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Do you need long distance running or jogging on top of weight lifting for healthy heart & lung function? Do you need aerobic training to improve cardiovascular fitness if you do weight lifting? Or is weight lifting enough?
If you’ve done 5×5 Squats with 1.5x your body-weight, you know your heart worked as hard as your legs. The stronger you get the stronger your muscles, your joints, but also your heart becomes. This post will explain why.
Aerobic vs. Anaerobic Exercise. Aerobic exercises use lipids (fats) with oxygen for energy. Anaerobic exercise use ATP-PC or glycolisis (carbs) for energy. That’s one of the reasons you need to eat carbs.
Short, high intensity sports like weight lifting, sprints, MMA are anaerobic. Long, low-intensity sports like jogging, walking, marathons are aerobic. You can find an overview of the energy systems used in sports here.
The Cardiovascular System. Your cardiovascular system is composed of your heart, blood & blood vessels. Some of its tasks include:
- Moving nutrients to/from cells and returning waste from cells
- Carrying oxygenated blood from your heart to your body/lungs
- Returning deoxygenated blood to your heart
Cardiovascular Fitness. Has nothing to do with endurance. It means having a healthy cardiovascular system: healthy heart & long function. Cardiovascular fitness decreases risks of cardiovascular diseases like high blood pressure.
Cardiovascular fitness also helps recovery between sets & workouts. Increasing your cardiovascular fitness improves oxygen & nutrients supply to your muscles, but also waste removal from your muscles.
Image credit: Healthwise
Cardiovascular Adaptations to Weight Lifting. Your left ventricle pumps blood to your body. Your right ventricle pumps blood to your lungs. Here’s what happens when you do weight lifting.
- Muscle contractions compress blood vessels.
- This increases resistance to blood flow and thus blood pressure.
- Heart must pump harder to supply blood to your muscles & rest of body.
The stronger you become, the more muscle you’ll have. The muscular wall of your left ventricle will thicken so your heart can deal with the increased blood pressure. This is how weight lifting improves your cardiovascular fitness.
Do You Need Aerobic Exercise? Weight lifting increases cardiovascular fitness above average. Unless you want to run marathons or compete in long distance bicyling you don’t need aerobic exercise.
Actually even if you run marathons, interval training & weight lifting are superior to aerobic exercise. Same thing for fat loss: interval training & weight lifting are superior to aerobic exercise.
Endurance Training for Anaerobic Sports. Sports like MMA demand endurance, strength, speed & power. You can build strength, speed & power with strength training, but you can’t achieve the necessary levels of endurance.
Aerobic exercise is slow. It interferes with strength, speed & power you need for anaerobic sports. The best way to build endurance for anaerobic sports is high intensity interval training: HIIT.
The problem: endurance & strength training are hard to combine. HIIT stresses your central nervous system which can impair performance. But that’s the topic of another article.
For Rowing, I usually do 80% Interval and 20% Endurance.
In the fall, (Races 5-10Km) I do more endurance and in spring and summer (races 1-2Km) its basically all sprint work, with some longer relaxed cardio on off days.
Also, I do a lot of Anaerobic Threshold training to increase anaerobic endurance
As a rower as well all our autumn(fall) and winter training is LSD (long slow distance) heart rate between 130-160. In spring it shoots up to intense sprints. heart rate 170 - max.
In my mind I wouldn’t be able to sprint like I am now with out all the long slow distance stuff (that’s also for technique too) but the results from sprints are much more dramatic then from long slow distance work. Def recommend to get off the bike, carry it and sprint up a hill.
I’m currently injured from my marathon training. It’s depressing and aggravating!
Another good read Mehdi, I’m looking forward to reading more about HIIT, hopefully on your site
I’m also planning on running a marathon this fall with my friend, but we’ll see how that goes.
I believe a mix of weight lifting, interval training, and aerobic training is best. According to this post:
“Actually even if you run marathons, interval training & weight lifting are superior to aerobic exercise.”
Good luck training for a marathon with only interval training & weight lifting. Without long, endurance-based runs at the core of your training, you’ll never reach your marathon potential. Interval training & weight lifting play their role, but I cringe when I hear talk that aerobic exercise is either unnecessary or the least beneficial type of exercise. I suppose it does depend on one’s goals. I am more focused on a mix between weight training strength and running stamina with my emphasis on long-term health.
It all depends on your goals. If you want to be competitive in a 5hr road bike race, a 3hr mtn bike race, a triathlon or a marathon you have to do the long rides, swims and runs. No way around this. Your body needs to get used to the effort and needs to adapt to become more efficient at doing those activities. We all know about specificity (i.e. if you want to get good at pull-ups, don’t do lat pull downs—practice doing pull-ups). Strength training, HIIT intervals, LSD, anaerobic threshold intervals, etc are just tools. A well prepared athlete will use all these tools at different points in their season, normally organizing his/her training through periodization.
If cardiovascular fitness (vs competitive performance) is the goal, I agree that aerobic endurance training is not necessary.
All your training efforts must square against this question: what is your goal?
Great read Mehdi.. I’m eager to hear your opinion on combining HIIT with strength training or muscle building routines.
To keep body fat levels low while building muscle, which is best - HIIT done 1 or 2x a week or low intensity PWO cardio? I don’t think theres a definite answer but trial and error seems to be the best choice. Your thoughts?
So wait, if you are trying to burn fat isn’t aerobic exercise the best? It will deplete fat stores as it uses fat as the energy source while anaerobic uses glucose.
Am I missing something?
@Peter: I agree that if you are into competitive long-distance running, rowing, or cycling, aerobic exercise is important. However for the rest of us, I think aerobic exercise is hardly necessary. And I tend to think that “running stamina” has no benefit to your long-term health, in fact it might act against your long-term health. Arthur Devany (arthurdevany.com) and Mark Sisson (http://www.marksdailyapple.com/chronic-cardio/) make some solid arguments against excessive cardio and these guys are in peak shape. (Devany is in his late 70’s, 210 lbs. and 8% body-fat)
This is an interesting idea. It’s clear to me that interval training is superior for fat loss over long distance and that if long distance competition is your goal, you need long distance training.
If your goal is to improve your quality of life and prevent heart attacks, what should be your focus? Assuming you do vigorous weight training 3 times a week, and have no interest in long distance activities beyond not getting winded by running up a few flights of stairs, is there any benefit to running? If HIIT will do it, how much is needed? Is there research to back this up? Most of the studies I’ve seen assume that cardio is done conventionally.
@Stu - HIIT is just a concept that provides templates for effort and recovery. You can apply these templates to all sorts of activities, running included.
When I start to get too blubbery, I usually do Tabata intervals running or cycling. Or I do Elliptical intervals according to the 20 minute cardio solution in Body-For-Life. I’ll mix these up and do them 2, 3 times a week. Might be tough if your squatting volume is high so be careful you don’t overtrain.
Check out the Crossfit site. Also, check out this Clarence Bass article: http://cbass.com/SEARCHOF.HTM
I play rugby, so i need to sprint, run and have endurance. But i also need strength and explosive movements.
Right now i am not really sure i can attain ALL of these. I am strong, but i need more stamina to run for longer periods and run fast at times too. But i also want to continue to get stronger.
I have two practice sessions a week. Both of them contact. Then I train in the gym twice a week. Either Squatting or Benching. I go for a jog once a week, and do two shuttle runs twice a week. (Of which one is done during practice.) Sometimes i can only train once a week in the gym, squatting is real strenous!
Whilst i am writing i might as well post my diet up for scrutiny:
1cup oatmeal + 4 eggs (whole)
1 cup oatmeal + 3 egg omlette (whole)
rice/chicken/veg
rice/chicken/veg
Steak/ or some form red meat
shake, blended with 1 cup oats, milk and yogart + two sccop whey.
looking to fit in more food in the near future.
@Peter
You do need long runs if you’re into marathons. But you don’t need them 3-4x per week, that’s too stressing on your body. Article has a link, check also mark’s daily apple as Brendan mentioned, he’s a runner.
@Carl
Cardio should be third. First strength training and healthy food. Then cardio to speed up fat loss. HIIT works best, but is harder, very intensive on CNS, so it can become too much when mixed with strength training. Will post more about that in the future.
@Nick
Aerobic exercise burns fat during the session. While weight lifting increases metabolic rate (so you’re burning more fat when you don’t workout). Similar thing with HIIT, also increases metabolic rate.
@Stu
Your heart, like all your other muscles, is trained during weight lifting. If you want healthy lung/heart function - cardiovascular fitness - focus on getting stronger. More strength = more muscle, including stronger heart muscle.
Do you have any HIIT routine advices?
thanks
@Mehdi
I didn’t see a link when your article was first posted. And of course long distance running 3-4x a week will kill the body. Most people in training for a marathon take one long run a week. Interesting stuff nonetheless.
@Brendan
I’m the last to advocate for marathon training. I think it’s horrible for the body. As for aerobic exercise, I DO think it is necessary, although excess “running stamina” likely has as little to do with long-term health as does excess strength in the weight room. The people who live the longest usually are neither ripped with muscle or able to run long distances.
PS: Really good and informative read, Mehdi. Really got my brain thinking.
@Pedro
Check rosstraining.com or crossfit, you’ll find ideas there.
@Peter
I have a friend (ex-lifter) who runs that way, he’s never injured.
You’re welcome. The people who do 1 long run/week to prepare for marathons are the ones who know what they’re doing
Some notes on cardiovascular health and aerobic training (from my morning cardiology class, so if you have any strong evidence to counter anything I say, I am more than interested to hear it):
While anaerobic and aerobic training both result in a “stronger” heart, the changes they bring about to achieve this strength and their effects on health are profoundly different.
As you correctly pointed out, weight training increases peripheral resistance, ultimately leading to hypertrophy of the left ventricular wall. What you did not point out was that this change is exactly the sort of pathological change in the heart seen with chronic hypertension, although the degree of hypertrophy is much greater in the latter case. Ventricular hypertrophy is bad for a variety of reasons, as it decreases the capillary density of the heart and increases its stiffness. Of course, the hypertrophy observed during weightlifting isn’t awful, since it’s mild compared to the hypertrophy found in hypertension. However, it is does not improve cardiac health either.
Aerobic exercise, in contrast, increases the volume of the ventricle, allowing more blood to be pumped per stroke. The ventricle wall stays the same thickness relative to the volume of the ventricle, leading to an increased ability to pump blood without the detrimental effects such as loss of capillary density or flexibility observed in strength training hypertrophy.
So, to summarize, both forms of exercise improve aspects of cardiac “fitness,” although only the changes brought about by aerobic training are beneficial. And again, if you have any evidence to the contrary, I’d like to be the first one to hear it.
@Erik: thanks for the comment based on some actual science. If anyone else has any good evidence on this, please post. I’m not interested in marathon, but I am interested in keeping a healthy cario system.
@Erik: Thanks for the alternative view.
Can you elaborate on how much strength training it’d take for heart hypertrophy to reach levels seen by hypertension?
How does aerobic exercise increase the stroke, but not also cause some form of hypertrophy in the heart?
@Erik
Weight lifting causes physiological hypertrophy. Hypertension (and other diseases) causes pathological hypertrophy. Pathological hypertrophy increases the chamber size, but decreases muscle wall thickness (think overtraining). Weight lifting increases muscle wall thickness, not chamber size. Aerobic fitness indeed increases chamber size, not muscle wall thickness.
Only thing aerobic fitness does is increasing cardiovascular fitness. Weight lifting does the same thing, but also increases muscle mass, bone density, testosterone levels, strengthen joints, increase flexibility, etc.
You write that only the changes of aerobic training are beneficial. In other words those of weight lifting are detrimental. Thus you pretend that weight lifting is bad for your hearth and health.
I’d say spend less time in your books, and more time in the gym, this way you can experience for yourself if your cardiovascular fitness improves or not.
Hi Mehdi,
Was interested to read this article, I have always been of the belief that HIIT is the way forward, and is healthier than endurance type training. I am also interested to see you have some rowers on here. I am considering starting rowing, as my local club has scouted me because of my height and build. Is Stronglifts 5×5 a good routine along with whatever they do at the club nights as a beginner’s rowing training?
@Mehdi,
To begin with, I did not suggest that weight training is bad for your overall physical health. I said that its cardiovascular effects are significantly different from endurance training, and that these changes are not beneficial. I never said that weight lifting is bad for one’s health, merely that it does very little beneficial in the way of cardiovascular health.
As for your posited difference between pathological and physiological hypertrophy, this is patently wrong, both from a perspective of book learning (of which you are so dismissive) and from practical experience (I have actually held several hearts with significant pathological hypertrophy; all of them had exceptionally thick ventricular walls with a diminished chamber See: sizehttp://library.med.utah.edu/WebPath/CVHTML/CV101.html). The difference between pathological and physiological hypertrophy, in the context of ventricular thickening, has much more to do with revesibility. Again, this is based on (a) my notes from medical school, (b) various comments from pathologists, and (c) my limited personal experience with cadaver hearts. So, if you have some better evidence than this to the contrary(i.e. something like a peer reviewed study), please let me know. Like said before, I’d be the first one who would like to know.
As for my PRACTICAL experience: I have been weightlifting for about six months and can currently back squat and deadlift twice my body weight (which I know is neither strong nor weak). I have noticed a significant decline in my ability to exer myself without becoming short of breath. Therefore, in my PRACTICAL experience, weight lifting has been detrimental to my cardiac health. You really shouldn’t be so blindly condescending of views which conflict with your own. It makes you sound just as short sighted as those idiot body builders you poke fun at.
@Erik
There’s a general bias against weight lifting, especially from the medical field. Dangerous, squats bad for knees, bad for hearth, etc. You’ll find the evidence you need by looking in the right direction. You have Internet, do your homework. Start with this one.
This was my last comment.
@Mehdi
Thank you for providing some real evidence in this discussion. That link you provided was interesting, and you’re probably right in saying that there’s a bias against weightlifting in the medical field. That being said, there’s also a bias among powerlifters against O lifting and bodybuilding, a bias among bodybuilders against O lifting and powerlifting. In short, biases abound within every group you look. The question that really matters is whether those biases are based on evidence. And it is evidence that I would like to discuss.
To begin with, there are two predominant attitudes within medicine regarding weightlifting and the heart. One is that it is bad for you. The primary evidence for this claim was that a comparison between weight lifters and the general population showed that weight lifters had bad hearts. However, a closer examination of the two groups shows that weight lifters also are more likely to use steroids. Correcting for steroids apparently shows that weight lifting isn’t awful for your heart. As a result, this view has largely fallen out of favor.
The second view is that weightlifting isn’t good for your heart. There is some evidence to the contrary in this area too. Patients with congestive heart failure do improve some with resistance training. Of course, complicating this result is the fact that patients with congestive heart failure probably weren’t terribly physically active during their lives. Doing 5 lb dumbell curls will have a significant effect on someone who’s been in a body cast for six months. Nevertheless, I wouldn’t use this evidence to suggest that 5 lb dumbell curls are a good strength training exercise.
In medicine, the only form of evidence that counts in the end, for a variety of reasons, is a randomized, controlled trial. My one critique of that link is the lack of RCTs in the studies he invokes (He does invoke a meta-analysis of RCTs, but a meta-analysis is rarely regarded as hard and fast evidence in and of itself). Here’s the abstract of a recent RCT comparing weight lifting to endurance training (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17641601?ordinalpos=2&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum).
Read it. Or don’t. However, the evidence in this case shows that:
(i) only running had significant effects on resting cardiac function
(ii) in terms of reducing wall stress on the ventricle and increasing ejection fraction (the percentage of blood in a ventricle pushed out during any given stroke), runners appear to do much better, although the study does not have enough statistical weight to prove these specific results beyond doubt
(iii) runners develop a better maximal oxygen uptake
(iv) weight lifters developed a greater maximal load than runners, although the running group also experienced gains in this area.
What this evidence suggests to me is that weight lifting is not an adequate substitute for running in terms of cardiac fitness. Maybe you’ll draw a different conclusion. Maybe you won’t. But is your faith in the religion of weight lifting so strong that getting on a bike for 30 minutes on your off days anathema?
I haven’t been on in awhile…. been so busy with work and training but work has settled down a bit.
This is a fantastic article, Mehdi. and I am impressed at the progress this place has made from the beginning. I have been reading the newest articles for about an hour now and I will be continuing to read here even if I don’t post.
Crossfit offers a fantastic aerobic/anaerobic training program that I used to do when I was training for rugby and strongman contests. Now that I have gotten back into fight training (after abandoning it to play rugby) I find that my cardio isn’t what it used to be. Treadmill work often isn’t enough when rolling on the mat, which is why crossfit type work and sprints combined with bodyweight movements for endurance are the way to go.
Perhaps one big thing that’s being missed is the type of weightlifting done vs the type of running done. Doing bicep curls and leg extensions is often considered “weightlifting” in research papers. Doing maximal strength training is also “weightlifting”. Metabolic conditioning like CF stuff is also “weightlifting”. However the type of cardiovascular adaptations they cause will be profoundly different.
If you have been weightlifting for 6 months and have a 2x bodyweight squat/deadlift, then it’s probable you’ve been following a max strength program with heavy poundages, low reps and longer rest periods. Obviously this wouldn’t cause the same beneficial adaptations as one with slightly lower poundages, higher reps and shorter rest periods. The same goes for running - long distance vs regular intervals vs HIIT. The parameters make a huge difference so it’s pointless going into a running vs weightlifting discussion if we don’t establish what kind of protocol was being used.
I was at the doctor yesterday and we had a discussion about cardiovascular fitness. She told me that I should not be weight training. I should be walking to increase my cardiovascular fitness level. I totally disagreed with her and I thought I was alone in feeling this way until I found this forum.