With all the buzz around our new Industrial Strength class (starting this Friday at 5pm) I thought this comparison of Strength vs. Cardio would be helpful.
When it comes to losing fat and maintaining a healthy weight, which is best? To get the body you want, should you spend more time doing cardio or lifting weights?
Both are important, but each type of exercise will affect your body differently. To initially get weight off, interval training is the best cardio workout for jump-starting your body to burn fat.
But to easily maintain a healthy weight, it is important to add strength training. Without it, up to 25% of your weight loss can come from lost muscle, rather than fat.
While Foundations and Afterburn both fall more into the “cardio” and “interval” categories, Industrial Strength adds muscle-toning moves that will increase strength and muscle endurance. With our small group personal training programs, you will build muscle mass much more quickly. And more muscle means more change in your body mass – from fat to lean.
Having more muscle is critical to losing fat and keeping weight off.
Think about this formula: 1 pound of muscle burns 35-50 calories. It takes about 1 year for a woman to build 10 pounds of muscle, lifting for 45 minutes, 3 days/week. That’s
2 1/4 hours per week. After that year, with 10 additional pounds of muscle, she is burning 350 to 500 calories more per day than before she started lifting weights. That’s 3500 calories per week (or more!), which equals 1 pound of fat. The woman who gained 10 pounds of muscle mass is now losing a pound of fat per week!
With cardio, you burn between 10 and 12 calories per minute. To lose a pound a week with cardio, you would have to do the exercise for 292 to 350 minutes, about 4 3/4 to 6 hours per week. And you will likely lose some muscle with the fat, so you will have to keep up the weekly pace if you want to maintain your weight.
A balance of cardio and strength training are what we offer at O3, so you can get your body to “lean and mean” and keep it there.
