more weight, sending a strong signal to your body to adapt by putting on new muscle. When we lift weights in the gym, we are using a heavy enough weight to break muscle down, so that the body replaces it with bigger, stronger muscle in case it faces that stimulus again.
Be sure to check out my article The Best Muscle Growth Plan for Beginner Lifters.
Reducing Injury
Cardio, if anything will CAUSE injury. You are doing a repetitive motion for miles and miles. Like a car, our joints, and legs only have so much mileage on them. The more miles you spend running, the more wear and tear you are creating. There is no focus on mobility work. Mobility work would involve using bodyweight exercises, or some light resistance to work your body through a FULL range of motion so that it learns to own the movement through its full range. The reason we get injured is because we get placed at some part of a range that our body has never handled before (and usually with an excessive external load also being thrown at it), causing our bodies to fall apart. Taking exercises through a full range of motion like a squat, teaches our body to own the full range so that our body can handle what gets thrown its way. Having strong bones and muscle also reduces your risk of injury overall from falls, and sudden incidents you weren’t expecting.
Anti Aging
Not only can resistance training help reduce injury, it’s one of the best things you can do for longevity. When we workout, we keep our bones strong, our heart healthy, and our muscles responsive and active. We used to think as we got older, that our metabolism slows down, and we just lose muscle. What they are finding now is while yes, that does inevitably happen, the rate at which it happens can be delayed well into your 60’s and 70’s. Those that find they are wasting away earlier only experience that due to the fact that they’ve most likely stopped working out, and stopped taking care of themselves physically. If you keep up a steady workout regimen you will maintain your muscle and bone density well into your older years.
Improving Aesthetics
Cardio won’t build a beach body. I hate to say it. It can help you become a skinnier, flabbier version of yourself but it won’t give you those toned arms, and washboard abs you crave. Cardio can help with creating a deficit to assist with burning body fat. If you want to see your abs or muscles actually have a POP to them, then they need size. Size is only built through resistance training. A muscle will never grow without doing heavier weight over time.
