Mixing weight training and cardio: a bad ideadont overdo the warm-ups
11 October 2005If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
A mule is a combination of a horse and a donkey and the hybrid animal has a specific purpose. Might there be a hybrid combination of weight training and cardiovascular training that could serve a mule-like specific exercise purpose? Could we (to double up on analogies) mix and match and kill two birds with one stone? In my opinion, no. I think weight training is a poor form of cardiovascular exercise. I believe there are better ways to raise the heart rate. I think aerobic exercise is a poor form of strength training. There are better ways to build muscle. Advocates for mixing these two exercise forms have existed for as long as the twin modes have been around. I believe that both modes are needed separate and distinct in any sensible fitness regimen. We need weight training to build and strengthen the muscles that surround the human exoskeleton. We need cardio to improve the functionality and health of the internal organs and arterial highways. The best way to lift weights is simply: use free weights to perform compound multi-joint movements that require groups of muscle to work together in a syncopated, coordinated fashion to complete the assigned muscular task. Free weight exercises, unlike progressive resistance exercises done using machines, have a third dimension of tension (controlling the side-to-side movement) that causes the activation of muscle stabilizers. For this reason alone machines that mimic can never equal the effectiveness of the free weight exercises they are designed to resemble.
Cardio exercise (aerobics) systematically elevates the heart rate for a protracted period of time. Internal organs operate at a purposefully accelerated capacity and this strengthens the heart muscle and improves the ability of the lungs to draw and distribute oxygen. Aerobic activity causes glands to increase output. Arteries and veins to and from the muscles are flushed with torrents of blood carrying nutrients to and waste products away from the muscles. Aerobic activity is time sensitive: in order to generate an elevated heart rate we seek to do a great amount of work within a specific timeframe. Weight training effectiveness suffers when we attempt to go too fast; by commencing a set before being sufficiently recovered from the previous effort poundage or reps suffer. Regardless you degree of fitness or strength level (we assume you are training hard enough to trigger hypertrophy) the target muscle needs to be rested and recovered in order to operate at maximum capacity. Certainly you can weight train quickly to keep the heart rate purposefully elevated but performing a maximum set with limit poundage before you are recovered causes you to lose repetitions. If by way of example you were capable of 100-pounds for 10 repetitions in a particular exercise but insisted on attempting 100×10 before full recovery 100×10 would no doubt end up as 100×7 or 100×8 bad news considering you were seeking 100×11. There is no way a fatigued muscle can operate at the same capacity as a fully rested muscle.
Certain sects of fitness experts have for decades attempted to promote the mule-like idea of combining cardio with weight training. Back in the 1960s Bob Gadja, the 1966 Mr. America, championed a weight training tactical approach called peripheral heart action, or PHA for short. The more pedestrian circuit training is still championed in many facilities around the country. Typically those that promote circuit training want badly to believe that this combination works. They are so swayed by their own prejudices and their belief in the preordained conclusion that they ignore copious data and empirical knowledge that refutes the effectiveness of this approach. Circuit training will produce results on untrained individual for a short period of time. But as longtime purposeful primitives are aware, you can use any crazy weight-training program on an untrained beginner and if a sufficient amount of workout intensity is generated results will occur. The problem is the expert assigns the amazing gains to the crazed program and turns an ineffectual training regimen into a religion hey, dont tell me this approach doesnt work; Ive had lots of clients gain a ton of muscle and triple their strength in six weeks. Of course when the trainee morphed from untrained into trained bye-bye gains.
Be on guard against becoming a routine zealot or iron missionary. There is no one system of progressive resistance that trumps all others and to stimulate progress on a consistent basis training modes should be rotated every six weeks or so. The mistake most beginners make is they develop an unhealthy allegiance to the system that got them great initial gains and use it for six years when the routine should have chucked after six weeks. But I digress.Rudyard Kipling once wrote, East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet. He was referencing the fact that Western European culture and Far Eastern oriental culture would never lose their respective identity to form some third blended culture that eradicated the traits and idiosyncratic tendencies of the two mother cultures. Cardio is cardio and progressive resistance training is PR training and never the twain shall meet. One is a horse and one is a donkey and creating a fitness mule is creating an amalgamation that is the worst of both worlds. Dont rush prior to all-out weight training; you will lose reps or poundage and this is to be avoided at all costs: better to take and extra minute or two (or three) before tackling that all-important final top set in a particular exercise. On the other hand, while performing the preliminary warm-up sets, why not go faster? Why not reduce the time gaps between these sets in order to speed up blood flow and warm up the target muscle?
When you think about it, there are two distinctly different training goals lodged within every exercise: for the first few sets in any exercise the goal is to warm-up. What does that mean? Seek to raise the core temperature of the muscle. This happens by increasing the blood flow within that muscle. A proper warm-up ingrains technique: technical execution of any exercise improves with practice and the warm-up sets provide that technical practice. Warm-ups grease neurological pathways and improve the central nervous systems ability to send electrical synapses to target muscles. The trick is to warm-up properly without losing strength for the top set. Too many trainees make the mistake of doing too many reps, use too much poundage or go too fast on the warm-up sets. They diffuse, dilute and lose precious strength needed for the all-important top set or sets. No hypertrophy, no muscle growth occurs when performing sub-maximal warm-up sets. The resistance is insufficient to flip the growth switch. Hypertrophy only occurs in response to some sort of maximal stress. This stress can take many forms but a sub-maximal warm-up is not one of them. Beware of expending too much energy on the warm-up; handled incorrectly a warm-up can wreck the effectiveness of your workout. Lets not assign aerobic attributes to a progressive resistance workout at least not to the point where poundage-handling ability is degraded or repetitions are lost.
Tags:Popularity: 2% [?]
Related Posts:
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
