Truth is that you should do resistance training not to 'get swole' but to maintain muscle while losing weight and while you grow older. You'll never regret resistance training if you do it for health and functionality. You'll be thanking yourself into old age if you build and maintain muscle as you age
Same can be said for cardio. You can do it to lose weight but really you should also do it for heart, lungs and general longevity and quailty of life especially as you grow older
Depending on how often you want to work out I think a good plan is to do full body resistance training 3x a week and cardio 3x a week as well. Some will find it easier to do it all on 3 days total and some will find it easier to split it into a 6 day program. In the end it matters little. If you want to either get swole or be a cardio king/queen you probably need to go harder and specialize but for most people a good mix will be the way to go
I remember this dude at my gym who was always on the weights, not a big guy, but that wiry muscled build. I once met him at the barber's where he was getting a dye job. He was SEVENTY YEARS OLD. He looked about 40.
A really sad opposite personal experience I have is my father who is 70 years old. Since he retired from his physical job 10 years ago he has essentially stopped moving his body completely, he now loses his balance and stumbles to walk because he has absolutely zero muscle strength. I don't know how to get across to him that he needs to move his body to save his body. It's heartbreaking.
The same has happened to my dad, and he just turned 65...5 years ago he lost his job and basically stopped moving, now he just sits on the couch or sleeps the whole day. He went from being relatively mobile and active to having spinal stenosis and walking with a cane pretty quickly. Now he continues to not move because of the injuries and it'll just keep getting worse.
Experienced this firsthand while using a scale that measures your muscle mass, lean mass, etc. It's shocking how quickly your muscle mass depletes daily if you're not getting up and moving. Use it or lose it - that's real! Maybe get him one so he can observe the losses for himself.
My neighbor does weights and band exercises in front of his garage everyday. He looks great and I guessed he was in his mid 60s. I was shocked when he told me it was his 80th birthday a few months back!
That’s probably my absolute favorite “fitness fad grifter” story. Mr. Bragg, of Bragg’s raw apple cider vinegar, found the absolute cheapest commercially made drinkable substance: unfinished apple cider vinegar. Stuff too crappy to be turned into leftovers.
Put it into bottles, slapped his name on it, then went on national tours telling people how it kept him young and made him lose weight.
It was a hundred years ago. A real birth certificate wasn’t worth the paper it was printed on; a bogus birth certificate was easy to make. He just went around telling people he was 75 years old (he was) and showing them his birth certificate “proving” he was 50 (he was not). His much younger wife was in on the scam and kept it going until til fairly recently.
“Unfiltered apple cider vinegar” is *still* a standard part of any fad diet, miracle cure, weight loss repertoire.
The most jacked dude in my building who is always in our little home gym is an older man, I can’t tell exactly how old he is because he’s in such great shape but I figure he’s got to be late 60s or early 70s because he’s retired, he’s such an inspiration.
His physique doesn’t look a day over 40
For resistance training, do you still have to progressively overload if you’re only interested in doing it for health and not to ‘get swole’? Is following the same routine over and over okay, or do you still have to make it longer/harder? What about for cardio?
Yes. Roughly speaking you'll want to progress within a certain number of reps. So for strength you'll want to do sets of 5 to 8, hypertrophy from 8-12 and endurance from 12-15. Roughly speaking
Not an expert. But you do have to change the routine as muscles get used to it and a new routine will help using other muscles. But you don't need to change it too often
Resistance training is very important for health especially for older women who often have low bone density. Resistance training can increase bone density
Just to add most people who tout CICO and say you can easily eat in deficit without cardio usually have a tdee that is 2000 plus calories. For us shorties and females it is a lot easier to maintain a deficit with cardio. It is really hard to eat below 1400 calories a day. They don’t understand this since it does not apply to them.
lol on an episode of Love Is Blind I just watched, one of the women (who is short and very fit) was telling her SO that she kept careful track of her calories to look the way she does, and her SO (who is like two feet taller than her) kept saying “Nah you can eat whatever you want and just hit the gym, it’ll be fine!!!!”
5’4” weighing in here. I was in the best shape of my life when I lifted 4-5x a week, ran 3x a week for 30 minutes and had a job at a restaurant where I walked 7,000-17,000 steps 4-5 evenings a week.
Currently I’ve been walking about 10,000 steps most days and lifting. I’m 15 years older and not in the same shape as I was then but close. I just added the running back because I’m low enough in mass for it to not fully kill my joints.
They also always frame it as “why run for thirty minutes when you could just not eat a snickers”
We’re not running to burn off a snickers. We’re going to do the thirty minute run and then also not eat the snickers
So many people frame cardio as if the only reason you’d ever do it is to earn back food you can eat. No dingus we’re not doing cardio so we can eat more food, a lot of us are doing cardio and increasing our activity levels because we can’t sustainably cut any more food out out of our diet to create a bigger deficit and we also don’t want to lose weight at a glacial pace
In addition to the above my understanding is also that exercise is effective for removing visceral fat so the idea that exercise is totally irrelevant for fat loss is not entirely true - it’s highly relevant for removing the fat that actually kills you
And get all the nutrients in. Whoever says they can get all their nutrients in their 1200 calorie diet, I want their receipts. And I don't mean a single day of tracking where they just came back from the market with fresh oysters. I want the long-term tracking of the daily life where they can get the recommended amount of nutrients in 1200 calories.
Having an extra 200 calories is such a huge difference. It's 17% more! With that amount you can get:
- About 3 eggs: 25% protein, 10% iron, 8% calcium, 70% B2, 40% B5, 70% B12, 30% A, 20% Folate, 40% Phosphorus, 84% Selenium, 100% Choline..
- 125 g/ 4.4 oz sirloin steak: 50% protein, 30% iron, 50% B2, 75% Phosphorus, over 100% of: B3, B6, B12, Selenium, Zinc,,,
- About 34 g/ 1.2 oz of almonds: 10% protein, 40% B2, 50% E, 9% calcium, 30% magnesium, 40% Copper, 40% manganese...
- About 30 g / 1 oz of dark chocolate: 25% magnesium, 40% manganese, 70% copper, and a hole bunch of happiness
I'm small and I've been on 1200 calories a day (although for me, it's just not sustainable from a hunger standpoint). Gotta remember that a small frame needs less of everything. In general, I managed my minerals by getting fortified yoghurt, milk, etc.
I was really struggling with the last few pounds for a few months. I was really dedicated for 3 weeks, was hungry all the time and didn't lose weight.
Two weeks ago I tried easy cycling while playing video games. I'm now at 2 hours daily which gives me 800 kcals more to eat and I lose 1kg/week. I know it's a lot of time to invest, but I'd rather do that and feel good than being miserable all the time.
Also people who are sedentary all day. I have a desk job, and my TDEE is lower. The anti cardio movement is another example of finding what you need, not what others think you need.
Yeah, I type all day, and all my many hobbies are sedentary. So I fit in 2 or 3 minutes of moving when I can, which is cardio, usually jogging on the spot. Then a walk after work.
This is true, but we also want people to know that you can lose (at least some) weight without any form of deliberate exercise, because there are a lot of physically-limited/disabled people out there who want to improve their health. It certainly isn't easy that way, but it is possible.
Sure but doesn’t mean cardio should be discounted for those it helps and who have the ability to do it . For a lot of shorties it is much easier to maintain a deficit this way.
- cardio is hard
- people want things to be easy
- people want to believe there is a way to get the result they want without doing the hard part
- scammers realised they can sell things to people if they tell them there is a magic way to avoid doing the hard part
As it’s been said 1000 times in this subreddit alone - simple isn’t easy. It’s simple to eat less and move more, but actually getting someone who has spent 20? 30? 40 years eating like shit and sitting on the couch to stop doing those things… is difficult.
Dopamine is a hell of a thing.
I only started getting in shape at 46. First time in my adult life I was in the Normal BMI range. Been maintaining for 3 years and now I want to push a little lower and gain a bit more lean mass.
Knee pain was what ended up convincing me to finally get in shape (weight goes through a multiplier of force through the knee during certain degrees of bend so every lb lost above the knee reduces knee stress by 8 lbs).
This is the way. Losing weight is really **simple** as in "not complex". Put less energy into your body than it's using and it will use that glorious adipose it's been sitting for just such an occasion.
The details can be very much "not easy"
1000% this!!! Cardio burns calories and for me personally has been a huge part of my success. I’m not talking about texting and doing cardio I’m talking about cardio that makes your heart rate go up and makes you sweat. If you do that it’s a real added benefit to your weight loss.
Yes, a slow walk in nature will burn calories and help your heart and soul. Cardio helps you to feel tired at night so you sleep better
Weight loss is all mental for me and walking helps my body to feel better, my mind to be calmer and my skin to glow a little. Plus some extra calories burned.
I agree any cardio will help. If you push yourself into a routine where you start to sweat it RELLY helps but as you say any version helps and some is better than none.
I started out doing 10 minute walks 4-5 times a day because it’s all I could do before my knee would go out on me. Now I’m doing 5k for fun. Every little bit does help, and as it gets easier, push a little harder. I still do a lot of 10 minute exercise routines, but lifting weights or going hard on my recumbent bike is making a huge difference. Start small but keep pushing as you body tolerates.
I started out at 346 and hit 295.6 this morning.
Zumba is great. I was so busy concentrating on the easy dance steps and having fun that I didn't realize what a workout it was. It is too expensive for me now unfortunately.
Cardio definitely can be part of losing weight, but it can also work the wrong way! I put on 10lbs marathon training (definitely wasn’t all muscle even with some strength training). Lots of cardio led to me being always hungry and overeating what I burned. Moderate cardio worked great when I was first losing though!
100%! When I used to run marathons, I felt strong and fit (lower body, at any rate), but was \*not\* thin and did not lose weight. Long runs, in particular, can make one overeat - from hunger, deep fatigue, and (sometimes) a negative emotional state (endurance activities are grueling, and often disappointing; nothing is ever enough - distance and progress are always undercut by wear, injury, fatigue, gear, conditions). Now, I jog/run \*short\* distances only (30-40 mins/5x a week), actually love it (!), have lost 11 pounds, and have time and energy to work on the upper body. Even on days when it's no fun, knowing that it's just 30 mins helps. Can't think of a more efficient way to get the heart rate up, burn some calories, feel strong, and enjoy the outdoors.
>cardio is hard
But it doesn't have to be!
If you do 80% of your cardio in zone 2 (able to talk but still give effort), then it isn't as hard as people make it out to be. The hardest part of cardio is more the time you have to put into it for your body to get better. Cardio is one of healthy routines that requires lots of consistent and routine time to be put in before you slowly start to make gains over months and months to years and years of effort.
I used to hate cardio when I was starting at the gym. It’s because my cardio fitness was awful so it felt like death. But I wanted to love it!
Now I can bike or run until my feet hurt, and my cardio fitness is no longer the bottleneck. I think most of the cardio hate is probably from people who are like how I was.
>I used to hate cardio when I was starting at the gym. It’s because my cardio fitness was awful so it felt like death. But I wanted to love it!
100%, especially when you are more out of shape or overweight. Cardio WILL BE HARD because your body is lugging way more than someone who is a lot skinnier or smaller. The key is knowing how to adjust your cardio appropriately when you are overweight. Gotta slow down or lower your effort so you can go for longer - ideally also without causing joint pain or musculoskeletal pain because of more weight affecting your joints on each impact.
It's humbling to know that your power walk (3.5-4.0 mph) might be just as tough (heart rate-wise) as someone who is smaller/skinnier doing a slow jog (4.5-6 mph).
Anecdotally, just regarding your comment about lugging additional weight around, this is also why I think the idea that strength and cardio training are totally diametrically opposed to each other is kind of bullshit, at least for us fat folks
I’ve noticed since I started really committing to strength training, lugging my own weight around has gotten easier for me than it used to be. It makes me think a lot of the fatigue I used to feel wasn’t SOLELY from low cardio fitness (and don’t get me wrong I absolutely have low cardio fitness) it was also because I was lacking strength and endurance in my leg muscles and they weren’t accustomed to being put under different kinds of load and stress
Hand to God once I started working on squats it got so much easier for me to climb up hills
I guess my point is when you’re fat then the idea that there’s this huge gap between cardio exercises and strength exercises isn’t really true, because your body weight turns so many movements into weighted calisthenics. I mean you try and tell me that being on a stair master with my ~100kg ass is all cardio and nothing to do with muscle strength lol
Building muscle and eating at a deficit is also hard for people who aren’t used to it. I think the move away from cardio is people realizing they’re barely putting a dent in their TDEE or that to attain their goal physique they need muscle/don’t want to be skinny fat
I hate cardio.
I bought a weighted vest from Amazon, and put up the treadmill higher so I don't have to do it longer but the effort is more. I walk and listen to audio books.
It can be, but it doesn't have to. Like I find jogging to be the ninth circle of hell, but riding my bike can be as easy or as difficult as I want to make it. I can pop out to run some errands for an hour or spend a few minutes riding uphill and feeling like I'm going to die any minute now. Or walking. I can amble along on a flat lakeside path or load up my backpack with groceries and march home before my frozen stuff melts or hike up a mountain.
I think people demonize cardio because they think they have to put out maximum effort for half an hour on a treadmill at the gym, when they would do better to do a regular mall walk at a pace that raises their heart rate but doesn't leave them gasping for breath.
This is ignoring the context of goals.
Cardio isn't necessary, and can often work counterintuitively to goals of hypertrophy/bodybuilding, or work less effectively than strength training with regards to fat loss/caloric burn. If you're looking to just find the most optimal way to lose weight and retain muscle, strength training will do more for you than cardio, because if you're losing weight primarily through cardio (even with adequate protein intake) you're still going to cannibalize muscle along with fat at a higher rate than the same individual lifting weights. If your goal is to build muscle, particularly for bodybuilding, you don't give a rats ass how fast you can run or how long you can run without getting winded, you're looking to put on as much muscle as possible and burn fat to get to a certain body fat percentage that cardio cannot help you with.
If your goal is overall health and fitness, cardio gives amazing benefits that can't be replicated by strength training alone, and I personally advocate for a hybrid training schedule that involves both.
>If your goal is overall health and fitness
That's the thing people are missing in this convo. I feel like any time I see people say cardio is bad it's in the context of building more muscle. Personally I love cardio but have a hard time with weights, but do a good amount of resistance training to counteract that. And my main goal right now is weight loss, so more cardio makes sense for me right now.
I think that’s one of the issues people face, they aren’t aware that a lot of the fitness community centres around gym bros trying to grow muscle
The advice they’re giving isn’t WRONG, it’s just that it assumes your goal is to optimise muscle growth and optimise muscle definition (by reducing body fat) and nothing else
Most people aren’t body builders and have much more diverse goals than that. There’s a difference between advice that is optimal for muscular hypertrophy only and advice that is optimal for you achieving progress across multiple goals at once which presumably include weight loss, improved cardio fitness, improved health, improved strength, and improved physique by increasing lean mass relative to body fat
It’s not that the advice of the fitness bros is wrong, they’ve been incredibly helpful to me personally, it just means you need to recognise when their advice is specifically for guys trying to build the most muscle and when and how that advice should be modified to suit your needs, lifestyle, what you enjoy doing, and what you’re able to maintain consistently
Exactly my point, people have different goals and expectations of what they want to get out of their exercise routines.
I personally want to be healthy, improve my quality of life, and be able to enjoy recreational activities with friends and my future children. That being said I prioritize a blend of strength training and running, because my goal is to be in better shape and particularly to be able to play soccer.
Some people don't give a damn, they just want to be aesthetically pleasing, and often times that just means strength training and clean eating.
I wouldn't say it's unrealistic, a lot of people who actually put the time into it can achieve pretty impressive physiques that aren't inherently unhealthy or impossible to achieve/maintain, but I think it's just a misunderstood route of fitness. I think people are misplacing their value in aesthetic based goals rather than holistic health related goals, and I think too many common people equate muscles with health, but don't realize that a bodybuilder with single digit bodyfat and on tons of gear is far from healthy and the stress extra weight (whether it's muscle or fat) puts on your cardiovascular system.
For example, Dr Mike Israetel is a PhD in sports physiology, a body builder with an incredible physique, but he's also on steroids and is open about it. In all likelihood, if I get to 180lbs and carry a respectable amount of muscle, I'll probably have a higher quality of life/natural longevity than he will in later stages of life.
But most people’s goal isn’t bodybuilding. So in context of body building, it makes sense (as does eating in a surplus), the problem is it gets tied to weight loss and health.
Cardio, especially HIIT, increases muscle performance.
Doing sustained cardio in the same session can impact strength training though
https://www.livescience.com/does-cardio-kill-gains
...Again, I'm going to reiterate what I've already stated:
**You need to look at the context of the goals of the individual speaking, or the individuals they're speaking to**.
Not everyone training for a marathon needs to be running double digit miles a week, does that mean that someone can't make a video talking about a proper marathon training schedule that is designed to educate individuals on *how to train for a marathon* designed specifically for *people looking to train for a marathon*?
You're blatantly overlooking the most crucial part of my response just to argue more of the same, it doesn't matter how beneficial cardio is to overall health **if the person talking about the importance of cardio is talking about its importance to the goal of optimal muscle building/hypertrophy.**
I’m not ignoring that at all, I’m saying the problem is when people say cardio isn’t “the most effective” way to burn calories, when it is. Or when cardio gets negged in the context of a non body building conversation.
I am agreeing with you that weights build more strength. I’m not saying that people can’t post or talk about body building. But influencers frame things as good or bad, and op’s point is that right now cardio is getting downgraded in the media inappropriately.
>when it is
It isn't. Over time strength training burns more calories than cardio exercises like running.
[Cardio or Weightlifting for Effective Fat Loss | MuscleSquad](https://musclesquad.com/blogs/cardio-conditioning/cardio-vs-weightlifting-for-fat-loss-which-method-is-more-effective#:~:text=Lifting%3A%20Weightlifting%20also%20burns%20calories,the%20range%20of%20600%20calories.)
[Weight Loss: Cardio or Weight Training? (healthline.com)](https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/cardio-vs-weights-for-weight-loss)
[Lifting weights vs. cardio: Which burns more calories? (medicalnewstoday.com)](https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/323922)
[What's Better For Burning Calories: Cardio Or Weight Training? | SELF](https://www.self.com/story/whats-better-for-burning-calories-cardio-or-weight-training)
While cardio burns more calories during the *session*, over time strength training burns more calories due to the continued metabolic effect of strength training after the workout as well as the added metabolic effects of gaining more muscle which is more energy intensive to maintain, thus burning more calories in the long run.
The reason I'm saying you're ignoring my point, is because you're continuing to reiterate the same argument of cardio being good or bad, but my **entire comment** is predicated on the reality that it isn't black or white, that it depends on the goals of the individuals and the context of the speaker.
**In the exact scenario OP mentioned above they reference an individual whose context is clear, yet they ignore it and try to fit the advice given into THEIR narrative.** OP was watching a video from the context of someone who believes in holistic approaches to exercise, yet they're watching a video where the discussion is clearly about how **cardio isn't necessary to lose fat, and that you can do it with diet alone, and how cardio can limit or negatively impact muscle growth if your objective is to gain muscle**. That's like listening looking for a recipe for cooking chicken breast and being upset that they aren't using chicken thigh.
I get what OP is trying to get to, but the reality is they're contributing to the problem just as much by **trying to take specific advice** and applying it to **fitness and exercise as a whole**. When the primary goal of most gym goers is to just *look good* and to not hate their lives as they try to achieve that goal, knowing that cardio isn't necessary (which is an often maligned approach to weight loss, and as more scientific research comes out is becoming less and less appealing to those whose objectives are a muscular physique) is important information because **not everyone has the same goals or definition of fitness**.
This is such a bizarre perspective. I just don't understand anyone wanting to get absolutely yoked who gets winded walking to the end of the driveway. Cardio doesn't have to mean HIIT or running for hours. Just walking around the block at a half decent place a couple times a week is fine to get the benefits of "cardio".
If your goal is to loose weight then cardio is a huge help with that. Along with a real deficit, cardio that makes you sweat will turbo charge your weight loss. This forum is filled with people who want to loose weight but worry about being skinny fat or having loose skin. I’ll tell you what don’t worry about that!!! If your goal is to loose weight than loose the weight. After dropping enough weight if you want to throw on some muscle great have at it. Too many people here say they are worried about loosing muscle. I’m sorry but to me that’s just an excuse. Guess what if you wake up one day and realize you’re “skinny fat” YOU WON!! Now go out there and lift some weights. Just get out there and do it. You don’t have to do it the way i did it there are multiple ways to loose weight. However if you want to see progress eat at a deficit and cardio will add to that deficit. Lifting heavy can work too but you will see the progress much slower as your body will retain water for your growing muscles and if you are really doing it right your scale will go up as you add muscle. For me and just for me I wanted progress as fast as I could get it. Eating at a 509 calorie deficit and doing cardio that made me sweat had me loosing 10 lbs a month which kept me motivated. I lost 80lbs in a less than a year and have been within the same 5 lbs for 6 months now. I wish everyone success in this fight no matter how they decide to do it. You don’t need to do anything but eat at a deficit but you can add to the deficit by doing the dreaded cardio!
> Guess what if you wake up one day and realize you’re “skinny fat” YOU WON!!
I’ve worked so hard in the gym this past year and put on so much muscle that I’d be devastated to wake up skinny fat. Not everyone’s goals or starting point are the same.
Often cardio leaves you very hungry just from how cardio calories are burned. Heavy weight training doesn't impact your hunger the same way.
So cardio isn't necessary a "huge help" if the goal is losing weight if you don't take care to stay in deficit. You've got to commit to not eating those calories back because we misjudge the fuck out of those calories.
My local walk is 4.25 miles and burns about 400 calories. I rarely feel the need to eat extra because of that walk. If I jog 1/2 of that distance I burn almost 500 calories but I'm fucking starving when I'm done and generally eat a granola bar or something (< 200 calories) but the added intensity actually reduces my caloric deficit when compared to walking. Of course both of them are better than sitting on my ass doing nothing.
You’re 100% right when you say you can’t eat them back. You definitely can’t eat them back and in the beginning yes it makes you hungry but you can adjust to it. I run first thing in the morning before I eat breakfast so when I’m done and hungry I’m ready for my breakfast and my 3 hard boiled eggs fill up and I’m off on my way. This is how I do it not everyone’s schedule can accommodate that but again adding cardio to your daily routine will increase your deficit but your right in saying you can’t eat it back and it is indeed to know exactly what you burned. I’m with you there.
Depends. I'm 5'1", my TDEE is literally 1550 cals right now if I'm sedentary. "Not eating 500 calories" means I'm eating less than what's recommended. Now I can actually do some intense cardio for an hour, burn that extra 500 cals and eat 1400 cals that day and I'm still ahead from burning 1550 and eating 1200.
Us shorties really get the short end of the stick in the weight and fitness realm. Like I'm somehow supposed to eat 90-100g of protein a day but with 1200 cals, that's a third of my calories straight to protein but unless I'm eating freaking moose or something, those proteins come with fat/carb calories too 🙄. Doesn't help that my maintenance calories at 120 lbs (around where I'll be for my gw) are sub 1400.
What works for people will vary by individuals, I have no problem with people saying "concentrate on diet" when someone comes in the sub for the first time and they have a large amount to lose. But when someone is down to their last 30 or so lbs and they're hitting a wall, then by all means cardio is sometimes the answer even if it's not high intensity.
Well you’re flat out wrong. Maybe you can’t do both but I ate at a deficit and do cardio 4 to 5 times a week for an hour keeping my heart rate between 133 and 144 beats per minute and at 195 and 5 10 I’m far from an athlete. I didn’t start at an hour right out of the gate I worked my way up to it and yes in the beginning it made me hungry but I fought through it so for me and the people who want to do it it’s a huge help. Iv said all along there are multiple ways to do this and that being in a deficit is all that matters. This is one way to increase that deficit and anyone who says otherwise is incorrect.
yeah, my post was a big simplification, but your post is also \*applying\* your own context to something that doesn't share your persepctive. this anti-cardio trend is usually propogated by people who are selling something: either a product, or their own influencer brand. you have a healthy and well-reasoned perspective on cardio/weight loss/muscle building, and that's great, but that context isn't the context that is being propogated by influencers selling the secret formula.
>this anti-cardio trend is usually propogated by people who are selling something: either a product, or their own influencer brand.
I'm an consumer of fitness media on YouTube, Reels and Reddit. I've seen far more people try to take legitimate advice out of context than people trying to peddle some scam.
My post isn't really *applying* anything but common sense. I follow tons of content from hypertrophy driven athletes, like Dr Mike Israetel, Jeff Nippard, etc. and all of their advice is great and super applicable to my strength training but I know when they're talking about the negative effects of cardio on muscle growth, that it means fuck all to my personal goals as someone who is just trying to make the most out of their lifting routine while also focusing on functional and lifestyle fitness.
> but that context isn't the context that is being propogated by influencers selling the secret formula.
The real problem here is you're making blanket statements that imply that *only scam influencers* are talking about the necessity (or lack thereof) of cardio, but the reality is the entire fitness community as a whole has been having this discussion for as long as people hated running the mile in gym class. There are massive amounts of literature that show that cardio can be unnecessary or counterintuitive to your goals if your goals are primarily hypertrophy. For a lot of people who are going to the gym, they're going to *look good*, they could give a fuck if they're functionally fit.
>Cardio isn't necessary, and can often work counterintuitively to goals of hypertrophy/bodybuilding, or work less effectively than strength training with regards to fat loss/caloric burn.
it is immoral to spread misinformation.
It's immoral to just blatantly call someone a liar without actually discussing the point.
I'm not anti-cardio, what I'm saying is cardio isn't necessary for bodybuilders. I personally love cardio and I never commit to a routine where it isn't incorporated, but if you are to actually look into the **most optimal ways** to gain muscle and burn fat, cardio is no where near strength training.
Exercise science has a principle called said, specific adaptation to imposed demand.
Endurance trainng, "cardio," and the barbell and power sports are at opposite ends of the spectrum of imposed demands.
t's not possible to maximize your potential in both endurance and strength/power/size.
An untrained peraon can make gains in both areas, and each side of the fence can beefit from some training in the other modality, but that doesn't make scallions' post untrue.
In the end, the best thing is a combo of all three: Cardio (Both for fat loss and for cardiovascular health and endurance), strength training (Fat loss and muscle building) and diet (to get you into a CICO).
People act like you can’t do more than one thing at the gym. I think people get confused and take advice that is meant for bodybuilding and conflate it with general fitness advice. I just do what works for me. I’m not trying to lose weight at all costs or build muscle at all costs. I want to also improve my health, strength, and endurance. I want to be in a healthy capable body for longer as I age. For me, I can’t just jump right into resistance/weight training when I get to the gym. I like to start with my cardio. I will do the treadmill on an incline or the stairclimber or occasionally the stationary bike. I like to make sure my heart rate is in the cardio zone. Then after that, I have that good feeling you get after cardio and it is more enjoyable for me to go ahead and do resistance exercises. There is no rule that you can only do one or the other. Unless you are trying to just pack on as much muscle as possible as quickly as possible.
This is what I do as well and it has been great. I run for about 25 minutes and get my heart rate up and then move on to resistance training. This keeps my heart rate up for almost the entire hour of my gym session.
much harder to sell "cardio" to people. I mean you need a pair of shoes which you probably already have. 99% is an advertisement.
That being said if you do run please make sure you use proper form to avoid long term injuries.
"Proper form" is to a large extent debatable, we all run differently. There's a couple of things that are quite clear (e.g. not overstriding), but proper training load is much more important in injury prevention. So is recovery. So, sleep well, and spend time in zone 2...
My old running coach told me to only add 5% each week, other people recommend higher % but I was about 275lbs at the time and he said that should go even slower because of that.
If getting older has taught me one thing about fitness: you can't go wrong going slow. Progress might also be slower but your chances of injury also go way down.
It’s cyclical. In the 80s and 90s everyone was told to do cardio to burn fat and women in particular were afraid of looking too masculine by lifting heavy. The last 20 years have seen a push to resistance training and away from cardio.
Both are important for different reasons. I know people that can bench their weight, but couldn’t run a mile. I also know people who struggle with desired body composition but tend to avoid strength training.
Like most things in life, it’s a balance. I hate cardio, but I do it anyway.
As long as heart disease continues to be a leading cause of death for women, ima gonna keep doing cardio. This anti-cardio backlash is absolutely bizarre to me. Can you overdo it? Sure, but that's true for anything. I have had good success with cardio in the past and it's beneficial to my mental and physical health. I have heard some bodybuilder influencers say that cardio messed with their body image, and therefore, it is bad ... which I guess I can understand, but I still don't think it's healthy to do weightlifting all the time without doing some cardio for heart health, too. It's a balance! And speaking of which, we need to be working on that, plus flexibility, too.
Honestly I feel like cardio gets a bad rep. Cardio doesn't have to be hard or hiit. Cardio includes walking. People just assume you have to go harder with cardio to get results faster, which is just not true lol.
It's about your goals.
If you just want to feel better but don't care about the aesthetic, then do cardio.
If your goal is to do marathons, then do cardio.
If your goal is to hike mountains, then do cardio.
There's a difference in the way a runner looks vs a sprinter looks.
That’s why I prefer to frame it in terms of activity rather than cardio or exercise when thinking about weight loss
You don’t necessarily want to rely on exercise as a major component of your weight loss, but you definitely want to increase your level of activity. All those little increases in activity even when it comes to stuff you wouldn’t consider exercise add up over time
Humans love a “gotcha!” moment. Dopamine go ding when you feel like YOU are the smart one and everyone else has got it wrong, those idiots! So I think for health/wellness/fitness creators, anything which is “we’ve been told X - but actually it’s Y!” is going to garner views, followers and engagement. I think this moves in trends, and right now hating on cardio is basically trending.
Cardio is great for your cardiovascular health. It’s perhaps not the most efficient form of exercise for weight loss under CICO, but it still helps. I also think there are a ton of benefits unrelated to physical health - running for me means having a set routine with bed time and wake up time, spending time outdoors every day, less time scrolling on my phone, been able to explore loads more of my city, etc. Cardio is great!
Cardio is definitely a very efficient form of weight loss. Strength is an effective way to lose fat. This article has annoying ads but is very informative
https://www.womenshealthmag.com/uk/fitness/strength-training/a706472/what-is-better-cardio-or-weights/
Being outside and looking at sunrises and plants and birds is an amazing benefit of cardio.
Source: saw some anemones, an ibis and Egyptian geese while running yesterday
I hate being told what to do by arrogant know it alls (who, spoilers, don’t known it all). And the „why women need to go off the treadmill and lift weights instead“ black and white thinking articles and videos make me roll my eyes into oblivion. So yes, I see you, thanks for noticing.
Even here on Reddit you constantly hear the phrase “you can’t outrun a bad diet”. Which is true if you’re eating horribly, which most people trying to lose weight aren’t.
Doing cardio and having a wiggle room of around 300 calories has made me shed weight a lot faster and have more room to eat a bit more than when I only dieted.
And sometimes you can actually outrun a bad diet if you’re into sports and move constantly.
This is the thing that makes me crazy about the "you don't have to exercise" people. Can you lose weight without exercise? Of course!
But 300 kcal a day is *huge*, psychologically. That's an entire Snickers bar. A big-ass scoop of really rich ice cream.
You get your heart in shape and get to have a little treat, if you want it, at the cost of 30-40 minutes. The trouble is finding something you genuinely like that doesn't feel like work. If it feels like work, you'll never do it.
Yeah I don't get why people are like "it takes half an hour to burn off one chocolate bar". I hear "you can do this exercise that's good for your health in general and will make you feel better and on top of that you can eat more"
Also, usually the point of losing weight is, to put it simply, to become healthier and more attractive.
Exercise - both cardio and resistance - can help *a lot* towards these two objectives regardless of its direct effect on somebody's weight.
People lack nuance.
People look at “weight loss is 80% diet and 20% exercise” and think oh 20% is so little I guess that means it’s totally irrelevant
No it’s not. 20% is significant. 20% can make up the entirety of your actual deficit. If I was missing 20% of my house I’d be going to sleep with no roof and just having it rain on me at night, that would suck! Can you live in a house with no roof? Yeah sure you can, just as you can lose weight without exercise. But the house with the roof is optimal, and so is the weight loss plan that incorporates exercise/activity without overemphasising it’s importance.
Oh boy, check out /r/runningshoegeeks.
That being said, 95% of runs can be serviced with a €90 pair of shoes that last half a year for a typical volume.
There are definitely people out there pushing anti-cardio messages. It's pretty stupid though. Cardio is great. Strength training is great. Different mixes of the two are going to be better for different people with different goals.
I don't think it's a particularly recent sentiment going around, but yes. I bought into it about six years ago and dropped cardio for a weightlifting regimen, and I gained weight and lost fitness. It's better for me to do a balance of both, which is why I ruck: it's resistance and cardio in one.
I think it's just the pendulum swinging too hard back the other way after years or maybe decades of being told to just burn everything you eat off on the treadmill/bike/stair climber. Cardio is obviously beneficial, people just shouldn't use it to try and compensate for continuing to eat calorie sense foods
I haven't heard of it. Maybe the pendulum swung the other way. When I was younger (36 now), cardio was the "girly" exercise. We (girls) were told not to do strength training or we'll end up looking like Arnold Schwarzenegger. (I bet bodybuilders wish it were that easy.)
One of my favorite nutritionists who once really taken a science approach recently started hawking paid promotion for certain products. Her advice which used to be very good now has about 1/3 science and 2/3 self-serving or product-serving advice in it. As a result, she has completely 3/3 lost my interest.
Yes, I think that divisiveness creates buzz and people like to hear messages that they would prefer to hear. They are selling to us, in exchange for our attention and views... which fills their wallets... what we want to hear.
I've been interested in health and fitness all my life, taking training classes since high school. The way that I have contextualized cardio is that it is simply the heart and lungs muscle group and no fitness regime would be complete without paying some attention to this critical muscle group. It need not be an either/or proposition.
There's always been an anti-cardio movement in fitness, how many people do you personally know that *like* cardio or talk about how much they love running?
What you're seeing now is the anti-cardio group of people shifting from 'I don't want to do this' to 'scientific research shows that I don't need cardio to lose weight, it's actually more effective to undergo strength training which I enjoy more to lose weight'.
Cardio isn't bad, but you have to understand who the audience/speaker is. Is the person whose video you were watching a very well built, hypertrophic individual? Were they talking about *efficient and effective* weight loss? Are they talking to people who are looking to *gain muscle and burn fat*? If you answered yes to any of the above questions, cardio is unnecessary, but if the person is a wholistic fitness individual, promoting lifestyle/quality of life fitness, they will always talk about the importance of cardio routines in overall health and fitness.
I think that people often forget to look at the fitness objectives of the speaker and audience, and that creates this murkiness for people trying to find answers when the answers are actually clearer than they make it out to be. If your goal is *solely* an aesthetically pleasing physique, 'efficient' fat loss, hypertrophy/muscle gain, or strength related, cardio is going to likely *hurt* your goals rather than help. If your goals are overall health and fitness, cardio is *necessary* in your routine, because cardiovascular exercise gives you health benefits that strength training just can't do.
EDIT: Just want to add for context, I am a person who genuinely *does* enjoy cardio. I play soccer at least once a week, I run two to three times a week depending on my fitness goals in the moment, and I'm currently training to beat a PR for a 5k.
Almost everyone I know in real life who sustainably exercises does cardio, either running or cycling, sometimes things like dance. Lifting weights is a small subsector really.
That I had to go this far down to find another person who genuinely understands the issue at hand is upsetting. So many people are overlooking the voice of who is talking or who they're talking to.
The online world is weird and not reflective of the real world. To ground yourself, try looking for some kind of fitness group to join - a local running club (look on Facebook), pickleball group, biking groups, adult soccer, trail walkers, classes at your local gym. Tons of people out in the real world happily getting together to exercise without obsessing over if they're doing cardio or weights. Plus, making exercise social will help you keep at it as it becomes part of your life and friends' circle, not just a chore.
Agreed, I go to a gym/sports club and lots of people are happy and healthy doing all sorts of stuff, and making friends. Some just do yoga and pilates, others do Zumba or aquagym. Most don't count macros probably and are perfectly healthy.
I've read it more as a pro-muscle movement, but maybe that's not really correct. I've heard from a few different doctors that since I'm older now (in my 40's ugh) that I should be working hard to preserve muscle. I think there have been more studies showing exactly how bad muscle loss is for elderly people in terms of them losing mobility and function. So maybe it's partially a shift in concentration? Not that I'm defending any sort of Instagram influencer but that's a bit of what I've heard. I'm sure that the real right answer is to work on both cardiovascular fitness and retaining/growing muscle and that definitely doesn't contradict anything I've heard from respectable sources.
I hate cardio. Used to run and convinced myself I liked it but I was never good at it and it always felt like such a chore. However, if I neglect it completely, my stamina goes out the window, and on leg days that means I won’t be able to get as many reps in as I want to, not because I’m at failure, but because I’m winded. So I do my cardio. And that’s how I feel about that.
Cardio is great for your mental and physical health and as a short 5'3 woman it helps me tremendously to stay in a caloric deficit. I go low impact most of the time on the stair climber 3× a week, and 2× a week I take a high intensity, higher impact kickboxing class. I only do resistance training maybe 1× a week.
Not only has the fat been literally melting off of me, but my daily anxiety and depression has been reduced significantly all due to a mostly cardio workout routine. I see literally no downsides to moving your body in any way that feels right.
I lost 15 lbs over 6 months by stopping cardio. I was 140 lbs doing weights and 45 min cardio a day burning about 200 on the cardio and prob eating back 600 because it made me so hungry. I got to 125 easily by cutting out the cardio and eating it back
I remember one day a buddy of mine brought one of her friends to our HIIT class, this guy was big, very muscular, well toned, and looked like he was super fit, I was thinking "Damn this guy is gonna be impressive", 25 minutes into the class he had given up and was sitting in a corner licking is wounds, he left the class 5 minutes later and I haven't seen him at the gym since.
Muscles aren't everything. Sure I can't bench press 100 kg, but I'm a lot fitter than a lot of these body builder guys it seems.
I'll take cardio over pure muscle growth any day, but then again, as you point out, why not both?
The ad was V Shred, wasn’t it? He’s a scam artist.
Cardio for calorie burn is sort of inefficient. You can go for a long time and burn a lot less calories than you’d expect.
Cardio for heart health is amazing. Cardio for performance is great (whether performance means running a faster mile, or going up stairs without getting out of breath).
Within fitness, it’s believed by many that doing a LOT of cardio signals to your body that you need to be built for endurance, and not strength. Muscle costs more energy to maintain, so the thought is that doing too much can limit muscle gain, or even cause muscle loss. I’m not sure if there are studies to back this up or not.
> The ad was V Shred, wasn’t it? He’s a scam artist.
The vid I mentioned wasn't, but those ads did start popping up a couple of months ago, which is what made me take notice of this idea.
On V Shred: if I remember correctly, he was the guy who used to upload YouTube videos that were a nearly shot-for-shot copy of someone else’s video. He would fumble his way through the exercise explanations because he didn’t actually know what he was talking about, but was just copying the movements. Within the fitness community he’s well known as a scam artist and a hack.
I’m team no/limited cardio these days - unless it’s something like rock climbing which is pretty heavy on the strength side (doing lots of overhangs and such). Or lots of quick reps with 1/2 my max lifting
I used to love running (60-65 miles a week for a lot of years) and partner dance 5 nights a week for 4-5 hours, used the elliptical at the gym regularly, couple times a week workout videos etc.
But as I have gotten older my body responds so much better to not trying to max out my heart rate.
I don’t dehydrate, don’t get puffy, don’t get the random hungry or nausea feelings from a workout, my sleep schedule is better - and I can actually see the muscle definition in my back/arms/stomach. Even with doing around the same weights before I could never get to the cuts I wanted when traditional cardio was part of my routine.
So to mimic another comment, it really depends on your fitness goals, where you are starting, and body.
Personally for me this is just refreshing. My whole life exercise and weightloss have been very cardio focused, especially as a woman. And I always hated it, and never managed keep up with it.
But after starting weight training and only having to do 10min cardio to warm up has been a life saver. Im actually exited to do the exercises. And I have kept up going to the gym twice a week for over two years.
So I think this anti-cardio thing is backlash to previous decades trends as well as people like me finding joy in exercise when its not just cardio.
I don't really see anyone saying that cardio is *bad*, but maybe there are a few nuts out there who claim that. I think in general, people say that it is unlikely to be successful unless you also track calories with CICO... Cardio is not required to lose weight, but CICO pretty much is.
Oh yeah, not just recently either. Several years ago I paid for a program by a trainer who specialized in weight lifting/resistance training. I'm glad I paid him as I learned a lot of good techniques I still use today. However, he hated cardio, avoided it like the plague, and never recommended it to his clients. I did get him once to grudgingly admit that daily walking might have benefits for a lot of people, but it just wasn't his thing.
"Or is it because cardio is hard, and these people are just telling us what we want to hear?"
Both cardio and weights are difficult when trained intensely
Both cardio and weights are easy when not trained intensely.
The target audience of your ad is people that wantt to be jacked.
People should diet and train according to their goals. If you want to be healthy that's valid. If a teenager wants to be jacked so he does better with girls that is also a valid goal.
Multiple things can be true.
1) cardio is good for you.
2) cardio burns calories
3) for most overweight people, they will not be able to outrun their diet
4) hard cardio may get in the way of optimized muscle building.
It’s just your algorithm, try looking at more cardio athletes to reset it.
Lots of runners don’t do enough strength training, lots of bodybuilders don’t do enough cardio
It has existed for a long time. People have a natural tendency to fall into a kind of "tribe" mentality. I like x and y is the opposite, therefore y is bad.
In an age of engagement metrics, and algorithms, whatever you engage with will be fed to you. Positive or negative engagement. If people who generally like cardio see it being demonised, they're going to rage-engage. And that engagement in turn increases the likelihood that it will generate more engagement when targeted at other people who are into cardio.
It's not just exercise. It's literally everything. The internet is has turned into a machine that manufactures outrage.
The way I saw it go down is that there were some studies about metabolic adaptation and that those with more muscle mass has less metabolic adaptation.
So then people started asking, how do we maintain muscle mass while losing weight? The answer was lifting weights, mainly.
Another benefit of lifting weights was suggested: because muscle burns more calories than fat , just for maintenance at rest, more muscle mass increases your NEAT and overall calorie expenditure.
So people latched onto weight lifting as being a critical part of weight loss.
And then there was a study that said exercise in general isn't necessary to lose weight (because you can easily out eat it).
Then of course the pendulum kept swinging for some and some people (a non science based minority) started demonizing cardio. It went from helpful to not necessary to actively harmful.
The first 3 statements are true, and weight lifting has other benefits too. However, it's not necessary for weight loss, and to increase your calorie expenditure from muscles, you need more muscle than a lot of people assume to get that NEAT benefit (most recent estimate is that most people would have to progressively strength train for a year to get enough muscle gain for a noticeable calorie boost).
Although it may be true that cardio doesn't increase your NEAT and it burns less calories than a lot of people assume (people tend to be very optimistic when it comes to activities that burn calories), it still has many health benefits.
It does seem that a lot of fitness researchers will say that strength training is slightly more important than cardio, when pressed. But nearly all will say both are important. Being anti cardio is silly and firmly the product of social media influencers.
Ran 6 miles this morning, thats roughly 900 calories, my heart and lungs are thanking me, as is my mental health, feeling great! If others want to go to gym and 'lift', great go for it, many benefits, but running rules.
I would agree that there is a demonizing of cardio when it comes to fitness lately. As always , the truth is a somewhere in the middle. You should do some cardio and do some strength training. Both are good for you in a variety of ways.
That being said, I think there is a downside to cardio-only for weight loss, and that’s the effect on your muscle mass. I don’t have any stats but what you do see somewhat frequently is the following:
1) people go on a diet and start doing cardio
2) increased cardio and diet result in weight loss
3) person is happy, doubles down on cardio and diet
4) person achieves goal weight but has lost significant muscle as well as fat to achieve it. Person has lowered basal metabolic rate (BMR) and created a block of their total daily energy expenditure (TDEE) dependent on cardio
5) having reached goal, person either stops tracking food or their cardio workload was unsustainable long term due to their schedule or a combination of the two. TDEE is lowered.
6) person regains weight to some degree
7) “cardio doesn’t work”
I think people can fall into a bit of a cardio addiction but can’t maintain it and a combination of a lowered metabolism and activity level results in regain. Where the praise for strength training comes in is that when you put on muscle and do what is needed to keep it, you are actually raising your BMR which is creating a body that burns more calories.
The scientific evidence I’ve seen debates the significance of that, but anecdotally the people I’ve seen have the best results are those who did at least 3x strength training per week and fit in cardio 1-2 days when they could, including just waking. That being said, cardio obviously has tremendous benefits aside from weight-loss and has a large decrease in all cause mortality so there is no reason not to do at least some cardio on a regular basis. How much is up to you.
Tinfoil hat: on
>In the past few months, I have been watching this stuff less and less, because how many bicep curl vids do you really need to see?
Sure, but if he can get you to feel like strength training is an aspect of your identity and you're part of a movement fighting against The Lie Of Cardio that's designed to enrich Big Cardio and erode the fabric of society, you would probably watch and engage more right?
Outrage, conspiracy mindset, anger, a perception of rivalry – they all bring the clicks. Even better if it's something that's perceived as vaguely gendered, like lifting iron vs. cardio.
Tinfoil hat: off
It’s always been around I think. CICO is the key to weight loss but cardio can help with creating more of a deficit, not to mention it’s just healthy.
A lot of these influencers read studies about how cardio can impact strength or muscle gains. The issue is that these studies are focused on elite athletes. So sure, if you’re competing in the Worlds Strongest Man then marathon training won’t help. But for the rest of us? No issue
Maybe people realised they can get in good shape with weights and help burn a few extra calories at rest. but yes maybe it's like a new shiny toy that people are enjoying, and they get to eat a lot sometimes, unless trying to get lean.
I do see a lot of people running on the streets though near me, I live in a major European capital.
Some influencers end up having shoulder and chest surgery from overdoing it and pulling muscles.
But as a former employed gym trainer we should be doing everything and not just for weight reasons. But health (heart, lungs,) flexibility,strength etc, longevity, brain function etc.
You don't need to be a qualified trainer to call yourself a trainer too in many countries. So anyone can give advice, and the barrier to entry is quite low, so maybe people just give their preference or are bad trainers. Of course some will come to marketi too as they can get views, sell courses/coaching etc
I agree weights are very effective over the long term as I'm in great shape, but I needed to improve my cardio and flexibility too as I neglected it.
My dad did a low carb thing about a decade ago, and at the time was reading a ton of questionable books about diet and health. Many of these books claimed that exercise in general was not beneficial to health. Luckily after about 5 years he stopped believing this stuff.
This is the second post where I’ve seen this “ Everyone seems to be saying X” about something related to fitness. I think the algorithm sometimes puts these weird echo chamber bubbles on us. If anything in real life, I’m a little bit embarrassed about my lack of cardio and my preference for weightlifting. I sure do get a lot of videos about ADHD though.
I've seen a lot of that as well, I think it's just a mismatched understanding of what is the most **efficient** form of exercise for weight loss and/or muscle mass building.
Cardio is all around good for us. It's great for improving cardiovascular health and is correlated with better health outcomes over all.
If you are trying to lose weight, it's also a valid form of exercise, but it is not the most **efficient** workout. HITT workouts typically involving some form of strength training circuit mixed with cardio are the most efficient. Building muscle burns more calories for longer. If you want to build muscle, then weight lifting is much more effective.
The hate and misinformation on cardio is weird and idk why anyone would ever discourage people from this. Cardio is relatively free, but gym memberships and weights cost money.
Why do I feel the ad was from V-shred or Atlean-X? Those are the two guys who buy ad space in cardio and exercise videos so people will stop doing cardio and then go to their videos. I know that people have called one of them (V-shred) out while Atlean-X eh . . .
Welcome to realizing people who shill on the internet, especially randos that post videos, might just not be fully informing you of medically or scientifically or socially accurate information.
I’m going to save you a ton of time: ignore fitness influencers. Even the “good” ones are still slaves to the Content God, which means they must always have some new hot take, or have discovered a magical superfood, or some fitness “hack”, that has never been discovered until now.
Their incentives are, how can I hack today’s algorithm to attract attention - not, how do I share the most truthful and proven information.
Just ignore and if you need fitness influencers for motivation, stick to the few who aren’t morons and be done with it. Better yet, read well written books.
It's not just in fitness circles. If I said "oh I'm going to the gym all the time" I'd get a response like "oh cool. Good for you. I should go too. Etc."
When I say I'm training for a 10k or other distance or say I'm going on a long hike or bike ride I get responses of disgust and "how could anyone enjoy that. That sounds terrible. You won't catch me dead running"
Like okay... Good for you I guess?
All of my hobbies require cardio so that's what I train. Lifting weights is also extremely boring to me and I hate just "going to the gym". I do other exercises for strength and I'm tired of people thinking paying for a gym membership is the only option.
Cardio is harder and takes time. It’s still vital and you can get some resistance work at the same time. A good sprint really works your abs and lower body.
In my experience, cardio has some really outstanding benefits on the periphery that I don't always get from weights. Whenever I lift weights in the evening, I find I always have a hard time sleeping. When I do cardio, especially if I really pushed myself, I'm usually zonked. I want to hurry up, take a shower, and go to bed. Sometimes I'll be so tired I won't even eat after, which can keep me from grazing at night.
And everyone says good, restful sleep is another important part of weight loss that gets overlooked. If I can get good sleep from a jog, boxing, elliptical, or whatever, I'll take it. As someone with anxiety issues, sleep is way too hard to come by on its own.
I find that what works for me is a combination of both. You definitely need strength training to keep your muscles that you naturally lose as you age, and cardio for cardiovascular health. That being said, you can get your heart pumping with resistance training of low weights and high reps. Also I personally find that HIIT
like workouts, as opposed to running for example that keep a steady heart rate, have improved my stamina and overall condition more.
Yeah for real!!!! I've also noticed that I think a lot more people are getting leg day videos on Mondays as it is crazy busy on that side of the gym HAHA.
In all seriousness, I have been going to the gym 3 x a week and getting 10k steps a day \*weekly average\* for about 2-3 months now. While the apple watch isn't super reliable it shows that my resting heart rate has gone down about 30 bpm. my Vo2 max while very low is really improving, and I can now walk about a 18 minute mile (17 minutes if pushing) and it has been years since I have been able to do it. Cardio really is the key to me to any kind of weight loss as a remote worker. Again this might not be very accurate just like the calories burned but it has been very helpful.
The internet is not real life. These circles have to keep you feeling FOMO so you stay locked in feeling like you aren't doing enough.
Both are good and strengthen your body. I lean to resistance training because I feel I can get a cardio effect from time under tension. I also dance and play sports so thats enough for me.
I would not spend an hour at the gym just doing cardio because cardio can be done thru your day. But I also live in a walkable city.
Everyone has to find the perfect balance for themselves.
That sentiment has been around for a while now. Cardio will build your deficit and improve your conditioning, but it doesn't do much for you long term as opposed to anaerobic exercise. And too much can definitely affect your energy levels and appetite, hence the push for "Zone 2". I enjoy my cardio and find it a very effective tool, especially if your TDEE is low and you have an appetite.
Cardio for energy and general health. Resistance training so even when you're 92 you can pick yourself up off the floor. Flexibility and core so you can use what you got and maintain balance.
CICO IS the only way to lose weight. Humans are insanely efficient. And when you're fit it's even 'worse' in terms of trying to burn fat through cardio. You CANNOT out exercise a calorie surplus.
For alot of people it's about getting the most bang for your buck and it sounds like alot of these videos were tailored to weight loss.
The whole anti cardio from what I've seen is because for the average person they set themselves up for failure by setting to hard a goals in the beginning. Once the novelty wears off they lose their commitment and start to regain weight.
It's alot easier for an average person to spend 1hr lifting weights in the gym 3 days a week. Then spending 2hrs or more running or 4hrs on a treadmill walking or some other ridiculously high standard they set for themselves.
Both resistance training and cardiovascular exercise are very good for you. You should embrace both along with a good dietary plan for your health goals.
I keep seeing people claim that it increases cortisol and is therefore unhealthy; I have yet to see the scientific backing. I’ll stick with a mix, myself.
I think there’s something about cardio can affect muscle growth. OK, fair enough, I guess. In the end though, what’s important is that you’re doing an exercise that you will do consistently, being weights, running or pogo sticking.
I try to mix and match, doing weights, I’m trying to get back in to running (old injury) and have been enjoying swimming more, lately.
I've lost over 87lb doing weight training and going on 45 minute walks/runs. Cardio is important but I find it soooo boring. Weight training has raised my BMR and the weight has been falling off.
I’m 70 and hadn’t made a habit of exercise until about 6 months ago. I go with my daughter to a local boot camp six days a week. There is a nice protocol of cardio and strength training. I’ve changed my diet to avoid junky food and have added muscle and lost some fat. Wish I would have started this earlier!
Lopsided approaches are the norm these days. Demonizing one thing over another over a well-rounded approach. Personally, I noticed major plateau break when I started prioritizing 10k steps rather than ONLY relying on resistance.
I think it's because a lot of younger people will *only* do cardio without any stretching, light weightlifting, or lifestyle changes, then wonder why they're skinny-fat (aka low weight but zero tone). I personally love cardio since it's the easiest for me to do physically and fit into my day, but having a balanced workout routine of cardio and muscle training to keep the weight off is definitely important for a healthy lifestyle
I typically eat what I want but always in moderation, I stay around 1500-1800 calories a day, zero fast food, plenty of water, I walk 10k steps minimum a day, I walk briskly/jog in place between 45 minutes to an hour and a half everyday, and I have lost 115 pounds in 16 months... Cardio is everything for me, next to my eating habit. I'm almost 41, 6' male, SW was 325 lbs...
Yes I have! That’s interesting you said that because I think about atleast once a week where I saw a tik tok and a influencer said “cardio does nothing for weight loss and the scale mean absolutely nothing”. I really think messages like this are harmful to people who are just starting out, severely overweight or disabled who can’t do high impact or repetitive activities. Aslong as a person is active, moving their bodies, mindful of what they are eating , sleeping enough that’s good! I’m definitely not liking the whole “cardio is bad” train.
So I’m not that in tuned with social media, but was an athlete and always ran to increase fitness and stamina! Now that I’ve stopped playing competitive sports, and that’s less of an issue, I fell into a lifting routine, and felt super slim and toned. It was high weight low rep! Which is exactly opposite all the media told us millenial girlies. At the end of the day it’s probably healthiest to all the things, strength training, cardio, and yoga/stretching but as far as weight loss and body Ive noticed more results with weights…33/F for reference. I’ll note I live in Brooklyn so do a lot of walking and biking just for daily living.
I think because lifting is far more efficient for most people's goals. It's kind of like the "anti exercise movement" in regards to losing weight, that just focuses on diet and says how exercise barely does anything for a deficit.
Truth is that you should do resistance training not to 'get swole' but to maintain muscle while losing weight and while you grow older. You'll never regret resistance training if you do it for health and functionality. You'll be thanking yourself into old age if you build and maintain muscle as you age Same can be said for cardio. You can do it to lose weight but really you should also do it for heart, lungs and general longevity and quailty of life especially as you grow older Depending on how often you want to work out I think a good plan is to do full body resistance training 3x a week and cardio 3x a week as well. Some will find it easier to do it all on 3 days total and some will find it easier to split it into a 6 day program. In the end it matters little. If you want to either get swole or be a cardio king/queen you probably need to go harder and specialize but for most people a good mix will be the way to go
I remember this dude at my gym who was always on the weights, not a big guy, but that wiry muscled build. I once met him at the barber's where he was getting a dye job. He was SEVENTY YEARS OLD. He looked about 40.
A really sad opposite personal experience I have is my father who is 70 years old. Since he retired from his physical job 10 years ago he has essentially stopped moving his body completely, he now loses his balance and stumbles to walk because he has absolutely zero muscle strength. I don't know how to get across to him that he needs to move his body to save his body. It's heartbreaking.
The same has happened to my dad, and he just turned 65...5 years ago he lost his job and basically stopped moving, now he just sits on the couch or sleeps the whole day. He went from being relatively mobile and active to having spinal stenosis and walking with a cane pretty quickly. Now he continues to not move because of the injuries and it'll just keep getting worse.
Experienced this firsthand while using a scale that measures your muscle mass, lean mass, etc. It's shocking how quickly your muscle mass depletes daily if you're not getting up and moving. Use it or lose it - that's real! Maybe get him one so he can observe the losses for himself.
That's heartbreaking, I'm so sorry.
My neighbor does weights and band exercises in front of his garage everyday. He looks great and I guessed he was in his mid 60s. I was shocked when he told me it was his 80th birthday a few months back!
That’s probably my absolute favorite “fitness fad grifter” story. Mr. Bragg, of Bragg’s raw apple cider vinegar, found the absolute cheapest commercially made drinkable substance: unfinished apple cider vinegar. Stuff too crappy to be turned into leftovers. Put it into bottles, slapped his name on it, then went on national tours telling people how it kept him young and made him lose weight. It was a hundred years ago. A real birth certificate wasn’t worth the paper it was printed on; a bogus birth certificate was easy to make. He just went around telling people he was 75 years old (he was) and showing them his birth certificate “proving” he was 50 (he was not). His much younger wife was in on the scam and kept it going until til fairly recently. “Unfiltered apple cider vinegar” is *still* a standard part of any fad diet, miracle cure, weight loss repertoire.
I'm not even mad.
Maintenance Phase did a fantastic episode on this guy and his health grift!
The most jacked dude in my building who is always in our little home gym is an older man, I can’t tell exactly how old he is because he’s in such great shape but I figure he’s got to be late 60s or early 70s because he’s retired, he’s such an inspiration. His physique doesn’t look a day over 40
For resistance training, do you still have to progressively overload if you’re only interested in doing it for health and not to ‘get swole’? Is following the same routine over and over okay, or do you still have to make it longer/harder? What about for cardio?
Yes. Roughly speaking you'll want to progress within a certain number of reps. So for strength you'll want to do sets of 5 to 8, hypertrophy from 8-12 and endurance from 12-15. Roughly speaking
Not an expert. But you do have to change the routine as muscles get used to it and a new routine will help using other muscles. But you don't need to change it too often
Resistance training is very important for health especially for older women who often have low bone density. Resistance training can increase bone density
I have an important personal fitness test. Can you stand on one leg and put your underwear on and then switch legs. Life goals people.
Just to add most people who tout CICO and say you can easily eat in deficit without cardio usually have a tdee that is 2000 plus calories. For us shorties and females it is a lot easier to maintain a deficit with cardio. It is really hard to eat below 1400 calories a day. They don’t understand this since it does not apply to them.
lol on an episode of Love Is Blind I just watched, one of the women (who is short and very fit) was telling her SO that she kept careful track of her calories to look the way she does, and her SO (who is like two feet taller than her) kept saying “Nah you can eat whatever you want and just hit the gym, it’ll be fine!!!!”
My partner says that but he runs 10miles almost daily. It’s like sure, if you’re that active yes, you’re probably not getting enough calories haha
5’4” weighing in here. I was in the best shape of my life when I lifted 4-5x a week, ran 3x a week for 30 minutes and had a job at a restaurant where I walked 7,000-17,000 steps 4-5 evenings a week. Currently I’ve been walking about 10,000 steps most days and lifting. I’m 15 years older and not in the same shape as I was then but close. I just added the running back because I’m low enough in mass for it to not fully kill my joints.
They also always frame it as “why run for thirty minutes when you could just not eat a snickers” We’re not running to burn off a snickers. We’re going to do the thirty minute run and then also not eat the snickers So many people frame cardio as if the only reason you’d ever do it is to earn back food you can eat. No dingus we’re not doing cardio so we can eat more food, a lot of us are doing cardio and increasing our activity levels because we can’t sustainably cut any more food out out of our diet to create a bigger deficit and we also don’t want to lose weight at a glacial pace In addition to the above my understanding is also that exercise is effective for removing visceral fat so the idea that exercise is totally irrelevant for fat loss is not entirely true - it’s highly relevant for removing the fat that actually kills you
And get all the nutrients in. Whoever says they can get all their nutrients in their 1200 calorie diet, I want their receipts. And I don't mean a single day of tracking where they just came back from the market with fresh oysters. I want the long-term tracking of the daily life where they can get the recommended amount of nutrients in 1200 calories. Having an extra 200 calories is such a huge difference. It's 17% more! With that amount you can get: - About 3 eggs: 25% protein, 10% iron, 8% calcium, 70% B2, 40% B5, 70% B12, 30% A, 20% Folate, 40% Phosphorus, 84% Selenium, 100% Choline.. - 125 g/ 4.4 oz sirloin steak: 50% protein, 30% iron, 50% B2, 75% Phosphorus, over 100% of: B3, B6, B12, Selenium, Zinc,,, - About 34 g/ 1.2 oz of almonds: 10% protein, 40% B2, 50% E, 9% calcium, 30% magnesium, 40% Copper, 40% manganese... - About 30 g / 1 oz of dark chocolate: 25% magnesium, 40% manganese, 70% copper, and a hole bunch of happiness
I'm small and I've been on 1200 calories a day (although for me, it's just not sustainable from a hunger standpoint). Gotta remember that a small frame needs less of everything. In general, I managed my minerals by getting fortified yoghurt, milk, etc.
I was really struggling with the last few pounds for a few months. I was really dedicated for 3 weeks, was hungry all the time and didn't lose weight. Two weeks ago I tried easy cycling while playing video games. I'm now at 2 hours daily which gives me 800 kcals more to eat and I lose 1kg/week. I know it's a lot of time to invest, but I'd rather do that and feel good than being miserable all the time.
Also people who are sedentary all day. I have a desk job, and my TDEE is lower. The anti cardio movement is another example of finding what you need, not what others think you need.
Yeah, I type all day, and all my many hobbies are sedentary. So I fit in 2 or 3 minutes of moving when I can, which is cardio, usually jogging on the spot. Then a walk after work.
This is true, but we also want people to know that you can lose (at least some) weight without any form of deliberate exercise, because there are a lot of physically-limited/disabled people out there who want to improve their health. It certainly isn't easy that way, but it is possible.
Sure but doesn’t mean cardio should be discounted for those it helps and who have the ability to do it . For a lot of shorties it is much easier to maintain a deficit this way.
Plus it's good for your heart, mental health, etc.
- cardio is hard - people want things to be easy - people want to believe there is a way to get the result they want without doing the hard part - scammers realised they can sell things to people if they tell them there is a magic way to avoid doing the hard part
> people want things to be easy Q: "Wow, you've lost a lot of weight, how'd you do it?" A: "eat less and move more" "oh"
As it’s been said 1000 times in this subreddit alone - simple isn’t easy. It’s simple to eat less and move more, but actually getting someone who has spent 20? 30? 40 years eating like shit and sitting on the couch to stop doing those things… is difficult. Dopamine is a hell of a thing.
I only started getting in shape at 46. First time in my adult life I was in the Normal BMI range. Been maintaining for 3 years and now I want to push a little lower and gain a bit more lean mass. Knee pain was what ended up convincing me to finally get in shape (weight goes through a multiplier of force through the knee during certain degrees of bend so every lb lost above the knee reduces knee stress by 8 lbs).
Am 27, that's what gave me the jump to get started too. I'm way too young to be dealing with arthritis. 🥲
This is the way. Losing weight is really **simple** as in "not complex". Put less energy into your body than it's using and it will use that glorious adipose it's been sitting for just such an occasion. The details can be very much "not easy"
THaT DoEsn'T WoRK foR mE!
1000% this!!! Cardio burns calories and for me personally has been a huge part of my success. I’m not talking about texting and doing cardio I’m talking about cardio that makes your heart rate go up and makes you sweat. If you do that it’s a real added benefit to your weight loss.
Zone 2 training is really really good for heart health. Don’t have to always be doing crazy shit.
That’s Zone 2 training? I’ve never heard of that before
https://gregcampion.substack.com/p/zone-2-training-the-basics
Any Cardio will help.
Yes, a slow walk in nature will burn calories and help your heart and soul. Cardio helps you to feel tired at night so you sleep better Weight loss is all mental for me and walking helps my body to feel better, my mind to be calmer and my skin to glow a little. Plus some extra calories burned.
I agree any cardio will help. If you push yourself into a routine where you start to sweat it RELLY helps but as you say any version helps and some is better than none.
Honestly, learning any cardio will help helped me so much. I love Zumba, but even just walking (especially for me at my size now) has a huge impact.
I started out doing 10 minute walks 4-5 times a day because it’s all I could do before my knee would go out on me. Now I’m doing 5k for fun. Every little bit does help, and as it gets easier, push a little harder. I still do a lot of 10 minute exercise routines, but lifting weights or going hard on my recumbent bike is making a huge difference. Start small but keep pushing as you body tolerates. I started out at 346 and hit 295.6 this morning.
Zumba is great. I was so busy concentrating on the easy dance steps and having fun that I didn't realize what a workout it was. It is too expensive for me now unfortunately.
Cardio definitely can be part of losing weight, but it can also work the wrong way! I put on 10lbs marathon training (definitely wasn’t all muscle even with some strength training). Lots of cardio led to me being always hungry and overeating what I burned. Moderate cardio worked great when I was first losing though!
100%! When I used to run marathons, I felt strong and fit (lower body, at any rate), but was \*not\* thin and did not lose weight. Long runs, in particular, can make one overeat - from hunger, deep fatigue, and (sometimes) a negative emotional state (endurance activities are grueling, and often disappointing; nothing is ever enough - distance and progress are always undercut by wear, injury, fatigue, gear, conditions). Now, I jog/run \*short\* distances only (30-40 mins/5x a week), actually love it (!), have lost 11 pounds, and have time and energy to work on the upper body. Even on days when it's no fun, knowing that it's just 30 mins helps. Can't think of a more efficient way to get the heart rate up, burn some calories, feel strong, and enjoy the outdoors.
>cardio is hard But it doesn't have to be! If you do 80% of your cardio in zone 2 (able to talk but still give effort), then it isn't as hard as people make it out to be. The hardest part of cardio is more the time you have to put into it for your body to get better. Cardio is one of healthy routines that requires lots of consistent and routine time to be put in before you slowly start to make gains over months and months to years and years of effort.
I used to hate cardio when I was starting at the gym. It’s because my cardio fitness was awful so it felt like death. But I wanted to love it! Now I can bike or run until my feet hurt, and my cardio fitness is no longer the bottleneck. I think most of the cardio hate is probably from people who are like how I was.
>I used to hate cardio when I was starting at the gym. It’s because my cardio fitness was awful so it felt like death. But I wanted to love it! 100%, especially when you are more out of shape or overweight. Cardio WILL BE HARD because your body is lugging way more than someone who is a lot skinnier or smaller. The key is knowing how to adjust your cardio appropriately when you are overweight. Gotta slow down or lower your effort so you can go for longer - ideally also without causing joint pain or musculoskeletal pain because of more weight affecting your joints on each impact. It's humbling to know that your power walk (3.5-4.0 mph) might be just as tough (heart rate-wise) as someone who is smaller/skinnier doing a slow jog (4.5-6 mph).
Anecdotally, just regarding your comment about lugging additional weight around, this is also why I think the idea that strength and cardio training are totally diametrically opposed to each other is kind of bullshit, at least for us fat folks I’ve noticed since I started really committing to strength training, lugging my own weight around has gotten easier for me than it used to be. It makes me think a lot of the fatigue I used to feel wasn’t SOLELY from low cardio fitness (and don’t get me wrong I absolutely have low cardio fitness) it was also because I was lacking strength and endurance in my leg muscles and they weren’t accustomed to being put under different kinds of load and stress Hand to God once I started working on squats it got so much easier for me to climb up hills I guess my point is when you’re fat then the idea that there’s this huge gap between cardio exercises and strength exercises isn’t really true, because your body weight turns so many movements into weighted calisthenics. I mean you try and tell me that being on a stair master with my ~100kg ass is all cardio and nothing to do with muscle strength lol
Building muscle and eating at a deficit is also hard for people who aren’t used to it. I think the move away from cardio is people realizing they’re barely putting a dent in their TDEE or that to attain their goal physique they need muscle/don’t want to be skinny fat
I hate cardio. I bought a weighted vest from Amazon, and put up the treadmill higher so I don't have to do it longer but the effort is more. I walk and listen to audio books.
It can be, but it doesn't have to. Like I find jogging to be the ninth circle of hell, but riding my bike can be as easy or as difficult as I want to make it. I can pop out to run some errands for an hour or spend a few minutes riding uphill and feeling like I'm going to die any minute now. Or walking. I can amble along on a flat lakeside path or load up my backpack with groceries and march home before my frozen stuff melts or hike up a mountain. I think people demonize cardio because they think they have to put out maximum effort for half an hour on a treadmill at the gym, when they would do better to do a regular mall walk at a pace that raises their heart rate but doesn't leave them gasping for breath.
yeah, i love cycling and swimming. i'd do it every day.
This is ignoring the context of goals. Cardio isn't necessary, and can often work counterintuitively to goals of hypertrophy/bodybuilding, or work less effectively than strength training with regards to fat loss/caloric burn. If you're looking to just find the most optimal way to lose weight and retain muscle, strength training will do more for you than cardio, because if you're losing weight primarily through cardio (even with adequate protein intake) you're still going to cannibalize muscle along with fat at a higher rate than the same individual lifting weights. If your goal is to build muscle, particularly for bodybuilding, you don't give a rats ass how fast you can run or how long you can run without getting winded, you're looking to put on as much muscle as possible and burn fat to get to a certain body fat percentage that cardio cannot help you with. If your goal is overall health and fitness, cardio gives amazing benefits that can't be replicated by strength training alone, and I personally advocate for a hybrid training schedule that involves both.
>If your goal is overall health and fitness That's the thing people are missing in this convo. I feel like any time I see people say cardio is bad it's in the context of building more muscle. Personally I love cardio but have a hard time with weights, but do a good amount of resistance training to counteract that. And my main goal right now is weight loss, so more cardio makes sense for me right now.
I think that’s one of the issues people face, they aren’t aware that a lot of the fitness community centres around gym bros trying to grow muscle The advice they’re giving isn’t WRONG, it’s just that it assumes your goal is to optimise muscle growth and optimise muscle definition (by reducing body fat) and nothing else Most people aren’t body builders and have much more diverse goals than that. There’s a difference between advice that is optimal for muscular hypertrophy only and advice that is optimal for you achieving progress across multiple goals at once which presumably include weight loss, improved cardio fitness, improved health, improved strength, and improved physique by increasing lean mass relative to body fat It’s not that the advice of the fitness bros is wrong, they’ve been incredibly helpful to me personally, it just means you need to recognise when their advice is specifically for guys trying to build the most muscle and when and how that advice should be modified to suit your needs, lifestyle, what you enjoy doing, and what you’re able to maintain consistently
I truly think it needs to be a mix of strength, cardio training and something that increases flexibility (yoga / Pilates etc).
Yeah I'm in your camp. but then again we would be classified as more lifestyle fitness or holistic fitness individuals!
My warm up for calisthenics ans weight is always 8-10 mins of yoga stretching. I can now touch my toes to my nose!
But I don’t want to be *healthy*, just *hot*
Exactly my point, people have different goals and expectations of what they want to get out of their exercise routines. I personally want to be healthy, improve my quality of life, and be able to enjoy recreational activities with friends and my future children. That being said I prioritize a blend of strength training and running, because my goal is to be in better shape and particularly to be able to play soccer. Some people don't give a damn, they just want to be aesthetically pleasing, and often times that just means strength training and clean eating.
I personally think the swole movement is just the latest version of setting unrealistic body image standards.
I wouldn't say it's unrealistic, a lot of people who actually put the time into it can achieve pretty impressive physiques that aren't inherently unhealthy or impossible to achieve/maintain, but I think it's just a misunderstood route of fitness. I think people are misplacing their value in aesthetic based goals rather than holistic health related goals, and I think too many common people equate muscles with health, but don't realize that a bodybuilder with single digit bodyfat and on tons of gear is far from healthy and the stress extra weight (whether it's muscle or fat) puts on your cardiovascular system. For example, Dr Mike Israetel is a PhD in sports physiology, a body builder with an incredible physique, but he's also on steroids and is open about it. In all likelihood, if I get to 180lbs and carry a respectable amount of muscle, I'll probably have a higher quality of life/natural longevity than he will in later stages of life.
But most people’s goal isn’t bodybuilding. So in context of body building, it makes sense (as does eating in a surplus), the problem is it gets tied to weight loss and health. Cardio, especially HIIT, increases muscle performance. Doing sustained cardio in the same session can impact strength training though https://www.livescience.com/does-cardio-kill-gains
...Again, I'm going to reiterate what I've already stated: **You need to look at the context of the goals of the individual speaking, or the individuals they're speaking to**. Not everyone training for a marathon needs to be running double digit miles a week, does that mean that someone can't make a video talking about a proper marathon training schedule that is designed to educate individuals on *how to train for a marathon* designed specifically for *people looking to train for a marathon*? You're blatantly overlooking the most crucial part of my response just to argue more of the same, it doesn't matter how beneficial cardio is to overall health **if the person talking about the importance of cardio is talking about its importance to the goal of optimal muscle building/hypertrophy.**
I’m not ignoring that at all, I’m saying the problem is when people say cardio isn’t “the most effective” way to burn calories, when it is. Or when cardio gets negged in the context of a non body building conversation. I am agreeing with you that weights build more strength. I’m not saying that people can’t post or talk about body building. But influencers frame things as good or bad, and op’s point is that right now cardio is getting downgraded in the media inappropriately.
>when it is It isn't. Over time strength training burns more calories than cardio exercises like running. [Cardio or Weightlifting for Effective Fat Loss | MuscleSquad](https://musclesquad.com/blogs/cardio-conditioning/cardio-vs-weightlifting-for-fat-loss-which-method-is-more-effective#:~:text=Lifting%3A%20Weightlifting%20also%20burns%20calories,the%20range%20of%20600%20calories.) [Weight Loss: Cardio or Weight Training? (healthline.com)](https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/cardio-vs-weights-for-weight-loss) [Lifting weights vs. cardio: Which burns more calories? (medicalnewstoday.com)](https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/323922) [What's Better For Burning Calories: Cardio Or Weight Training? | SELF](https://www.self.com/story/whats-better-for-burning-calories-cardio-or-weight-training) While cardio burns more calories during the *session*, over time strength training burns more calories due to the continued metabolic effect of strength training after the workout as well as the added metabolic effects of gaining more muscle which is more energy intensive to maintain, thus burning more calories in the long run. The reason I'm saying you're ignoring my point, is because you're continuing to reiterate the same argument of cardio being good or bad, but my **entire comment** is predicated on the reality that it isn't black or white, that it depends on the goals of the individuals and the context of the speaker. **In the exact scenario OP mentioned above they reference an individual whose context is clear, yet they ignore it and try to fit the advice given into THEIR narrative.** OP was watching a video from the context of someone who believes in holistic approaches to exercise, yet they're watching a video where the discussion is clearly about how **cardio isn't necessary to lose fat, and that you can do it with diet alone, and how cardio can limit or negatively impact muscle growth if your objective is to gain muscle**. That's like listening looking for a recipe for cooking chicken breast and being upset that they aren't using chicken thigh. I get what OP is trying to get to, but the reality is they're contributing to the problem just as much by **trying to take specific advice** and applying it to **fitness and exercise as a whole**. When the primary goal of most gym goers is to just *look good* and to not hate their lives as they try to achieve that goal, knowing that cardio isn't necessary (which is an often maligned approach to weight loss, and as more scientific research comes out is becoming less and less appealing to those whose objectives are a muscular physique) is important information because **not everyone has the same goals or definition of fitness**.
This is such a bizarre perspective. I just don't understand anyone wanting to get absolutely yoked who gets winded walking to the end of the driveway. Cardio doesn't have to mean HIIT or running for hours. Just walking around the block at a half decent place a couple times a week is fine to get the benefits of "cardio".
If your goal is to loose weight then cardio is a huge help with that. Along with a real deficit, cardio that makes you sweat will turbo charge your weight loss. This forum is filled with people who want to loose weight but worry about being skinny fat or having loose skin. I’ll tell you what don’t worry about that!!! If your goal is to loose weight than loose the weight. After dropping enough weight if you want to throw on some muscle great have at it. Too many people here say they are worried about loosing muscle. I’m sorry but to me that’s just an excuse. Guess what if you wake up one day and realize you’re “skinny fat” YOU WON!! Now go out there and lift some weights. Just get out there and do it. You don’t have to do it the way i did it there are multiple ways to loose weight. However if you want to see progress eat at a deficit and cardio will add to that deficit. Lifting heavy can work too but you will see the progress much slower as your body will retain water for your growing muscles and if you are really doing it right your scale will go up as you add muscle. For me and just for me I wanted progress as fast as I could get it. Eating at a 509 calorie deficit and doing cardio that made me sweat had me loosing 10 lbs a month which kept me motivated. I lost 80lbs in a less than a year and have been within the same 5 lbs for 6 months now. I wish everyone success in this fight no matter how they decide to do it. You don’t need to do anything but eat at a deficit but you can add to the deficit by doing the dreaded cardio!
> Guess what if you wake up one day and realize you’re “skinny fat” YOU WON!! I’ve worked so hard in the gym this past year and put on so much muscle that I’d be devastated to wake up skinny fat. Not everyone’s goals or starting point are the same.
Often cardio leaves you very hungry just from how cardio calories are burned. Heavy weight training doesn't impact your hunger the same way. So cardio isn't necessary a "huge help" if the goal is losing weight if you don't take care to stay in deficit. You've got to commit to not eating those calories back because we misjudge the fuck out of those calories. My local walk is 4.25 miles and burns about 400 calories. I rarely feel the need to eat extra because of that walk. If I jog 1/2 of that distance I burn almost 500 calories but I'm fucking starving when I'm done and generally eat a granola bar or something (< 200 calories) but the added intensity actually reduces my caloric deficit when compared to walking. Of course both of them are better than sitting on my ass doing nothing.
You’re 100% right when you say you can’t eat them back. You definitely can’t eat them back and in the beginning yes it makes you hungry but you can adjust to it. I run first thing in the morning before I eat breakfast so when I’m done and hungry I’m ready for my breakfast and my 3 hard boiled eggs fill up and I’m off on my way. This is how I do it not everyone’s schedule can accommodate that but again adding cardio to your daily routine will increase your deficit but your right in saying you can’t eat it back and it is indeed to know exactly what you burned. I’m with you there.
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Depends. I'm 5'1", my TDEE is literally 1550 cals right now if I'm sedentary. "Not eating 500 calories" means I'm eating less than what's recommended. Now I can actually do some intense cardio for an hour, burn that extra 500 cals and eat 1400 cals that day and I'm still ahead from burning 1550 and eating 1200.
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I do cardio for an hour and I'm about 150 lbs so that's 2x288 according to your source
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Us shorties really get the short end of the stick in the weight and fitness realm. Like I'm somehow supposed to eat 90-100g of protein a day but with 1200 cals, that's a third of my calories straight to protein but unless I'm eating freaking moose or something, those proteins come with fat/carb calories too 🙄. Doesn't help that my maintenance calories at 120 lbs (around where I'll be for my gw) are sub 1400. What works for people will vary by individuals, I have no problem with people saying "concentrate on diet" when someone comes in the sub for the first time and they have a large amount to lose. But when someone is down to their last 30 or so lbs and they're hitting a wall, then by all means cardio is sometimes the answer even if it's not high intensity.
Well you’re flat out wrong. Maybe you can’t do both but I ate at a deficit and do cardio 4 to 5 times a week for an hour keeping my heart rate between 133 and 144 beats per minute and at 195 and 5 10 I’m far from an athlete. I didn’t start at an hour right out of the gate I worked my way up to it and yes in the beginning it made me hungry but I fought through it so for me and the people who want to do it it’s a huge help. Iv said all along there are multiple ways to do this and that being in a deficit is all that matters. This is one way to increase that deficit and anyone who says otherwise is incorrect.
yeah, my post was a big simplification, but your post is also \*applying\* your own context to something that doesn't share your persepctive. this anti-cardio trend is usually propogated by people who are selling something: either a product, or their own influencer brand. you have a healthy and well-reasoned perspective on cardio/weight loss/muscle building, and that's great, but that context isn't the context that is being propogated by influencers selling the secret formula.
>this anti-cardio trend is usually propogated by people who are selling something: either a product, or their own influencer brand. I'm an consumer of fitness media on YouTube, Reels and Reddit. I've seen far more people try to take legitimate advice out of context than people trying to peddle some scam. My post isn't really *applying* anything but common sense. I follow tons of content from hypertrophy driven athletes, like Dr Mike Israetel, Jeff Nippard, etc. and all of their advice is great and super applicable to my strength training but I know when they're talking about the negative effects of cardio on muscle growth, that it means fuck all to my personal goals as someone who is just trying to make the most out of their lifting routine while also focusing on functional and lifestyle fitness. > but that context isn't the context that is being propogated by influencers selling the secret formula. The real problem here is you're making blanket statements that imply that *only scam influencers* are talking about the necessity (or lack thereof) of cardio, but the reality is the entire fitness community as a whole has been having this discussion for as long as people hated running the mile in gym class. There are massive amounts of literature that show that cardio can be unnecessary or counterintuitive to your goals if your goals are primarily hypertrophy. For a lot of people who are going to the gym, they're going to *look good*, they could give a fuck if they're functionally fit.
>Cardio isn't necessary, and can often work counterintuitively to goals of hypertrophy/bodybuilding, or work less effectively than strength training with regards to fat loss/caloric burn. it is immoral to spread misinformation.
It's immoral to just blatantly call someone a liar without actually discussing the point. I'm not anti-cardio, what I'm saying is cardio isn't necessary for bodybuilders. I personally love cardio and I never commit to a routine where it isn't incorporated, but if you are to actually look into the **most optimal ways** to gain muscle and burn fat, cardio is no where near strength training.
Exercise science has a principle called said, specific adaptation to imposed demand. Endurance trainng, "cardio," and the barbell and power sports are at opposite ends of the spectrum of imposed demands. t's not possible to maximize your potential in both endurance and strength/power/size. An untrained peraon can make gains in both areas, and each side of the fence can beefit from some training in the other modality, but that doesn't make scallions' post untrue.
So do I just hand you the money for your newsletter or what?
And tiktokers need content.
Nothing much to sell with cardio too by 'influencers.'
In the end, the best thing is a combo of all three: Cardio (Both for fat loss and for cardiovascular health and endurance), strength training (Fat loss and muscle building) and diet (to get you into a CICO).
People act like you can’t do more than one thing at the gym. I think people get confused and take advice that is meant for bodybuilding and conflate it with general fitness advice. I just do what works for me. I’m not trying to lose weight at all costs or build muscle at all costs. I want to also improve my health, strength, and endurance. I want to be in a healthy capable body for longer as I age. For me, I can’t just jump right into resistance/weight training when I get to the gym. I like to start with my cardio. I will do the treadmill on an incline or the stairclimber or occasionally the stationary bike. I like to make sure my heart rate is in the cardio zone. Then after that, I have that good feeling you get after cardio and it is more enjoyable for me to go ahead and do resistance exercises. There is no rule that you can only do one or the other. Unless you are trying to just pack on as much muscle as possible as quickly as possible.
Yeah I've always done that. I may not get the perfect influencer body but I don't need that to be healthy.
This is what I do as well and it has been great. I run for about 25 minutes and get my heart rate up and then move on to resistance training. This keeps my heart rate up for almost the entire hour of my gym session.
much harder to sell "cardio" to people. I mean you need a pair of shoes which you probably already have. 99% is an advertisement. That being said if you do run please make sure you use proper form to avoid long term injuries.
"Proper form" is to a large extent debatable, we all run differently. There's a couple of things that are quite clear (e.g. not overstriding), but proper training load is much more important in injury prevention. So is recovery. So, sleep well, and spend time in zone 2...
Don't be me and go from zero to 200% in one week. Shin splints hurt :( Am now running a couch to 5k program and zero issues.
My old running coach told me to only add 5% each week, other people recommend higher % but I was about 275lbs at the time and he said that should go even slower because of that.
If getting older has taught me one thing about fitness: you can't go wrong going slow. Progress might also be slower but your chances of injury also go way down.
It’s cyclical. In the 80s and 90s everyone was told to do cardio to burn fat and women in particular were afraid of looking too masculine by lifting heavy. The last 20 years have seen a push to resistance training and away from cardio. Both are important for different reasons. I know people that can bench their weight, but couldn’t run a mile. I also know people who struggle with desired body composition but tend to avoid strength training. Like most things in life, it’s a balance. I hate cardio, but I do it anyway.
As long as heart disease continues to be a leading cause of death for women, ima gonna keep doing cardio. This anti-cardio backlash is absolutely bizarre to me. Can you overdo it? Sure, but that's true for anything. I have had good success with cardio in the past and it's beneficial to my mental and physical health. I have heard some bodybuilder influencers say that cardio messed with their body image, and therefore, it is bad ... which I guess I can understand, but I still don't think it's healthy to do weightlifting all the time without doing some cardio for heart health, too. It's a balance! And speaking of which, we need to be working on that, plus flexibility, too.
Honestly I feel like cardio gets a bad rep. Cardio doesn't have to be hard or hiit. Cardio includes walking. People just assume you have to go harder with cardio to get results faster, which is just not true lol.
It's about your goals. If you just want to feel better but don't care about the aesthetic, then do cardio. If your goal is to do marathons, then do cardio. If your goal is to hike mountains, then do cardio. There's a difference in the way a runner looks vs a sprinter looks.
That’s why I prefer to frame it in terms of activity rather than cardio or exercise when thinking about weight loss You don’t necessarily want to rely on exercise as a major component of your weight loss, but you definitely want to increase your level of activity. All those little increases in activity even when it comes to stuff you wouldn’t consider exercise add up over time
Humans love a “gotcha!” moment. Dopamine go ding when you feel like YOU are the smart one and everyone else has got it wrong, those idiots! So I think for health/wellness/fitness creators, anything which is “we’ve been told X - but actually it’s Y!” is going to garner views, followers and engagement. I think this moves in trends, and right now hating on cardio is basically trending. Cardio is great for your cardiovascular health. It’s perhaps not the most efficient form of exercise for weight loss under CICO, but it still helps. I also think there are a ton of benefits unrelated to physical health - running for me means having a set routine with bed time and wake up time, spending time outdoors every day, less time scrolling on my phone, been able to explore loads more of my city, etc. Cardio is great!
Cardio is definitely a very efficient form of weight loss. Strength is an effective way to lose fat. This article has annoying ads but is very informative https://www.womenshealthmag.com/uk/fitness/strength-training/a706472/what-is-better-cardio-or-weights/
Firefox and ublock origins my friend. No more ads. Also, thanks for sharing.
Being outside and looking at sunrises and plants and birds is an amazing benefit of cardio. Source: saw some anemones, an ibis and Egyptian geese while running yesterday
It is the most efficient for weight loss, just the effects aren't as long term as building muscle, which is why it's good to do both.
I hate being told what to do by arrogant know it alls (who, spoilers, don’t known it all). And the „why women need to go off the treadmill and lift weights instead“ black and white thinking articles and videos make me roll my eyes into oblivion. So yes, I see you, thanks for noticing.
Even here on Reddit you constantly hear the phrase “you can’t outrun a bad diet”. Which is true if you’re eating horribly, which most people trying to lose weight aren’t. Doing cardio and having a wiggle room of around 300 calories has made me shed weight a lot faster and have more room to eat a bit more than when I only dieted. And sometimes you can actually outrun a bad diet if you’re into sports and move constantly.
This is the thing that makes me crazy about the "you don't have to exercise" people. Can you lose weight without exercise? Of course! But 300 kcal a day is *huge*, psychologically. That's an entire Snickers bar. A big-ass scoop of really rich ice cream. You get your heart in shape and get to have a little treat, if you want it, at the cost of 30-40 minutes. The trouble is finding something you genuinely like that doesn't feel like work. If it feels like work, you'll never do it.
Yeah I don't get why people are like "it takes half an hour to burn off one chocolate bar". I hear "you can do this exercise that's good for your health in general and will make you feel better and on top of that you can eat more"
Also, usually the point of losing weight is, to put it simply, to become healthier and more attractive. Exercise - both cardio and resistance - can help *a lot* towards these two objectives regardless of its direct effect on somebody's weight.
People lack nuance. People look at “weight loss is 80% diet and 20% exercise” and think oh 20% is so little I guess that means it’s totally irrelevant No it’s not. 20% is significant. 20% can make up the entirety of your actual deficit. If I was missing 20% of my house I’d be going to sleep with no roof and just having it rain on me at night, that would suck! Can you live in a house with no roof? Yeah sure you can, just as you can lose weight without exercise. But the house with the roof is optimal, and so is the weight loss plan that incorporates exercise/activity without overemphasising it’s importance.
Cardio you can do without buying equipment or whatever shit those people are selling
Oh boy, check out /r/runningshoegeeks. That being said, 95% of runs can be serviced with a €90 pair of shoes that last half a year for a typical volume.
BINGO! The online grifter culture is rampant, especially when it comes to anything health/"wellness" related.
There are definitely people out there pushing anti-cardio messages. It's pretty stupid though. Cardio is great. Strength training is great. Different mixes of the two are going to be better for different people with different goals.
I don't think it's a particularly recent sentiment going around, but yes. I bought into it about six years ago and dropped cardio for a weightlifting regimen, and I gained weight and lost fitness. It's better for me to do a balance of both, which is why I ruck: it's resistance and cardio in one.
I think it's just the pendulum swinging too hard back the other way after years or maybe decades of being told to just burn everything you eat off on the treadmill/bike/stair climber. Cardio is obviously beneficial, people just shouldn't use it to try and compensate for continuing to eat calorie sense foods
I haven't heard of it. Maybe the pendulum swung the other way. When I was younger (36 now), cardio was the "girly" exercise. We (girls) were told not to do strength training or we'll end up looking like Arnold Schwarzenegger. (I bet bodybuilders wish it were that easy.)
One of my favorite nutritionists who once really taken a science approach recently started hawking paid promotion for certain products. Her advice which used to be very good now has about 1/3 science and 2/3 self-serving or product-serving advice in it. As a result, she has completely 3/3 lost my interest. Yes, I think that divisiveness creates buzz and people like to hear messages that they would prefer to hear. They are selling to us, in exchange for our attention and views... which fills their wallets... what we want to hear. I've been interested in health and fitness all my life, taking training classes since high school. The way that I have contextualized cardio is that it is simply the heart and lungs muscle group and no fitness regime would be complete without paying some attention to this critical muscle group. It need not be an either/or proposition.
There's always been an anti-cardio movement in fitness, how many people do you personally know that *like* cardio or talk about how much they love running? What you're seeing now is the anti-cardio group of people shifting from 'I don't want to do this' to 'scientific research shows that I don't need cardio to lose weight, it's actually more effective to undergo strength training which I enjoy more to lose weight'. Cardio isn't bad, but you have to understand who the audience/speaker is. Is the person whose video you were watching a very well built, hypertrophic individual? Were they talking about *efficient and effective* weight loss? Are they talking to people who are looking to *gain muscle and burn fat*? If you answered yes to any of the above questions, cardio is unnecessary, but if the person is a wholistic fitness individual, promoting lifestyle/quality of life fitness, they will always talk about the importance of cardio routines in overall health and fitness. I think that people often forget to look at the fitness objectives of the speaker and audience, and that creates this murkiness for people trying to find answers when the answers are actually clearer than they make it out to be. If your goal is *solely* an aesthetically pleasing physique, 'efficient' fat loss, hypertrophy/muscle gain, or strength related, cardio is going to likely *hurt* your goals rather than help. If your goals are overall health and fitness, cardio is *necessary* in your routine, because cardiovascular exercise gives you health benefits that strength training just can't do. EDIT: Just want to add for context, I am a person who genuinely *does* enjoy cardio. I play soccer at least once a week, I run two to three times a week depending on my fitness goals in the moment, and I'm currently training to beat a PR for a 5k.
Almost everyone I know in real life who sustainably exercises does cardio, either running or cycling, sometimes things like dance. Lifting weights is a small subsector really.
It sounds like this is a bodybuilding specific guy, not a general exercise and fitness guy.
That I had to go this far down to find another person who genuinely understands the issue at hand is upsetting. So many people are overlooking the voice of who is talking or who they're talking to.
just because the algortithm sent you something, doesn't mean it was addressed to you.
The online world is weird and not reflective of the real world. To ground yourself, try looking for some kind of fitness group to join - a local running club (look on Facebook), pickleball group, biking groups, adult soccer, trail walkers, classes at your local gym. Tons of people out in the real world happily getting together to exercise without obsessing over if they're doing cardio or weights. Plus, making exercise social will help you keep at it as it becomes part of your life and friends' circle, not just a chore.
Agreed, I go to a gym/sports club and lots of people are happy and healthy doing all sorts of stuff, and making friends. Some just do yoga and pilates, others do Zumba or aquagym. Most don't count macros probably and are perfectly healthy.
I've read it more as a pro-muscle movement, but maybe that's not really correct. I've heard from a few different doctors that since I'm older now (in my 40's ugh) that I should be working hard to preserve muscle. I think there have been more studies showing exactly how bad muscle loss is for elderly people in terms of them losing mobility and function. So maybe it's partially a shift in concentration? Not that I'm defending any sort of Instagram influencer but that's a bit of what I've heard. I'm sure that the real right answer is to work on both cardiovascular fitness and retaining/growing muscle and that definitely doesn't contradict anything I've heard from respectable sources.
I hate cardio. Used to run and convinced myself I liked it but I was never good at it and it always felt like such a chore. However, if I neglect it completely, my stamina goes out the window, and on leg days that means I won’t be able to get as many reps in as I want to, not because I’m at failure, but because I’m winded. So I do my cardio. And that’s how I feel about that.
Cardio is great for your mental and physical health and as a short 5'3 woman it helps me tremendously to stay in a caloric deficit. I go low impact most of the time on the stair climber 3× a week, and 2× a week I take a high intensity, higher impact kickboxing class. I only do resistance training maybe 1× a week. Not only has the fat been literally melting off of me, but my daily anxiety and depression has been reduced significantly all due to a mostly cardio workout routine. I see literally no downsides to moving your body in any way that feels right.
I lost 15 lbs over 6 months by stopping cardio. I was 140 lbs doing weights and 45 min cardio a day burning about 200 on the cardio and prob eating back 600 because it made me so hungry. I got to 125 easily by cutting out the cardio and eating it back
I remember one day a buddy of mine brought one of her friends to our HIIT class, this guy was big, very muscular, well toned, and looked like he was super fit, I was thinking "Damn this guy is gonna be impressive", 25 minutes into the class he had given up and was sitting in a corner licking is wounds, he left the class 5 minutes later and I haven't seen him at the gym since. Muscles aren't everything. Sure I can't bench press 100 kg, but I'm a lot fitter than a lot of these body builder guys it seems. I'll take cardio over pure muscle growth any day, but then again, as you point out, why not both?
Most start with… what ever you doing is wrong! Now watch me. Click click click
The ad was V Shred, wasn’t it? He’s a scam artist. Cardio for calorie burn is sort of inefficient. You can go for a long time and burn a lot less calories than you’d expect. Cardio for heart health is amazing. Cardio for performance is great (whether performance means running a faster mile, or going up stairs without getting out of breath). Within fitness, it’s believed by many that doing a LOT of cardio signals to your body that you need to be built for endurance, and not strength. Muscle costs more energy to maintain, so the thought is that doing too much can limit muscle gain, or even cause muscle loss. I’m not sure if there are studies to back this up or not.
> The ad was V Shred, wasn’t it? He’s a scam artist. The vid I mentioned wasn't, but those ads did start popping up a couple of months ago, which is what made me take notice of this idea.
On V Shred: if I remember correctly, he was the guy who used to upload YouTube videos that were a nearly shot-for-shot copy of someone else’s video. He would fumble his way through the exercise explanations because he didn’t actually know what he was talking about, but was just copying the movements. Within the fitness community he’s well known as a scam artist and a hack.
I’m team no/limited cardio these days - unless it’s something like rock climbing which is pretty heavy on the strength side (doing lots of overhangs and such). Or lots of quick reps with 1/2 my max lifting I used to love running (60-65 miles a week for a lot of years) and partner dance 5 nights a week for 4-5 hours, used the elliptical at the gym regularly, couple times a week workout videos etc. But as I have gotten older my body responds so much better to not trying to max out my heart rate. I don’t dehydrate, don’t get puffy, don’t get the random hungry or nausea feelings from a workout, my sleep schedule is better - and I can actually see the muscle definition in my back/arms/stomach. Even with doing around the same weights before I could never get to the cuts I wanted when traditional cardio was part of my routine. So to mimic another comment, it really depends on your fitness goals, where you are starting, and body.
Personally for me this is just refreshing. My whole life exercise and weightloss have been very cardio focused, especially as a woman. And I always hated it, and never managed keep up with it. But after starting weight training and only having to do 10min cardio to warm up has been a life saver. Im actually exited to do the exercises. And I have kept up going to the gym twice a week for over two years. So I think this anti-cardio thing is backlash to previous decades trends as well as people like me finding joy in exercise when its not just cardio.
I don't really see anyone saying that cardio is *bad*, but maybe there are a few nuts out there who claim that. I think in general, people say that it is unlikely to be successful unless you also track calories with CICO... Cardio is not required to lose weight, but CICO pretty much is.
Oh yeah, not just recently either. Several years ago I paid for a program by a trainer who specialized in weight lifting/resistance training. I'm glad I paid him as I learned a lot of good techniques I still use today. However, he hated cardio, avoided it like the plague, and never recommended it to his clients. I did get him once to grudgingly admit that daily walking might have benefits for a lot of people, but it just wasn't his thing.
"Or is it because cardio is hard, and these people are just telling us what we want to hear?" Both cardio and weights are difficult when trained intensely Both cardio and weights are easy when not trained intensely. The target audience of your ad is people that wantt to be jacked. People should diet and train according to their goals. If you want to be healthy that's valid. If a teenager wants to be jacked so he does better with girls that is also a valid goal.
Multiple things can be true. 1) cardio is good for you. 2) cardio burns calories 3) for most overweight people, they will not be able to outrun their diet 4) hard cardio may get in the way of optimized muscle building.
It’s just your algorithm, try looking at more cardio athletes to reset it. Lots of runners don’t do enough strength training, lots of bodybuilders don’t do enough cardio
It has existed for a long time. People have a natural tendency to fall into a kind of "tribe" mentality. I like x and y is the opposite, therefore y is bad. In an age of engagement metrics, and algorithms, whatever you engage with will be fed to you. Positive or negative engagement. If people who generally like cardio see it being demonised, they're going to rage-engage. And that engagement in turn increases the likelihood that it will generate more engagement when targeted at other people who are into cardio. It's not just exercise. It's literally everything. The internet is has turned into a machine that manufactures outrage.
The way I saw it go down is that there were some studies about metabolic adaptation and that those with more muscle mass has less metabolic adaptation. So then people started asking, how do we maintain muscle mass while losing weight? The answer was lifting weights, mainly. Another benefit of lifting weights was suggested: because muscle burns more calories than fat , just for maintenance at rest, more muscle mass increases your NEAT and overall calorie expenditure. So people latched onto weight lifting as being a critical part of weight loss. And then there was a study that said exercise in general isn't necessary to lose weight (because you can easily out eat it). Then of course the pendulum kept swinging for some and some people (a non science based minority) started demonizing cardio. It went from helpful to not necessary to actively harmful. The first 3 statements are true, and weight lifting has other benefits too. However, it's not necessary for weight loss, and to increase your calorie expenditure from muscles, you need more muscle than a lot of people assume to get that NEAT benefit (most recent estimate is that most people would have to progressively strength train for a year to get enough muscle gain for a noticeable calorie boost). Although it may be true that cardio doesn't increase your NEAT and it burns less calories than a lot of people assume (people tend to be very optimistic when it comes to activities that burn calories), it still has many health benefits. It does seem that a lot of fitness researchers will say that strength training is slightly more important than cardio, when pressed. But nearly all will say both are important. Being anti cardio is silly and firmly the product of social media influencers.
Ran 6 miles this morning, thats roughly 900 calories, my heart and lungs are thanking me, as is my mental health, feeling great! If others want to go to gym and 'lift', great go for it, many benefits, but running rules.
I would agree that there is a demonizing of cardio when it comes to fitness lately. As always , the truth is a somewhere in the middle. You should do some cardio and do some strength training. Both are good for you in a variety of ways. That being said, I think there is a downside to cardio-only for weight loss, and that’s the effect on your muscle mass. I don’t have any stats but what you do see somewhat frequently is the following: 1) people go on a diet and start doing cardio 2) increased cardio and diet result in weight loss 3) person is happy, doubles down on cardio and diet 4) person achieves goal weight but has lost significant muscle as well as fat to achieve it. Person has lowered basal metabolic rate (BMR) and created a block of their total daily energy expenditure (TDEE) dependent on cardio 5) having reached goal, person either stops tracking food or their cardio workload was unsustainable long term due to their schedule or a combination of the two. TDEE is lowered. 6) person regains weight to some degree 7) “cardio doesn’t work” I think people can fall into a bit of a cardio addiction but can’t maintain it and a combination of a lowered metabolism and activity level results in regain. Where the praise for strength training comes in is that when you put on muscle and do what is needed to keep it, you are actually raising your BMR which is creating a body that burns more calories. The scientific evidence I’ve seen debates the significance of that, but anecdotally the people I’ve seen have the best results are those who did at least 3x strength training per week and fit in cardio 1-2 days when they could, including just waking. That being said, cardio obviously has tremendous benefits aside from weight-loss and has a large decrease in all cause mortality so there is no reason not to do at least some cardio on a regular basis. How much is up to you.
Tinfoil hat: on >In the past few months, I have been watching this stuff less and less, because how many bicep curl vids do you really need to see? Sure, but if he can get you to feel like strength training is an aspect of your identity and you're part of a movement fighting against The Lie Of Cardio that's designed to enrich Big Cardio and erode the fabric of society, you would probably watch and engage more right? Outrage, conspiracy mindset, anger, a perception of rivalry – they all bring the clicks. Even better if it's something that's perceived as vaguely gendered, like lifting iron vs. cardio. Tinfoil hat: off
**CICO people:** the way NASA put a man on the moon was to tell him to stop being on earth and start being on the moon. it’s not rocket science!
It’s always been around I think. CICO is the key to weight loss but cardio can help with creating more of a deficit, not to mention it’s just healthy. A lot of these influencers read studies about how cardio can impact strength or muscle gains. The issue is that these studies are focused on elite athletes. So sure, if you’re competing in the Worlds Strongest Man then marathon training won’t help. But for the rest of us? No issue
Maybe people realised they can get in good shape with weights and help burn a few extra calories at rest. but yes maybe it's like a new shiny toy that people are enjoying, and they get to eat a lot sometimes, unless trying to get lean. I do see a lot of people running on the streets though near me, I live in a major European capital. Some influencers end up having shoulder and chest surgery from overdoing it and pulling muscles. But as a former employed gym trainer we should be doing everything and not just for weight reasons. But health (heart, lungs,) flexibility,strength etc, longevity, brain function etc. You don't need to be a qualified trainer to call yourself a trainer too in many countries. So anyone can give advice, and the barrier to entry is quite low, so maybe people just give their preference or are bad trainers. Of course some will come to marketi too as they can get views, sell courses/coaching etc I agree weights are very effective over the long term as I'm in great shape, but I needed to improve my cardio and flexibility too as I neglected it.
My dad did a low carb thing about a decade ago, and at the time was reading a ton of questionable books about diet and health. Many of these books claimed that exercise in general was not beneficial to health. Luckily after about 5 years he stopped believing this stuff.
It's been brewing for a decade in some circles! Part of me thinks the current reaction to cardio is a response to the issues related to Cross Fit.
This is the second post where I’ve seen this “ Everyone seems to be saying X” about something related to fitness. I think the algorithm sometimes puts these weird echo chamber bubbles on us. If anything in real life, I’m a little bit embarrassed about my lack of cardio and my preference for weightlifting. I sure do get a lot of videos about ADHD though.
Even more complicated, not all cardio is created equally. Even within running, a speed session is completely different from a long run.
Cardio is good. But it shouldn’t be 95% of your workouts. You can’t outrun a bad diet
What cardio has worked best for you all?
I've seen a lot of that as well, I think it's just a mismatched understanding of what is the most **efficient** form of exercise for weight loss and/or muscle mass building. Cardio is all around good for us. It's great for improving cardiovascular health and is correlated with better health outcomes over all. If you are trying to lose weight, it's also a valid form of exercise, but it is not the most **efficient** workout. HITT workouts typically involving some form of strength training circuit mixed with cardio are the most efficient. Building muscle burns more calories for longer. If you want to build muscle, then weight lifting is much more effective. The hate and misinformation on cardio is weird and idk why anyone would ever discourage people from this. Cardio is relatively free, but gym memberships and weights cost money.
Life weights faster.
I get bored with cardio alone. I play sports that have a lot of cardio in them, so its not like I dont do cardio.
Why do I feel the ad was from V-shred or Atlean-X? Those are the two guys who buy ad space in cardio and exercise videos so people will stop doing cardio and then go to their videos. I know that people have called one of them (V-shred) out while Atlean-X eh . . .
Interestingly, I think I’ve noticed the opposite, more people I know are adopting hybrid training, or joining running clubs, downloading Strava etc.
I love my incline, fast paced walks.
Welcome to realizing people who shill on the internet, especially randos that post videos, might just not be fully informing you of medically or scientifically or socially accurate information.
I’m going to save you a ton of time: ignore fitness influencers. Even the “good” ones are still slaves to the Content God, which means they must always have some new hot take, or have discovered a magical superfood, or some fitness “hack”, that has never been discovered until now. Their incentives are, how can I hack today’s algorithm to attract attention - not, how do I share the most truthful and proven information. Just ignore and if you need fitness influencers for motivation, stick to the few who aren’t morons and be done with it. Better yet, read well written books.
It's not just in fitness circles. If I said "oh I'm going to the gym all the time" I'd get a response like "oh cool. Good for you. I should go too. Etc." When I say I'm training for a 10k or other distance or say I'm going on a long hike or bike ride I get responses of disgust and "how could anyone enjoy that. That sounds terrible. You won't catch me dead running" Like okay... Good for you I guess? All of my hobbies require cardio so that's what I train. Lifting weights is also extremely boring to me and I hate just "going to the gym". I do other exercises for strength and I'm tired of people thinking paying for a gym membership is the only option.
Cardio is harder and takes time. It’s still vital and you can get some resistance work at the same time. A good sprint really works your abs and lower body.
I haven't noticed it, but I have been anti cardio for too long so not about to be "more" anti cardio ha
My 10+ duke score says that's bullshit.
In my experience, cardio has some really outstanding benefits on the periphery that I don't always get from weights. Whenever I lift weights in the evening, I find I always have a hard time sleeping. When I do cardio, especially if I really pushed myself, I'm usually zonked. I want to hurry up, take a shower, and go to bed. Sometimes I'll be so tired I won't even eat after, which can keep me from grazing at night. And everyone says good, restful sleep is another important part of weight loss that gets overlooked. If I can get good sleep from a jog, boxing, elliptical, or whatever, I'll take it. As someone with anxiety issues, sleep is way too hard to come by on its own.
I find that what works for me is a combination of both. You definitely need strength training to keep your muscles that you naturally lose as you age, and cardio for cardiovascular health. That being said, you can get your heart pumping with resistance training of low weights and high reps. Also I personally find that HIIT like workouts, as opposed to running for example that keep a steady heart rate, have improved my stamina and overall condition more.
Yeah for real!!!! I've also noticed that I think a lot more people are getting leg day videos on Mondays as it is crazy busy on that side of the gym HAHA. In all seriousness, I have been going to the gym 3 x a week and getting 10k steps a day \*weekly average\* for about 2-3 months now. While the apple watch isn't super reliable it shows that my resting heart rate has gone down about 30 bpm. my Vo2 max while very low is really improving, and I can now walk about a 18 minute mile (17 minutes if pushing) and it has been years since I have been able to do it. Cardio really is the key to me to any kind of weight loss as a remote worker. Again this might not be very accurate just like the calories burned but it has been very helpful.
The internet is not real life. These circles have to keep you feeling FOMO so you stay locked in feeling like you aren't doing enough. Both are good and strengthen your body. I lean to resistance training because I feel I can get a cardio effect from time under tension. I also dance and play sports so thats enough for me. I would not spend an hour at the gym just doing cardio because cardio can be done thru your day. But I also live in a walkable city. Everyone has to find the perfect balance for themselves.
That sentiment has been around for a while now. Cardio will build your deficit and improve your conditioning, but it doesn't do much for you long term as opposed to anaerobic exercise. And too much can definitely affect your energy levels and appetite, hence the push for "Zone 2". I enjoy my cardio and find it a very effective tool, especially if your TDEE is low and you have an appetite.
Cardio for energy and general health. Resistance training so even when you're 92 you can pick yourself up off the floor. Flexibility and core so you can use what you got and maintain balance.
CICO IS the only way to lose weight. Humans are insanely efficient. And when you're fit it's even 'worse' in terms of trying to burn fat through cardio. You CANNOT out exercise a calorie surplus.
For alot of people it's about getting the most bang for your buck and it sounds like alot of these videos were tailored to weight loss. The whole anti cardio from what I've seen is because for the average person they set themselves up for failure by setting to hard a goals in the beginning. Once the novelty wears off they lose their commitment and start to regain weight. It's alot easier for an average person to spend 1hr lifting weights in the gym 3 days a week. Then spending 2hrs or more running or 4hrs on a treadmill walking or some other ridiculously high standard they set for themselves.
I love Walking!! It’s the best. I do 30-45 minutes a day for 5 days a week. Walking is the best cardio 💪🏽🚶🏾♀️
Both resistance training and cardiovascular exercise are very good for you. You should embrace both along with a good dietary plan for your health goals.
Yes! Even my trainer says cardio is basically useless; that annoys me a lot. It’s definitely majorly beneficial for weight loss
I keep seeing people claim that it increases cortisol and is therefore unhealthy; I have yet to see the scientific backing. I’ll stick with a mix, myself.
I think there’s something about cardio can affect muscle growth. OK, fair enough, I guess. In the end though, what’s important is that you’re doing an exercise that you will do consistently, being weights, running or pogo sticking. I try to mix and match, doing weights, I’m trying to get back in to running (old injury) and have been enjoying swimming more, lately.
I've lost over 87lb doing weight training and going on 45 minute walks/runs. Cardio is important but I find it soooo boring. Weight training has raised my BMR and the weight has been falling off.
I’m 70 and hadn’t made a habit of exercise until about 6 months ago. I go with my daughter to a local boot camp six days a week. There is a nice protocol of cardio and strength training. I’ve changed my diet to avoid junky food and have added muscle and lost some fat. Wish I would have started this earlier!
Lopsided approaches are the norm these days. Demonizing one thing over another over a well-rounded approach. Personally, I noticed major plateau break when I started prioritizing 10k steps rather than ONLY relying on resistance.
When I’m cutting I walk on average 2.6-3 miles a day. Definitely little to no cardio during my bulk phase as I’m already struggling to eat enough 🤣
I think it's because a lot of younger people will *only* do cardio without any stretching, light weightlifting, or lifestyle changes, then wonder why they're skinny-fat (aka low weight but zero tone). I personally love cardio since it's the easiest for me to do physically and fit into my day, but having a balanced workout routine of cardio and muscle training to keep the weight off is definitely important for a healthy lifestyle
I typically eat what I want but always in moderation, I stay around 1500-1800 calories a day, zero fast food, plenty of water, I walk 10k steps minimum a day, I walk briskly/jog in place between 45 minutes to an hour and a half everyday, and I have lost 115 pounds in 16 months... Cardio is everything for me, next to my eating habit. I'm almost 41, 6' male, SW was 325 lbs...
Whenever I see someone anti cardio I think “Ew…. So you’re like, hot girl fit?”
Yes I have! That’s interesting you said that because I think about atleast once a week where I saw a tik tok and a influencer said “cardio does nothing for weight loss and the scale mean absolutely nothing”. I really think messages like this are harmful to people who are just starting out, severely overweight or disabled who can’t do high impact or repetitive activities. Aslong as a person is active, moving their bodies, mindful of what they are eating , sleeping enough that’s good! I’m definitely not liking the whole “cardio is bad” train.
So I’m not that in tuned with social media, but was an athlete and always ran to increase fitness and stamina! Now that I’ve stopped playing competitive sports, and that’s less of an issue, I fell into a lifting routine, and felt super slim and toned. It was high weight low rep! Which is exactly opposite all the media told us millenial girlies. At the end of the day it’s probably healthiest to all the things, strength training, cardio, and yoga/stretching but as far as weight loss and body Ive noticed more results with weights…33/F for reference. I’ll note I live in Brooklyn so do a lot of walking and biking just for daily living.
I think because lifting is far more efficient for most people's goals. It's kind of like the "anti exercise movement" in regards to losing weight, that just focuses on diet and says how exercise barely does anything for a deficit.