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03-02-08 05:34 PM - Post#415217
There are, I believe, clear differences between endurance/cardiovascular training and weight training. They are as follows:
(1) Weight training induces primary muscular failure. Even when we go as high as 15 - 25 reps, discontinuation of the exercise always results from our inability to continue lifting. Sure, we do experience breathlessness when deadlifting and squatting hard but we cease when we can no longer lift.
(2) Cardiovascular exercise doesn't induce muscular failure. The closest you get is a drained feeling and weakness of the limbs due to lactic acid. However, when we fail on cardio, we fail due to our inability to keep going and this isn't like failing on the 20th rep of a squat. It's more a case of stitch in the side, doubling over and just not being able to carry on.
When I used to climb some 15 per cent gradient on my bike and never made it all the way up, it wasn't my inability to crank the pedals that proved my undoing. It was my limitations to keep going and the point of not being able to endure as a whole.
As bodybuilders we need to do both. We need weight resistance to increase muscle density, load bones and strengthen tendons. We need cardio to develop efficiency of heart, lungs and red cells.
That's why Bruce Lee had his students do weights and cardio combined to create overall athleticism.
My thoughts on the subject...
This last summer I ran exclusively and raced in 5ks. Now I would not consider myself a runner at all. Hate running in fact. I am certainly more of a fast twitch person than a slow twitch. At the time I started I was about 215#. I ran for a good 3 months and ran in about 4 or 5 races. Training was between 15-30k a week for me. At the end of my running stint I was down to about 209. But I was not very strong or muscular. I really did not replace any fat with muscle. I just lost fat.
Now in about 2 weeks I will be 2 months into just mild cardio (1 mile warm ups) and dedicated iron work. I can guarantee that I have replaced 5 lbs of fat with 5# of muscle. I am now 206# and my body looks totally different than it did when I was running.
My workouts after my warm up are grouped into superset. When I come off my 1 mile warm up run I am in a full sweat. I need to grab a towel and wipe off kind of sweat. With what I am doing with my supersets I keep that sweat up and my heart rate going. To be honest I think I am getting the same heart rate out of my iron work that I got out of say a 10k training run during the summer.
When I look at the other guys working out at my gym they are not sweating at all. They kill a lot of time between sets. I am really the only one doing a superset routine when I am there. Now I don't know if that is a good thing or a bad thing.
What I do know is that in half the time doing iron work compared to running I am in hands down better shape. I am stronger and look much better.
I am early enough in my iron work that I am replacing fat with muscle at 1:1. Even at 40 I still have a good metabolism. I am guessing that I still have about 5-10 lbs of fat I can replace with muscle before I get to the point that I start to gain (muscle) weight.
I think I have gone off topic a little but from my experience I can get a just as good cardio workout by lifting (with superset) than dedicating 30 minutes a few times a week to just running. After all I hate to run.
I still try to get in a quick HIT workout one time a week. But it is in conjunction with lifting.
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