It is already a no-brainer that we should exercise regularly. After all, exercise helps in keeping our bodies healthy. Unfortunately, despite this knowledge that we should exercise more, we don’t know how to do this exactly.
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It is an ongoing debate to this day about whether cardio (aerobic) exercise beats resistance (strength) training. Cardio usually takes the form of running, while resistance training often takes the form of weightlifting.
A common refrain is that cardio is the best thing for losing weight or improving heart health, and resistance is the best thing for building muscle (though without any cardiovascular benefits). But is that really the case?
The problem is that in sports science, solid advice based on big scientific studies is quite rare. It makes sense when you think about it: Unlike clinical medicine, where a company can earn hundreds of billions of dollars down the road after developing a single drug, there’s not as much motivation (or money) behind finding the perfect workout. What’s more, as a society, we are generally more interested in knowing which medications prevent heart attacks than in whether crunches or situps are more effective.
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When it comes to comparing cardio and resistance training, the evidence doesn’t show a benefit either way. One large systematic review — a type of meta-study that collates evidence from an entire field of research — focused on mentions of visceral fat in studies comparing the two forms of exercise. This is the fat that builds up in your torso and is thought to be the primary driver of obesity-related disease, which makes it an important indicator for health. The systematic review combined the results from 35 studies looking at more than 2,000 people across a wide range of exercise regimens. In terms of visceral fat, the review found that cardio provided benefits, but when compared to resistance training, the data was inconclusive.
Like most studies in the field, those comparing cardio and resistance training are few and far between. Another review, this one from 2018, looked at a range of health factors. Researchers found more than a dozen studies showing that cardio improved health, but only a handful compared cardio and resistance, and those lacked enough evidence to draw any conclusions at all.
It turns out the results depend on how much you’re already doing.
See more of this on Medium.com.
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Source: neatorama