Strength Training 101: Why Cardio Alone Isn’t Enough (Video)

Pretty much everyone these days has heard about the value of cardio exercise, and you can probably think of examples of it—running, bicycling, swimming, jumping rope, dancing, hula-hooping, hiking–pretty much any activity that gets the body in motion for a while. Cardio is the medical word for heart, and this kind of exercise always gets the heart pumping faster in order to get oxygen and fuel to the muscles that you’re using for whatever the motion is. Since the oxygen has to be brought into the body, cardio exercise also means faster and deeper breathing, so that your lungs get a workout too.

In the long run, cardio has been demonstrated to have many health benefits—strengthening the heart and breathing muscles, improved blood circulation, better sleep, more energy, blood sugar management—so many that it’s easy to think that as long as you’re getting your hour or so of some form of cardio exercise 3-4 days a week, then you can check off the physical activity box of your personal health plan. But the truth is that cardio is only half of the story.

For one thing, cardio exercise alone won’t make it easier for you to lift things, including your own body, or carry luggage, or your German shepherd. It won’t make it easier to unscrew the lids off of jars, dig holes, move furniture, make a bed, or tighten a bolt. These and a hundred other physical tasks require not just good blood circulation and lung power, but also strong muscles in your arm, legs, hips, shoulders, chest, back, and abdomen. Building and maintaining those muscles is what you’ll want to be doing on the days of the week that you aren’t focused on cardio, with a kind of exercise called strength training.

And building those muscles has benefits beyond household chores. Several large studies have found that strengh also likely helps people live longer and avoid chronic health problems including cardiovascular disease, diabetes, obesity, and bone density loss. There are also some indications that it can help prevent or at least delay cognitive decline in the over 70 age group.

With all these benefits for older folks, does that mean you can ignore your muscles if you’re under 40? Just as with cardio, that depends on your level of daily physical activity. But it’s a lot easier to maintain muscles as you get older than it is to make them from scratch, so one way or another you’ll want to build those muscles while you’re younger.

The bottom line is that whether you’re young, middle-aged, or in your golden years, if you don’t have a job or engage in sports that provide regular muscle-building activity, then you should be setting aside time for that at least three days a week.

Does that mean you need to invest in a gym membership or weight machine? Not at all. You can engage in an effective strength training routine at home with adjustable dumbbells, or even just lifting your own body from the floor.

It’s not hard to find good muscle-building routines on the web. However, whether you’re exercising by yourself at home or with the guidance of a professional coach on machines at a gym, you’ll want a routine that is not just powerful, but also safe. We’ll give you some tips for that in another video.

Meantime, thank you for our attention, and we hope you found this information helpful. If you did, ….(subscribe)…