How to properly combine cardio and strength training?

The decision to play sports has been made! Since Monday or last week, or perhaps you have been leading an active lifestyle for a couple of months. Now you have to make a decision: cardio or strength training will become the basis of your sports life. Or maybe we will need both? Let's try to understand the issue... And let's consider: both the female position and the male one...

The beautiful half of humanity, especially its newcomers, usually have no doubts - what a question, of course, cardio!

How else can you lose weight if you don’t sweat a lot through shaping, aerobics, all kinds of intensive activities or dancing? A great choice to start with, especially if you like dynamic workouts. In addition, well-constructed exercises will allow the body to adapt correctly - the heart and blood vessels will get used to new loads, joints and muscles will become stronger.

Regular classes in any type of aerobics - step, dance, slide aerobics - allow you to maintain good physical shape, develop coordination and endurance. When the body is strong enough and accustomed to the stress, you can move on to more intense types of aerobic exercise:

1. box aerobics,
2. tai-bo,
3. pump aerobics (classes with a minibarbell),
4. Super Body complexes (aerobic exercise + strength training for all muscle groups),
5. Interval (a combination of a step aerobics complex with a set of strength exercises for all muscle groups).

These types of training combine aerobic and strength training. Thus, we get the maximum impact on the body - we train the heart and blood vessels, and work with the main muscle groups. As a result, we get beautiful muscle definition and excellent physical shape.

For lovers of proven methods of aerobic exercise - the whole range of modern cardio equipment: treadmill, exercise bike, stepper, elliptical and a lot of their variations. Training programs are already stored in the device’s memory. All you have to do is come and start practicing!

What is the additional benefit of this training? When the percentage of muscle in the body (compared to the percentage of fat) increases, the metabolism becomes faster, which means that we burn calories, not only during exercise, but also at rest, even while lying on the couch. What is not a reason to choose this particular direction for your subsequent improvement? A competent recipe for a “cardio and strength training” cocktail will allow you to develop an individual approach to achieving your ideal appearance - losing weight or gaining volume, getting curves in the right places.

Now let's look at the male perspective on the question we proposed earlier. What do men prefer: fitness and a greater bias towards aerobic training, or bodybuilding and a bias towards working with serious, impressive weights?

If you want to have good health, strong immunity, always be in good physical shape, have an excellent athletic physique, and hypertrophied muscle volume and shape are of no use to you, then, of course, choose the first option - fitness. Here, almost everything is the same as what we previously discussed in terms of women’s training: aerobic exercise, cardio equipment and exercises with light equipment and non-limiting weights. Follow this program, work intensively, and you will be happy.

But, as you probably already guessed, most men prefer not fitness, but bodybuilding. They want to have bigger “cans”, wider shoulders, a huge back and a lumpy, muscular body. Moreover, the larger these bumps, the better. Isn't this what every man dreams of?

Remember important rule: the aerobic component of your workout should occupy at least 25% of the total time planned for physical activity. It is in this mode that your training will become correct, and you will not be afraid for your heart and health in general.

As you can see, our dear readers, there is no way to get rid of aerobics! And even if your choice is bodybuilding, you definitely shouldn’t throw cardio out of your mind completely. And only a competent combination of both of these components leads to success and good health and longevity. And which of them is in the foreground and which is in the background is still a very big question. Well, in general, no matter what type of physical activity you choose as a basis, adhering to a competent approach, a positive effect on your health and excellent mood is guaranteed. Well, the visual results won’t take long to arrive either. So go ahead, try and combine!