if you are someone that hates cardio or maybe your Tim restrained and you're looking for a type of exercise that will be kind of a catchall and give you the benefits of strength training and cardio and and everything in one this episode is for you or maybe you've just wondered okay my heart rate gets up when I'm strength training does that mean strength training also doubles as cardio so these are things that I want to discuss today and these are things that I've honestly had the question about and haven't really fed understood until I dove into the research about this so first of all why do cardio what are the important adaptations to your health cardio at least steady state cardio like running biking swimming Etc are study State class imposes continuous and sustained demands on the same muscle groups therefore creating really consistent oxygen delivery needs and steady blood flow patterns think of like Highway driving you can get really good fuel economy on the highway because you aren't start starting and stopping all the time you aren't breaking and accelerating all the time and so cardio is kind of the same your heart gets more efficient at pumping blood and improving your endurance because you're doing kind of the same motions repetitively cardio obviously strengthens your heart it enhances your ability to deliver blood efficiently to your body which is very important for your overall health this is called increased cardia cardiac output in stroke volume two things that are crucial to maintaining cardiovascular health and reducing the risk of heart disease as you age regular cardio also improves function of the lungs increased lung capacity and efficiency of oxygen exchange can improve your endurance making you better at doing those longer steady state activities cardio can also enhance insulin sensitivity and glucose metabolism which strength training also does something I talk about all the time and this can improve blood sugar control which increases energy reduces cravings and helps reduce the risk of chronic disease so doing cardio can help you feel better now in the moment and it can also help reduce the risk of disease as you age cardio is also associated with improved mood it reduces symptoms of depression and anxiety and you might have heard it kind of can give you those feel-good neurochemicals those endorphins and strength training can do this as well but cardio is associated with improved mental health and finally cardio can improve your V2 Max V2 Max maybe something you've heard about is the maximum rate at which you can consume oxygen during intense exercise it happens to be a key indicator of aerobic fitness and cardiovascular health and is very linked to longevity so when it comes to V2 Max small improvements in your V2 Max can make Major Impact tax in your risk of mortality or your risk of death so the leap from poor VO2 max just to average V2 Max will provide the most noticeable differences and then from there as you improve the differences are still important but they're a little less when you jump from average to above average you are getting an improvement in your overall health and you're lowering your risk of mortality but it's less and then again when you go from above average to I don't know what the one above that I can't remember Elite um again small change but still a change so if you're someone that's like okay where should I shoot to be if you're someone who wants to live a long vibrant life you want to be independent you want to avoid the risk of disease what BO2 Max should you shoot for obviously the higher the better but it does become a big time commitment to jump from let's say above average to Elite it may not be something that everyone has the time or interest to invest in of course if you're an endurance athlete this will be something you want to invest in and something that you want to shoot for is really trying to get towards that Elite status V2 Max but just for the average fitness Enthusiast above average is likely sufficient for the major health benefits mine is 39 which is classified as above average or good and to get this BO2 Max I do the evlo 510 per week schedule I do our study State class 1 to 210 per week and I walk every day so I don't currently do any hit we'll talk about hit here in a moment and the impacts of hit on V2 Max is something that I probably will add in my future but right now I'm just kind of doing our 150 minutes of light to Moder intensity you know with walking study State classes and then my Evo classes and that has already landed me at an above average V2 Max which is really encouraging it goes to show that you don't need to do a ton of activity to have a really pretty good V2 Max so that's endurance or steady state cardio what about hit which is also considered cardio it can be considered cardio how does hit affects your cardiovascular fitness so hit can provide really similar effects and sometimes Superior cardiovascular effects than traditional or steadystate cardio so it improves V2 Max to a greater extent than endurance training it can improve cardiac output significantly and it's more time efficient than endurance training right hit is short bursts of activity for you know 15 20 minutes max so although both forms of cardio will affect your body slightly differently hit may be more time efficient to get really most of the cardiovascular benefits ideally you do a little bit of both right you do that 150 minutes of light to moderate intensity or that endurance uh cardio per week and then you sprinkle in a couple of hit sessions maybe 1 to two 15 to 20 minute sessions per week Max remember that you don't need to do a lot of hit and I actually don't recommend doing more than that per week because this may cause recovery interference from your strength training sessions so that brings us to strength training which is the question of this podcast how does strength training affects your cardiovascular health and does it count as cardio so you will get some cardiovascular adaptations from strength training especially with circuit training which I'll talk about here more in a moment but they won't be the same for as much as traditional cardio or hit strength training and having more muscle in general there are different ways to build muscle and strength train and in this episode I'll talk specifically about kind of traditional strength training so doing a set of an exercise and then resting for a few minutes and then doing it again versus circuit training like ELO where you aren't really resting in between exercises so you're doing a circuit of exercises without rest in between so for example you're doing a set of chest presses and then while your chest rests you're working your upper back with no break in between the chest and the upper back exercise so traditional strength training and circuit training will have slightly different effects on your cardiovascular health with circuit training having a greater effect and I'll talk about this a in a little bit more detail in a moment traditional strength training doesn't have a huge effect on your cardiovascular health traditional strength training isn't shown to improve V2 Max however women who strength train experience a 177% reduction in the risk of cardiovascular disease compared to women who didn't strength train this is probably due to the improvements that muscle has in your body improves blood pressure lipid profiles insulin sensitivity all things which improve your overall health and improve your cardiovascular health traditional strength training also results in some modest improvements in things like stroke volume and cardiac output but again just are not as pronounced as traditional cardio if we compare steady state cardio to hit to strength training the differences in V2 Max are quite different so in a study in women looking at uh hit plus strength training moderate intensity continuous exercise so endurance training plus resistance training and then resistance training only a study looked at women who were kind of in three different groups so one group was hit plus resistance training the second group was endurance training plus resistance training and the third group was resistance training only and they trained only two times a week for 11 weeks so what they found is the groups who did the cardio improved in their cardiovascular fitness so the group that did hit plus resistance training their V2 Max improved by about 14% the group that did resistance training plus endurance training or or traditional cardio improved by about 7% in their V2 Max and the resistance training only group improved by 2.7% so the group that did resistance training and hit improved the most followed by the group that did resistance training plus endurance cardio followed by the group that only did resistance training so although you might not get the same adaptations that you get from Hit or endurance training in regards to V2 Max overall endurance stroke volume cardiac output you are receiving benefits that help you avoid cardiovascular disease even if you are just strength training and not doing any cardio you may ask yourself my heart rate gets up with lifting even if even if you're doing traditional lifting you might find that towards the end of your set your heart rate really spikes but wouldn't that provide the same cardiovascular benefits as something like a hit workout in short it does not provide the same V2 Max benefits or cardiovascular benefits because we just don't see the same V2 Max improvements from strength training than we do with hit so this goes to show that there are fundamental differences in how those two types of exercise affect your cardiovascular system think of it like this with hit you're specifically training your heart to pump more blood and your body to use more oxygen again with that kind of continuous movement with strength training your elevated heart rate is happening for a different reason it's happening in response to managing various stresses so muscular stress increase in blood pressure rather than being forced to maximize its pumping capacity to doing the same movements over and over hit is is more about the heart while strength training is really more about the muscles how about circuit training how does circuit training affect your cardiovascular health in relation to more traditional strength training where you're taking breaks between sets so circuit training will provide better cardiovascular adaptations than traditional strength training but still not as much as cardio or hit this is because even with circuit training even though your heart rate is up more consistently throughout the session than it is with traditional strength training the demands are still more variable you get more ups and downs of your heart rate you don't have that kind of steady state heart rate and as you approach failure in your lifts your heart rate spikes to pump blood to larger muscle fibers that are being recruited this also raises your blood pressure which will increase your heart rate so your heart rate Rises but for different reasons than it does with Hit or endurance cardio with cardio hit or endurance your heart rate rises again due to that continuous rhythmic movement so hit and cardio are more about your system as a whole rather than about the muscles themselves with strength training and circuit training the demands are intermittent to different muscle groups so you're limited by muscle not your heart rate whereas in cardio you're limited by your heart rate not your muscles a study looked at the differences between traditional strength training versus circuit training alternating upper and lower body exercises so in the group that did the traditional strength training they rested in between exercises and what they found was that their heart rate Peaks around 115 to 120 beats per minute and then the heart rate dropped significantly during the rest period to 100 to 110 beats per minute so it did stay elevated but to a much lower degree however in the circuit group they found an overall higher heart rate throughout the session about 130 beats per minute and it stayed pretty constant throughout the whole session so we need more studies on this but the authors suggest that this way of training this circuit training could be an effect way to combine strength and cardiovascular training in a really time efficient manner so all that to say circuit training will provide better cardiovascular adaptations than traditional strength training but it may not be optimizing your V2 Max and cardiovascular adaptations it can be a great kind of catchall if you're very time limited and you want to get the benefits of strength training and get some cardiovascular benefits at the same time so given all of this information how much strength training and cardio should you do so the World Health Organization recommends aerobic activity and strength training each week so when it comes to aerobic activity they recommend 150 to 300 minutes of moderate of like to moderate intensity cardio per week or 75 to 150 minutes of vigorous activity per week so that's your cardio and then they also recommend at least two strength training sessions per week targeting major muscle groups I will say that I strongly recommend more than two strength training sessions per week as this probably isn't enough to stimulate hypertrophy or muscle growth depending on the program of course but again you're getting that at least 150 minutes of like to moderate intensity cardio and strength training so does this mean that strength training can count as some of your cardio minutes when it comes to the World Health Organization recommendation they're saying also so keyword also so this indicates that it's meant to be done in addition to your aerobic activity not as an alternative so in short no you do need both strength training and cardio so you may be asking yourself this is a lot of information what do I do with all of this information should I do circuit training or should I do more traditional strength training I'm hearing that I do need to do the cardio probably in addition but where what should I prioritize for optimal hypertrophy results or muscle growth results it's probably best to take breaks if you notice yourself very fatigued and you notice that your fatigue and your cardiovascular fatigue is inhibiting the quality of set because again we want the muscle to be the limiting factor when we're strength training not your cardiovascular uh capacity for example if you notice that you can do far less reps on set two than you could on set one when you were fresh you could probably afford to take a break that's kind of what I notice when I'm working out is if I'm like okay whoa in set one I could do 15 really good reps and then in set two I could only do six this must mean that I have accumulated quite a bit of fatigue I could have forward to take a break so that I can get a higher quality set again when we're strength training we're focused on muscle not how tired you are not on your cardiovascular load or your cardiovascular demand so if your cardio is holding you back from getting high quality load to the muscles take breaks and this is something that we encourage in our EO classes all the time even though we are a circuit style training if you notice you're being limited by your heart rate go ahead and take a break however you can still see great results from doing circuit training without breaking and this is how we train depending on the class if you feel like you're not limited by your heart rate you might not need to take a break in between exercises or in between sets I tend to take more breaks in something like lower body where the systemic stress is more so you your heart rate gets up high with lower body lifts because they're just larger muscles so I do tend to take more breaks when I am taking lower body but again you can kind of adjust this if you're noticing I'm not being limited by my heart rate um I'm still being limited by the muscle then you might not need to take a break and doing circuit training can kind of help you keep your workouts a little shorter and a little more time efficient I like to say don't overthink this it is interesting that there are slightly better benefits from circuit style training but we do want to divide our strength training from our cardio we do want to separate them for the most part strength training has some cardio benefits but it really doesn't fully replace cardio because it affects your cardiovascular system from different mechanisms while circuit training can provide some cardiovascular benefits and help maintain a decent V2 Max it really shouldn't be your only tool if optimal cardiovascular health is the goal like I said I am mainly doing you know walking some steady state classes and ELO and it's helping me maintain an above average BO2 Max which is kind of where my goal is at least right now the research shows that even though your heart rate stays elevated during circuit training the adaptations are just different than they are from traditional cardio or hit because of how that elevation occurs circuit training creates mainly local muscular and metabolic adaptations while dedicated cardio creates more comprehensive cardiovascular improvements particularly in heart function and oxygen delivery so for the average person just looking to kind of maintain good health and fitness a combined approach makes the most sense circuit training is an excellent time efficient way to get both strength and cardiovascular benefits but including some dedicated cardio so some hit and set state will provide better over overall cardiovascular adaptations so shoot for those 150 minutes of cardio alongside your strength training routine the good news is you don't need to have Elite level cardiovascular fitness for the health benefits being moderately above average for your age group through regular exercise appears to provide most of the health and quality of life benefits the key is finding something that's sustainable where you can both resistance drain and do some form of dedicated cardio hope this was helpful we will see you all next week same time same place bye for now