When I talked about the virtues of cardio training, the major advantage I hit on was the ability of cardio training to burn upwards of 300 calories in 30 minutes! I mentioned that anything much more than that would begin forcing your body to start devouring your muscle tissue. The obvious question is then:

Why not just do all cardio training and skip the weights?

To be truthful, it’s not a bad sounding idea right? Burn tons of calories, gain a sleek physique… But this plan has a hidden dark side. Studies have shown that while your body burns calories like a runaway freight training during cardio training, within 30 minutes of exercising your body returns to its normal baseline caloric consumption.

Yeah, so?

So your baseline caloric consumption is made up of a number of factors, one of them being the amount of muscle your body has to work to maintain. In other words the more muscle you have, the more calories you are constantly burning, even when you’re just sitting around, or even sleeping! Basically, you’re getting hit with a double whammy, you’re no longer burning calories from your workout, and your baseline calorie burn has been diminished, so that anything you eat has a much greater chance of being converted into fat.

Studies have shown on the other hand, that weightlifting produces a calorie burn which maintains itself for up to 36 hours after working out! This sustained burn is a result of the body having to work to rebuild and strengthen muscles that you worked. The more muscles you work, the greater the burn. This means that you burn calories while working out, continue to have residual burn from your work out long after, and your increasing your baseline caloric consumption due to the muscle mass you’ve added! All of this adds up to significant weight loss!

So I should ditch the cardio and go straight to weight lifting?

There are a lot of weight loss books and programs designed around that very concept, yes. However, weightlifting won’t lead to a faster mile time, or keep you from sucking wind during a round of ultimate frisbee. If you’re looking to lose weight fast and permanently, look to weightlifting to give you long lasting results. If you want to be able to go out and enjoy that new body you’ve worked hard to create, don’t forget to mix in a cardio routine as well.

Just like every other aspect of life, exercising needs balance. Too much cardio and you’re going to hamper your weight loss attempts, too much lifting and you won’t be able to do much other than look good in the gym.

My personal recommendation is to do one of the following:

• Circuit training like I’ve posted here
• Add some cardio training at the end of weightlifting
• Alternate days of weightlifting and cardio training

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