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Training in a Gym: Cardio vs. Strength Training for Weight Loss
Training in a gym is very popular. Every year, 300,000 people start exercising in a gym, making fitness one of the most practiced sports. Regarding the goals of the athletes who step into the gym, there are not many surprises: 34 percent aim to lose weight and achieve a leaner body. There is no doubt that weight loss is one of the main reasons for athletes. However, what often raises doubts is the best way to achieve it. Is cardio training or strength training the right method for weight loss?
In later articles, we have extensively described both variants based on published research and individual goals.
Losing Weight with Strength Training
There has been a long-standing association between weight loss and long cardio sessions. By doing long cardio training sessions, you burn a lot of calories, making it likely that you will lose weight. The relationship with strength training is often not considered when you want to work on your weight. Yet, strength training can be very valuable when you want to work on your weight. In some cases, this can even be more effective than traditional long cardio sessions.
Everything that weighs even a gram in your body contributes to the number displayed on the scale. Whether it’s your fat mass, muscle mass, bones, or fluids, everything adds up to the total, which is the number you focus on when you want to work on your weight. Unfortunately, this number does not reflect the composition and proportions relative to each other and your total body composition. It is therefore important to let go of this fixation on total weight and take a deeper look at how your body is composed. Do an accurate fat measurement using a skinfold caliper and work to reduce the amount of body fat. Because that’s what you want, after all, if you want to lose weight.
The Benefits of Strength Training
Compared to cardio training, strength training can have several benefits on your weight and body fat percentage. When doing cardio training, your metabolism increases during the training. You often achieve this by training at a certain intensity of your maximum heart rate. The effects after this training are not very significant, and you are not specifically developing muscles. Of course, you are training your muscles, but in a different way than you do with strength training.
When you do strength training, your muscle mass grows. The muscles in your body are active cells and require energy. Unlike fat mass, which is an energy store, muscles also require energy at rest. In short: even when you are in a resting state, your body burns more calories when you have more muscle mass.
Another advantage is that your body remains active after the strength training workout. During the training, you can burn approximately 400 to 500 calories, depending on the intensity, but this continues after the training. This afterburn effect, also known as Excess Post-Exercise Oxygen Consumption (EPOC), means that your resting metabolism remains elevated for up to 48 hours after your training, allowing you to continue burning calories even after your workout.
The Benefits of Cardio Training
When doing cardio training for fat burning, there are also several benefits. It is not only strength training that is good for weight loss. Cardio training is often low-threshold and very accessible for people who have never been to the gym before. This makes it easy to start and endure for a long time, as you can determine the intensity yourself. In addition, the cardio machines require little explanation, and you can start using them without too much trouble. The amount of calories you can burn with cardio training is often very high. You can easily burn around 500 to 800 calories in an hour of running. This is often much lower with strength training.
Of course, there are also disadvantages. When you mainly focus on cardio training, your body will not get much shape. After all, your fat decreases, but you have not followed an active muscle-building program to give your body a bit more shape. This can be a disadvantage if you want to add a bit more shape and accents to your body. Another disadvantage is that you need to spend quite a bit of time during training at a fairly high intensity to reach the 500 to 800 calories you want to burn. A simpler way to create a calorie deficit is to eat fewer calories. We believe this is inherently linked to working on your weight.
Conclusion
There are many benefits to strength training when you want to lose weight. The same goes for cardio training. It is no longer appropriate, in our opinion, to immediately put you on the treadmill as many instructors have done until now. Because a solid workout with heavy weights can have quite a few more benefits than an hour of running on the treadmill, not only during but also after the training. Therefore, determine for yourself which of
the two you prefer. And realize that if you want to work on your weight, you may need to consume slightly fewer calories. This is much easier than burning these calories in the gym.
