Cardiovascular or Strength Training
Most of us add cardio to our training routines in order to lose weight and to burn calories in order to stay lean. The other reason for adding cardio exercises is to improve cardiovascular fitness while building muscles.
Cardio is generally followed where fat loss is a main concern. When you want to loose weight cardio helps to a great extent to burn more number of calories.
If you have reached your desired weight and now intend to gain more muscles you should focus more on strength training. In order to sustain a slender build while motivating growth all year round you should follow a diet that provides just enough energy that is required for growth. It is important to remember that if you do the things right for 80% of the time then you will be right for the rest of the 20% of time.
Cardio machines are not accurate in the sense that they calculate the number of calories burnt on the basis of resting metabolic rate of your body. This means that when the machine is showing 400 calories burnt it implies that those calories include the calories you would have burnt just sitting down. To explain, it means that if you have a RMR of 1900, then after spending an hour on the treadmill in burning 400 calories, you would actually have burnt an extra 320 calories, not 400.
Our bodies are built to store calories so as to help our bodies to fight during times of food scarcity. What was an advantage in ancient times has become a curse in the modern times given the food abundance. The body tends to store extra calories supplied to it in the form of fat to stave off the rough times which are very few.
When you are strength training the body does not work to build muscle rather the body’s own growth machinery is put into action. After the body has been stimulated to grow there are two stages; recovery and overcompensation or further growth.
The body does not build even one gram of new muscle till it has recovered fully from the loss it suffered in the workout. This means that you need to give your body time to recover before you overcompensate for further muscle building. In simple words the recovery stage should be small in order for the body to be overcompensated for further growth.
Cardio would be bad for your attempts at muscle building since it would slow down the rate of recovery and hence prevents overcompensation. Basically, any extra work, cardio or otherwise will prevent muscle buildup.
To maintain cardiovascular fitness it is better to opt for high intensity workouts which help you to sustain cardio fitness while allowing your body time to recover.
