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Episode 61: Putting Conditioning Back Into Strength & Conditioning
1.2k Plays8 months ago
Welcome to Season 4, Episode 61 of the Movement Logic podcast! In this episode, Laurel explores whether strength training alone suffices for health and longevity. She compares training stress, intensity, and adaptations of strength training versus high intensity interval training (HIIT) versus cardiorespiratory endurance training. Discover how both HIIT and cardio are forms of conditioning, and why both strength and conditioning are necessary "weekly human maintenance habits" for preventing chronic disease and promoting longevity.
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You will also learn:
- What counts as exercise?
- Does HIIT promote strength or cardiorespiratory endurance or both?
- What is aerobic versus anaerobic conditioning?
- What role does cardiorespiratory fitness play in our strength gains and what role does strength play in our cardiorespiratory fitness gains?
- How strength training, HIIT, and cardio compare when considering the following: typical length of a session, work to rest ratios, relative intensities, common limitations to performance, and the specific adaptations each promotes.
- Is strength enough for health and longevity?
- Is walking conditioning?
- Can the fatigue cost of HIIT interfere with our ability to exercise enough throughout the week?
- What should we pay attention to specifically if we want to build strength with HIIT?
- What’s the best way to structure weekly strength and conditioning workouts, specifically when we want to do both on the same day?
Reference links:
Episode 6: How Much ‘Should” You Exercise
High-intensity interval training for health benefits…
Episode 37: Plyometrics—Get More Bang For Your Bones
Episode 46: How Often Should You Strength Trainlll?
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Philosophy
00:00:02
Speaker
Welcome to the Movement Logic podcast with yoga teacher and strength coach Laurel Beaversdorf and physical therapist, Dr. Sarah Court. With over 30 years combined experience in the yoga, movement, and physical therapy worlds, we believe in strong opinions loosely held, which means we're not hyping outdated movement concepts. Instead, we're here with up to date and cutting edge tools, evidence, and ideas to help you as a mover and a teacher.
Solo Episode: Strength and Endurance
00:00:33
Speaker
Hey there, and welcome back to the Movement Logic podcast. It's just me today, Laurel, giving Sarah a well-deserved breather. Well, actually, I'm not giving her a breather. We're giving her a breather. This is a solo episode, and today we're going to be diving into the nuances of strength training, high-intensity interval training, also known as HIIT, H-I-I-T, and cardio respiratory endurance training, also known commonly as cardio.
Understanding BMI
00:01:03
Speaker
But before we delve into today's topic, I need to address a couple of points from our last episode. In episode 60, Dismantling Long and Lean Part 1, I discussed BMI, particularly in relation to inaccuracies that can arise. And I misspoke about it skewing high and taller people. It's actually muscular individuals.
00:01:24
Speaker
who may be more commonly misclassified as overweight or obese using that formula due to its inability to distinguish between muscle primarily in this case and non-lean mass, which we know is fat. So I wanted to make that correction. It's not tall people that BMI gets wrong, it's muscular people that BMI gets wrong. And this is particularly of interest for the ways BMI has
00:01:48
Speaker
incorrectly classified African Americans as a population since this population tends to have higher levels of lean mass, muscle mass and bone density proportionally speaking when compared to white.
00:02:01
Speaker
And especially Asian populations. So I wanted to make that correction. Additionally, I said that BMI does not accurately measure what it intends to measure, which I said was body composition. But what I meant is that BMI, it's actually a screening tool. It's used to evaluate someone's weight relative to their height.
00:02:20
Speaker
But the findings of BMI are often incorrectly used to interpret body composition. So BMI as a screening tool actually doesn't tell us anything about relative amounts of lean and non-lean mass. And it also doesn't tell us anything about how fat non-lean mass is distributed, which is often considered to be a more important consideration to make when assessing body fat percentage and its role in
00:02:46
Speaker
determining how healthy we are or unhealthy we are. Okay. So I listened back to the episode after it was published. I caught those two areas in need of correcting and clarifying. So there you go. Part two of Long and Lean is coming out on March 20th and it's a banger. So you're going to want to listen to it.
Course Experience and Community
00:03:03
Speaker
Okay, now let's share a testimonial from Meg, who is a participant in our bone density course Lift for Longevity. Meg wrote in the Facebook group, quote, I started this course as someone accustomed to exercising and fitness only in the last two years. I was nervous and very intimidated by racks, barbells, et cetera. I did month two, workout B today at the gym.
00:03:28
Speaker
My back squat to box was 58 pounds versus 20 pounds at the start. I am impressed. Every new month, I think, I don't know if I can do this. And then I do. I'm so thankful I found you, ladies. Meg, we are so thankful we found you. And thank you for writing that. The group, and Sarah and I, are currently entering our last two months of the course. But truly, it is just the beginning.
00:03:56
Speaker
because strength training like brushing your teeth is a lifelong habit. We're going to keep going. We created this six month course to get people started in a meaningful way to create conditions for women between the ages of 30 and 70 plus who are often alienated from typical strength training environments. We created this course to create the conditions for them to make obvious changes to their strength
00:04:20
Speaker
with a group of people like them and it's happening on so many levels and so we're not gonna just end the course and that's it. We're gonna find ways to keep it going with this cohort and future cohorts. We're still ironing out the details but Sarah and I decided that once you're in bone density course you're in it forever as long as you want to keep going with us. We have this thriving Facebook group that
00:04:45
Speaker
This cohort will continue to benefit from after the course ends and we're also planning away past cohorts to be able to continue to benefit from the live classes with future people who are picking up heavy shit. We started out as 90 plus women strong and we're just gonna keep building our club of badass women.
00:05:06
Speaker
We're launching again this fall, so if you want to make sure you get in on the action, get on our wait list, which is linked in the show notes. This is also where you'll get a wait list only discount. So we're not giving any other discounts on the 2024 course, except for this one, and it's a good one. So if you think you might want to join us and you'd rather pay less than more, you definitely want to get on the wait list, and that again is linked in the show notes.
Physical Activity Guidelines
00:05:34
Speaker
Okay, let's dive into our topic, which is strength training versus HIIT versus cardio. Or we could simplify this and say let's talk about the difference between strength versus conditioning. In episode six of season one,
00:05:50
Speaker
we delved into the question of how much exercise should we be doing? In that episode, we explored the recommendations from the CDC, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, regarding physical activity. And according to the CDC's physical activity guidelines,
00:06:06
Speaker
Adults should aim for at least 150 minutes of moderate intensity aerobic activity or 75 minutes of vigorous intensity aerobic activity throughout the week or an equivalent combination of both. Note that those values are the minimums of a range. So it's actually 150 to 300 minutes of moderate intensity activity or
00:06:35
Speaker
75 to 150 minutes of vigorous intensity activity. But for the sake of having to say fewer words and also for the sake of naming the minimal effective dose,
00:06:49
Speaker
I'll just refer to the 150 minutes of moderate aerobic activity and the 75 minutes of vigorous aerobic activity. Just know that it's actually a range but we'll speak in terms of the minimal effective dose. Additionally,
00:07:05
Speaker
Muscle strengthening activities, strength training should be done full body, right? Strength training on two or more days a week. Now for older adults, because we get a lot of questions from older adults asking us, are the rules different for me? Are the things that I'm able to do different because I'm older? Usually the answer is no, and it is in this case as well. For older adults, the guidelines are similar, but they should also, according to the CDC, incorporate activities to improve balance and flexibility
00:07:35
Speaker
which can help reduce the risk of falls. Here's where I want to add my note, which is that full range of motion strength training can maintain or even improve flexibility, and strength training in general is an evidence-based way to decrease fall risk.
00:07:50
Speaker
Okay, now let's break down what moderate and vigorous actually mean here. There are a couple of ways that I'm gonna give you in this episode to measure whether or not your exercise is moderate or vigorous, but I think the best, simplest way to do it is via a talk test. Okay, so a talk test is basically a very straightforward rule of thumb for gauging respiratory rate or the rate of your breathing during exercise.
00:08:17
Speaker
Talk tests allow us to assess exercise intensity based on our ability or inability to speak for various amounts of time comfortably. So by checking in and monitoring this, we can gain insight into how our respiratory rate is, and that can give us a gauge on our effort level. So moderate intensity activity should get your heart rate up and make you breathe harder, but you should still be able to hold a conversation. You can't sing, but you can have a conversation.
00:08:47
Speaker
Contrast that with vigorous intensity activities, which should feel more challenging than moderate, and it should make it actually difficult to speak. So you might only be able to get a few words out at a time without having to pause to catch your breath.
The Role of Conditioning
00:09:03
Speaker
Okay, there's another word that we need to discuss which is the use of the word aerobic as in 150 minutes of moderate intensity aerobic activity or 75 minutes of vigorous intensity aerobic activity. Some argue that conditioning might be a better term.
00:09:19
Speaker
And there are two main reasons that I suss out for this argument, which is one, conditioning actually encompasses in people's minds, especially a wider range of activities beyond traditional steady state cardio. So when we think cardio, my mind goes to like the machines at the gym.
00:09:35
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So I think of the treadmill and the extra cycle and the stair machine. You might also think of swimming. And in fact, conditioning can include much more than just these traditional steady state cardio activities. So you have more options beyond the machines at the gym and running, cycling, and swimming, et cetera.
00:09:56
Speaker
A second reason why I think conditioning might be a better term to use is that while aerobic exercise does predominantly rely on oxygen to produce energy, typically over an extended period of time, and aerobic activities,
00:10:12
Speaker
rely heavily on these energy systems that don't require oxygen. Despite that, though, there is involvement from both systems. Different amounts of involvement, of course, will depend on the demands of the activity, but it's maybe a little exclusionary to say that this has to be aerobic conditioning.
00:10:30
Speaker
since anaerobic conditioning will also involve the aerobic system specifically for recovery. So just know that there's almost always involvement from both systems. Involvement exists on a continuum depending on duration and intensity. So anyway, I thought that was
00:10:46
Speaker
important to say because when you read the guidelines it says that it has to be aerobic. In this episode we're going to be talking about conditioning both aerobic and anaerobic ways of conditioning your body. For example, HIIT can meet the physical activity guidelines for vigorous intensity slash moderate intensity exercise even. We'll hopefully get not too much into the weeds but a little bit more into the nuance of what conditioning can entail and how we might use HIIT and traditional forms of
00:11:15
Speaker
steady state cyclical cardio to meet these physical activity guidelines. Okay, now for the primary goal of these guidelines, right, so the CDC as well as the World Health Organization, the WHO,
00:11:28
Speaker
have written similar guidelines. The primary goal from these two institutions is to prevent a wide range of diseases. We might work out for various reasons beyond just improving our health and longevity. We might do it for performance goals. We want to be really good at something. We might do it for aesthetic goals. Maybe we want to look more muscular or whatever it is.
00:11:50
Speaker
But the primary reason for these physical activity guidelines is literally to prevent you from getting a wide range of diseases and to prevent you from dying sooner than you need to. So let's talk about what the primary diseases are that these guidelines aim to combat. So the biggest one is cardiovascular disease, which is the number one killer.
00:12:12
Speaker
Then type 2 diabetes, obesity, certain cancers, osteoporosis, which we talk about a lot on this podcast, depression and anxiety, dementia and cognitive decline, chronic respiratory diseases, musculoskeletal disorders, think back pain, arthritis, other joint problems, and then overall mortality risk, which is to say that regular physical activity is associated with a lower risk of dying prematurely.
00:12:41
Speaker
Alright, so let's cut right to the chase. One of the questions I got when I polled my audience on Instagram was, which one's more important? Cardio or strength? Here's the thing. A single best predictor of overall mortality risk is VO2 max. Okay, so your VO2 max is a measure of your maximal oxygen intake, a percentage of your maximal oxygen intake when you are activating large muscle groups at
00:13:07
Speaker
maximal intensities during exercise. So it's basically a measure of your body's ability or an indicator of your body's ability to deliver oxygen to active muscle tissue. Typically we have our VO2 max measured in a lab wearing a mask. That's how we get the most accurate measurement. But if you have a smartwatch, your smartwatch will rely heavily on your heart rate to predict your VO2 max. And while it won't be accurate,
00:13:35
Speaker
It can provide you with a trend line to follow if you've started doing, say, some more conditioning type exercise to know whether or not you're making improvements to your cardio respiratory fitness. You want to see that trend line go up, right? Beyond where you began. Here's the deal. Strength training does not improve VO2 max except for in examples of folks
00:14:00
Speaker
who are extremely deconditioned due to being sedentary. Does this mean that strength training is not important? Of course not, because the CDC and the WHO recommend two times a week whole body strength training as well as conditioning exercise or aerobic exercise, as they say.
00:14:18
Speaker
Here's the reason why strength training is particularly important. First of all, strength training reduces fall risk, so it reduces the risk of fracture. It improves your bone density, which also reduces your risk of fracture. It also increases lean muscle mass, which is very important for the prevention of type 2 diabetes.
00:14:38
Speaker
And then there's the fact that being strong just allows you to continue to do cool shit for longer in your life, which is another way of saying being strong allows you to continue exercising for longer in your life, to continue being physically active. So the benefits that cardiorespiratory endurance or cardio confer to strength and the benefits that strength confers to cardio are very synergistic in nature, right? So we want to do both. And obviously we are being
00:15:08
Speaker
recommended to do both by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization because these are the types of ways to exercise that will result in our continued health and hopefully longevity. At the same time, right, we have so many options out there. What kind of strength training should I do?
00:15:31
Speaker
Is HIIT strength training? Is it cardio? What type of cardio should I be doing? How do I know how intense it should be? There's so many questions, so this is why I wanted to record this episode.
00:15:43
Speaker
Let's define a few words, okay? So first of all, physical activity. Physical activity encompasses any movement that requires more energy than what you utilize while resting. So essentially, if you're not sitting still or lying down, you are engaging in physical activity. As a population, I think we could all agree that we probably need to be a bit more physically active in our daily lives. We're awfully sedentary. Now, exercise is different from physical activity in that it's a subset.
00:16:10
Speaker
physical activity, which means that not all physical activity is actually exercise. All exercise is physical activity, not all physical activity is exercise. Exercise, a subset of physical activity, involves purposeful structured movement done repeatedly in order to improve health, fitness,
00:16:28
Speaker
Wellbeing, here's where we can think of activities like yoga, jogging, weightlifting, calisthenics, like push-ups, pull-ups, Pilates, like these are all definitely under the category of exercise because they're all planned and structured and we do them to improve our health or fitness or our wellbeing. Okay, let's dive into the three types of exercise we'll be focusing on today.
Strength, HIIT, and Cardio Explained
00:16:50
Speaker
Strength training, high intensity interval training, HIIT, and cardio.
00:16:53
Speaker
Let's define each. So strength training, which is sometimes also called resistance training, involves exercises aimed at generating maximal or near maximal force through muscle contractions against resistance. This resistance can come from external sources like weights, machines, resistance bands, but it can also come from body weight exercises. So it can come from internal resistance that we get from
00:17:18
Speaker
things like push-ups, planks, pull-ups. Strength training can include dynamic movements where we exercise our muscles through long and short muscle lengths or eccentric and concentric contractions, but it can also involve holding positions or static holds where we work our muscles isometrically. So there's a wide
00:17:37
Speaker
variety of ways we can approach resistance training or strength training. The capacities we're seeking to enhance when we resistance train or strength train are strength, right? So strength is defined as our muscle's ability to produce force. It's typically measured in terms of our ability to produce maximum force by lifting a heavy weight. Power is another capacity we're seeking to enhance with strength training and power
00:18:02
Speaker
refers to the ability of muscles or a group of muscles to generate force quickly. Mathematically, power is measured by the amount of work that we perform divided by the time taken to complete the movement. So say the heavier weight and the less time you take to move that heavy weight, the more power that you perform. Power is a very important factor in athletic performance, so it contributes to
00:18:28
Speaker
our ability to be explosive, things like sprinting, jumping, and throwing. Interestingly, and this is maybe a topic for another episode, power is actually a capacity that is one of the first capacities we lose as we age, and therefore a capacity that we should continue to train and hold on to as we age as well. In string training programs, exercises aimed to improve power often involve more rapid movements.
00:18:57
Speaker
against resistance. So think plyometric exercises, things like box jumps, hops, skips, things like that. But also Olympic weightlifting, which we have talked about on this podcast, which involves lifting barbells quickly, as well as other ballistic movements, maybe kettlebell swings or medicine ball throws. Okay, so that's strength training or resistance training.
00:19:20
Speaker
Now, high intensity interval training, okay, so HIIT is characterized by brief, intense bursts of exercise followed by short recovery periods. It's intense because the demand on the heart is typically pretty high. And one reason for this is that movements are performed quickly, oftentimes
00:19:42
Speaker
the work-to-rest ratio is either a one-to-one or a two-to-one. So what I mean by work-to-rest ratio is that, say we work for 30 seconds to do bodyweight squats. We do as many as we can, so we're going to do them quickly, right? It's not a heavy weight, but we're going to do them quickly for 30 seconds and then we might rest for 30 seconds.
00:20:01
Speaker
before doing another work bout of maybe a different exercise. It could also be a two to one ratio where maybe we do body weight squats for 30 seconds and then we only rest for 15 seconds, two to one, right? And then we move on to do another bout of work of a different exercise. There's a misconception that HIIT must always be so extremely intense that we're on the verge of puking and this is just not the case.
00:20:25
Speaker
There's actually a lot of examples and research of work bouts in high intensity interval training, as long as four minutes in length. So that would mean that we're definitely relying primarily on more aerobic energy systems, but also interesting to note, there's another kind of interval training called sprint interval training. And this involves even shorter work bouts at maximum intensity. So if we're talking talk tests, like you're not doing much talking, right? Maybe some grunts and
00:20:56
Speaker
an occasional groan. But if you're maximally efforting, the only thing you're doing is going as hard as you can. And so in sprint interval training, work bouts are typically no longer than 15 seconds. And rest bouts can be as long as 20 times the length of the work bout. The capacities we're building with HIIT include strength, power, and cardio respiratory endurance.
00:21:25
Speaker
The capacities we're building with SIT have much more to do with power and speed, less to do with endurance. Here's where I think the main takeaway should come. You will not get as strong or as cardiovascularly fit
00:21:44
Speaker
doing hit as you would if you instead did strength training for strength and cardio for cardio. At the same time, you will get stronger doing hit than you would if you just did cardio. That's assuming that there is some type of resistance
00:22:04
Speaker
like weights or some type of calisthenic movement that you're doing that would potentially result in you getting stronger. So in other words, you're not doing HIIT with just some type of cardio mode like intervals on a bike or intervals running. You're lifting some weights
00:22:22
Speaker
or doing some type of traditional strength training movements just in a hit context. Okay, and in a similar way that you'll get stronger doing hit if you instead were just doing cardio, you'll also get more cardiovascularly fit doing hit than you would if you just did strength. But for the most part, hit is a little bit of both, but certainly not the best
00:22:50
Speaker
of both worlds okay so we're dealing here with two forms that are very different strength and cardio and then something that's kind of in between which is hit i didn't say any of that to detract from your interest in or appreciation for hit because the fact of the matter is most of us are not elite athletes so we don't need to get so hung up on how our
00:23:12
Speaker
exercise transfers to performance like elite athletes really do, like what they do and how they spend their time matters enormously. And it doesn't for us if we're just looking to do exercise for health and if we're looking to enjoy exercise because that's what's gonna make us wanna do more of it. And I think there's, at least in my audience and members of my virtual studio and the people that I interact with online, there's a lot of interest in HIIT.
00:23:40
Speaker
And I like HIIT too, and I think that there's a lot of good reasons to enjoy it. Namely, for the variety of ways the workouts can be structured, which I think goes a long way toward keeping it interesting for folks. So HIIT is not steady state. It involves usually a lot of variety. It definitely involves a variety of intensities, right? You're going to work really, really hard, and then you're going to rest.
00:24:05
Speaker
And you're going to do that in various ratios of work to rest, and it's different usually every time. You might be working the same big muscle groups every time, but I'm going to say you're definitely not going to see the types of improvements to your strength from HIIT than you would if you just did strength training. And you're also not going to see the same types of improvements to your cardio respiratory endurance from HIIT than you would if you just did cardio.
00:24:25
Speaker
But if it's what you love to do, if it's what you want to do, if it's what you will do, it's absolutely going to take you toward meeting those physical activity guidelines. We'll talk about what some of the drawbacks of HIIT are as well in terms of fatigue costs. But for now, I want to give you the best information that I have to help you make the best decision for how you're going to use exercise to stay healthy.
00:24:48
Speaker
how you're going to use exercise to enjoy exercise because I actually think that's maybe the more important place to start. What do you want to do? Also, there's more forms of exercise beyond just strength training, HIIT, and cardio respiratory endurance or cardio. I'm just focusing on these three because a lot of different ways of exercising fit into these three buckets. We're also going to discuss a little bit about yoga and Pilates and things like that as well just to understand how they might and might not fit into these.
00:25:15
Speaker
three buckets or how they might and might not take you closer to meeting the physical activity guidelines. Finally, we've got cardio, cardio respiratory endurance. This refers to activities that challenge your heart, your lungs, your circulatory system primarily in order to support energy production during exercise. Cardio includes steady state cyclical activities.
00:25:37
Speaker
like running, cycling, swimming, walking. Note that I'm creating a distinction between hit and cardio, but in actuality, hit can constitute as cardio. It just happens to be on the more intense end of the cardio spectrum. And we'll talk about this a little bit later, but sometimes the elevation and heart rate during hit
00:26:02
Speaker
can be the result of a slowing of blood flow back to the heart because of the muscles that are being worked during HIIT and that can give us a false sense of effort as it relates to cardiorespiratory activity that involves your circulatory system. So we will talk about artificial ways of elevating the heart rate and just know that if you're doing HIIT with weights that could be playing into your perceived effort.
00:26:31
Speaker
but also know that HIIT can count as cardio. I'm separating HIIT away from cardio for this conversation. So think steady state cyclical activities because that's what we're comparing with HIIT. When it's cardio, it's typically steady state cyclical activities like running, cycling, swimming, or walking. Of course, if we're going to call walking cardio, it should meet the threshold of intensity that it would need to meet
00:26:57
Speaker
to count as moderate intensity exercise or even vigorous intensity exercise. So it's going to depend on the current level of cardio fitness of the person walking, how fast they might need to walk, or whether or not they might need to be walking uphill in order for walking to provide enough of a cardio respiratory stimulus.
Integrating Strength and Conditioning
00:27:22
Speaker
Here's where I want to kind of zoom out again and be like, okay, we just defined these three buckets.
00:27:26
Speaker
string training, hit, cardio. For a moment here we're going to kind of step away from string training and just focus on hit and cardio because these are what constitute conditioning.
00:27:37
Speaker
And the reason I wanna talk to you about conditioning is that I started off in the movement world as a yoga teacher. I'm still a yoga teacher and I know many of you listening are as well. And maybe you're a Pilates teacher as well with a similar trajectory or similar learning curve where you came to a point where you realize that actually like that yoga is not all we need to do. Yoga and Pilates aren't strength training and we need to be doing strength training
00:28:03
Speaker
for health and longevity. So a lot of us started doing strength training. And now I feel like I'm noticing in myself, I noticed this as well. People that I come into contact with online is that now we tend to think that strength training is all we need or yoga and strength training is all we need. And I'm here to say that you need S strength, but you also need the conditioning. So we want to put the C back in S and C. And I got my certified strength and conditioning specialist certification, CSCS.
00:28:33
Speaker
And I definitely got it because I was really super into strength training, but while getting it became much more interested in conditioning and have since started running a lot more than I strength train actually at the moment.
00:28:44
Speaker
But the whole purpose of this episode is really to open up your mind, some of you who think like you've got your bases covered if all you're doing is strength training, or if all you're doing is yoga even, to make you see that actually you might want to consider pursuing these other ways of challenging your body, even if it's just meeting the minimal physical activity guidelines set out by the CDC or WHO.
00:29:03
Speaker
Which, by the way, would be wonderful. They've given us the minimal effective dose that we need to really move the needle, and I think that that's where we should definitely set our sights, right? If you want to do more than that, great, but I would try to meet the minimum. Let's talk about hit and cardio because these both are forms of conditioning, the thing that we might be missing, at least in this audience.
00:29:24
Speaker
Conditioning, let's define it. Conditioning refers to a broad category of exercises intended to enhance endurance. Endurance in this context refers to the muscle's capability to consistently generate submaximal forces repeatedly over a set period of time.
00:29:42
Speaker
So this is different from strength, which is your body's ability to generate near maximal or maximal forces for a short amount of time. It's also different from sprint interval training, which is also your body's ability to generate maximum or near maximal forces over a short period of time. The difference between strength and sprint is that strength is about generating maximum tension and sprinting is about moving at maximum speeds. There are two sub-levels of conditioning.
00:30:12
Speaker
We're not going to talk a whole lot about this because everyone's eyes will start to glaze over and roll back into their head or maybe fall out of their head, but they are aerobic and anaerobic conditioning. Now, if you have an exercise science degree, like these words aren't scary to you, but if you don't, you might immediately be tuning out. I just want you to know two things about aerobic and anaerobic conditioning. They refer to metabolic pathways, which is just the way that your body produces energy for exercise. Okay. And these are two different pathways.
00:30:41
Speaker
aerobic conditioning, also known as cardiovascular exercise or cardio, relies on oxygen. And the thing to know about that is that processes that require oxygen just take longer. However, this is an efficient process that produces a lot of energy. So when we're doing exercise that uses oxygen, we're probably producing submaximal forces because it takes longer, but we're able to sustain that activity for longer periods of time.
00:31:08
Speaker
As I said, aerobic conditioning can involve both cyclical steady state cardio and HIIT. Technically, when we think HIIT though, we might think, well, it's high. And so cardio is supposed to be submaximal forces because we're using oxygen because it takes longer.
00:31:24
Speaker
Just know that it is a combination of both. Depending on how you approach it, it could very much be an aerobic conditioning stimulus primarily. Now anaerobic conditioning, this type of exercise, does not rely on oxygen to make energy because it takes too long. It requires energy rapidly.
00:31:42
Speaker
to support very high levels of muscle force production. But what it does use, there's limited storage capacity for that type of energy in your body. So you use it up quickly. And this form of energy production involves a rapid waste product buildup that will then interfere with muscle force production. So if you've ever experienced
00:32:03
Speaker
a burn. Okay, you're probably experiencing some of that buildup. Okay, so the two things I want you to know about aerobic and anaerobic is aerobic uses oxygen to produce submaximal forces for long periods of time and anaerobic does not use oxygen in order to produce maximal or near maximal forces for short amounts of time. Anaerobic conditioning, the non-oxygen using one. It typically involves going fast
00:32:30
Speaker
or moving heavy loads, typically also shorter duration activities, lasting less than a minute, performed at maximum or near maximum intensities.
00:32:40
Speaker
This can include hit, it definitely includes sit, sprint interval training. But you can also think of proprietary methods like CrossFit. CrossFit WODS are quite anaerobic in nature. WODS stands for Workout of the Day. They're often sometimes called Metcons for Metabolic Conditioning, which is kind of an empty phrase because any type of physical activity we do conditions our metabolism in a certain way.
00:33:04
Speaker
Anyway, they're sometimes called Metcons to denote this form of exercise which involves intense workouts and minimal rest. You can also think of boot camp style workouts where you're going to do things like burpees, box jumps, jumping rope, maybe sprinting on a treadmill or rowing sprints on a rower. Anaerobic conditioning exercise can also include kettlebell workouts.
00:33:25
Speaker
involving explosive movements. Now, here's another thing. Strength training also relies heavily on anaerobic energy production because muscle forces are high. Speed of movement is not high, but muscle forces are high. However, since strength training does not rely heavily on circulatory system factors, but rather it relies heavily on neuromuscular
00:33:50
Speaker
system factors like neuromuscular excitability, muscle recruitment efficiency, adaptations of those natures that arise from strength training, that arise from getting stronger. What this means is that there are very different physiological pathways involved in the adaptations that we challenge and enhance with strength training than there are for the ones we challenge and enhance with conditioning, whether it be anaerobic or aerobic.
00:34:19
Speaker
This is why they live in very different categories. We've got strength and then we've got conditioning. Now, they are not totally unrelated, but they should be thought of as distinct forms of exercise, especially if you want to better understand how to meet the physical activity guidelines for both and how hit and formats like it might occupy that middle ground between the two and give us a little bit of both types of
Energy Systems in Exercise
00:34:49
Speaker
adaptations that arise from these different physiological pathways. So aerobic exercise can be maintained for longer periods of time, typically more than a minute, and anaerobic exercise can be maintained for shorter periods of time, typically less than a minute, before you will need to rest.
00:35:02
Speaker
While you're resting though, from anaerobic exercise, typically your body will then lean more into your aerobic metabolism to replenish its energy source. So think of the phrase, I need to catch my breath. After very intense bouts of exercise, your body needs to catch its breath and it needs to recover. That's where the aerobic system comes into play with anaerobic conditioning. It's like switching gears in your car from speeding to cruising, right?
00:35:29
Speaker
The aerobic system helps your body recover by using oxygen to produce energy more steadily. It's a slower but more sustainable energy source and therefore plays a very important role in anaerobic conditioning. No exercise is strictly confined to being purely aerobic or anaerobic exercise. It's more like a continuum.
00:35:50
Speaker
Both systems are involved to varying degrees, but different types of exercise or different types of conditioning will rely at least to some extent on one more than the other, sometimes quite a bit more on one versus the other. Almost always, or I will just say always, there is a reliance on both energy systems. All right, let's compare and contrast all three in some really simple practical ways and also some slightly more sophisticated ways so that we can see where these three buckets, I like to think of them like,
00:36:20
Speaker
buckets for the types of exercises we might be doing. Which bucket do they go in?
00:36:23
Speaker
Let's see where they converge and diverge as forms of exercise and the benefits that they give us. So let's start with something really simple and practical, like the typical length of a session. This is not a rule by any means, but it tends to be the case that strength sessions are typically between 30 and 60 minutes in length and hit sessions are typically between 15 and 25 minutes in length versus cardio sessions, which can be short,
00:36:53
Speaker
Like maybe 15 minutes, but also they can last for hours because it takes some people four hours to run a marathon, right? So cardio has a much higher ceiling in terms of how much time you're going to be doing it, which tells you a little bit about the intensity level.
00:37:10
Speaker
that we're working at with cardio, which is sometimes low to moderate versus the intensity level that we occupy with things like strength to hit, which can be moderate to high. So we simply cannot sustain strength and hit for as long as cardio because the intensity is typically higher.
00:37:28
Speaker
All right, let's talk about work-to-rest ratios for these three different categories of exercise. During strength training, we're engaging in moderate to maximum efforts, and the rest is typically longer than the work, so there's a longer work-to-rest ratio.
00:37:47
Speaker
So work efforts are relatively short compared to the time we spend resting. We might do a set of an exercise like the squat. Let's say it takes us 30 seconds, maybe 40 seconds to complete a set of eight to 10 reps of the squat. And then we would proceed probably to rest about two minutes. So we go from 40 seconds of work to 120 seconds of rest.
00:38:16
Speaker
That's a one to three work rest ratio. This can extend upward to as long as a one to 10 work rest ratio. So when I'm doing heavy threes, right, I'm lifting a lot of weight, but I'm only doing three reps, you know, it might not take me more than like 15 seconds to complete the set, but then I'm gonna need to rest for three minutes before doing that again. So we've got a 15 second,
00:38:42
Speaker
to 180 second, right? That's a one to, I don't even know a lot, work rest ratio, right? So this is a real clue for some of you who have been strength training, but maybe cutting your rest times short. It could be the case that because your work to rest ratios are not very long, that you are potentially not working at a high enough intensity
00:39:08
Speaker
because rest is not physiologically warranted in your body. It's not required. When you are working at moderate to high intensities with the weight that you're lifting, your body requires rest before you're able to pick that weight up again. So just something to keep in mind. Now, if we're training power in our strength training session, remember that power is one of the physiological outcomes that we can have as a goal.
00:39:35
Speaker
for doing strength training or doing resistance training. If we're training power, let's say we're using a plyometric exercise like box jumps, for example. The key to making box jumps an exercise that we use to improve power rather than an exercise we use
00:39:53
Speaker
to improve endurance is that we make sure we keep effort high for every rep and that we keep rest times long enough so that we can recover enough to be able to keep effort high for each subsequent set. A lot of times when we start doing plyometrics, which we have an entire episode on plyometrics, episode 37, plyometrics, get more bang for your bones.
00:40:19
Speaker
So if you want to learn more about the different types of plyometric exercises, there are definitely give that one a listen. That is linked in the show notes. A lot of times the tendency is to start to use plyos in a submaximal longer duration effort, right? Because we won't really be moving the needle much on our power as much as we'll be moving the needle on our endurance. One of the biggest mistakes that I see members of my virtual studio making when we do plyometric exercise in some of the programs in my
00:40:49
Speaker
virtual studio is that instead of working for maximum effort, they're working for maximum reps. So I always have to say, instead of doing as many as you can, do them as explosively as you can, for example. Because we're working on strength training and power development, we're not trying to make the strength training session a cardio or a HIIT session.
00:41:10
Speaker
So now let's say we're actually engaging in a HIIT workout and we're using exercises that we might also use in strength training but what we're gonna do in the HIIT workout is we're gonna take a lot of weight off of that exercise. So now instead of a squat with a moderate to heavy weight, we're gonna do body weight squats or squats with a light weight and we're gonna do them quickly, right? We're gonna do that for a workout of maybe a minute or maybe 30 seconds or maybe a minute and a half and then we're gonna stop and we're gonna rest, right?
00:41:40
Speaker
we're not going to rest as long. We're going to maybe do a one-to-one work rest ratio or even a two-to-one work rest ratio where we rest half the time that we work because the purpose of HIIT, depending, might be more to enhance cardio-respiratory endurance and muscle endurance rather than strength, rather than power, and rather than speed even. Same thing with plyometric exercise used in HIIT. If we're doing, say, jump ropes, we might be trying to
00:42:10
Speaker
skip rope for as many hops as possible in a minute or whatever it might be, and the purpose isn't necessarily to produce as much force as possible into the ground or to jump as high as possible, but rather to get our heart rate up to engage in some more cardiovascular stress.
00:42:27
Speaker
A couple of ways that HIIT workouts can be formatted and I want to just share just a very small sampling so that you have an idea of why I think people like HIIT. I think people like HIIT because of the variety of ways that the workouts can be structured more so than the types of exercises. I think people actually genuinely feel engaged by HIIT workouts and I definitely am one of those people so you can
00:42:51
Speaker
Here's a really classic one, which is Tabata training. So Tabata training consists of 20 second workouts, followed by 10 second rest periods. You do eight rounds, so it adds up to being four total minutes. And you might do, for example, 20 seconds of squats, as many reps as you can, then rest for 10 seconds.
00:43:11
Speaker
Then 20 seconds of push-ups, as many reps as you can, then rest for 10 seconds. 20 seconds of jumping jacks, rest for 10 seconds. And so you get the idea and you would repeat this pattern for a total of eight rounds, or maybe you would do four exercises, two cycles. And by the end of the four minutes, your heart rate is going to be
00:43:29
Speaker
pretty high, you will have done a variety of exercises that work major muscle groups. You'll be out of breath, you might be sweating, right? And then you might rest for two minutes and then do another four minute Tabata of totally different exercises. But it's a great way to structure training to really reduce rest times in order to elevate your heart rate and give you that probably mostly aerobic stimulus, honestly. Because the rest times are so low,
00:43:57
Speaker
it's unlikely that you're going to be able to sustain high forces or high speed for that long before having to rely more on your aerobic energy system. Here's another example, pyramid workouts. So this one could start with like 30 seconds of burpees, followed by 30 seconds of rest, then 45 seconds of burpees, followed by 45 seconds of rest, 60 seconds of burpees, 60 seconds of rest.
00:44:22
Speaker
45 seconds of burpees, 45 seconds of rest, 30 seconds of burpees, 30 seconds of rest. The pyramid goes all the way up to the point and then comes all the way back down to the base. Those are two different ideas of ways to structure a high-intensity interval training workout. There are maybe thousands of more ways to do it, but I really think that the way that these
00:44:45
Speaker
workouts are structured are what really grab people, what really excite people and make people like love this way of exercising. And it might maybe also make other people hate this way of exercising.
00:44:55
Speaker
All right, now finally, cardio or cardio respiratory endurance exercise, work to rest ratio, typically there is no rest. Steady state means pretty much just that. We're running at about the same pace, right? And we're keeping about the same effort throughout. So let's review. Strength training, we've got shorter workouts and longer rest periods.
00:45:21
Speaker
Hit, we probably have something along the lines of a one-to-one or even a two-to-one. And then cardio, we don't rest. Let's talk now about demands and limiters.
00:45:35
Speaker
In general, the limitation that we experience in our ability to do a thing is oftentimes the thing that that activity trains.
Limits of Strength and Cardio
00:45:46
Speaker
Okay, so what does that mean? So a limitation to not lifting a heavy weight is not being strong. Therefore, lifting weights that are
00:45:56
Speaker
heavy for you is what's going to make you capable of lifting that future heavy weight. I can't deadlift 300 pounds. My limitation is I'm not strong enough. By deadlifting a percentage of my maximum, I will potentially build the amount of strength that I would need to be able to lift the thing.
00:46:14
Speaker
So when we want to understand what an activity helps us acquire, we should look at what the main limitations are to being able to do that activity. Strength demands near maximal to maximal force production. It's primarily limited then by our body's ability to produce the maximal or near maximal force that it needs to be able to produce to lift the weight or to work against the resistance. Something that is not a limitation
00:46:40
Speaker
to strength training is cardiorespiratory endurance. You do not need to have high levels of cardiorespiratory endurance or even moderate levels of cardiorespiratory endurance to be strong as hell. Now there's kind of a myth that strength training is cardio and I think it comes from this idea, it comes from the observation, very valid observation that
00:47:02
Speaker
our heart rate goes up when we strength train, especially after we finish a set. This is because when we're strength training, we're contracting our muscles, and our muscles are squeezing vasculature, and they're preventing the return of blood to the heart. This makes it so that our heart actually has to beat faster to keep that blood moving, so it has to actually beat faster. There's a lot of ways to artificially elevate your heart rate.
00:47:28
Speaker
So one day I was hiking in the woods near my house and I saw a snake and I stopped and I pulled out my phone and I videoed it and my heart was racing. And I jokingly posted on social media that I saw a snake and got my cardio. But in that case, my heart is beating faster because the fight or flight response in my body has kicked in.
00:47:53
Speaker
And my body is like preparing to fight or flee. Some other ways that you can artificially elevate your heart rate are by doing drugs, right? Like taking cocaine, I guess. Smoking cigarettes is another way. There's ways of elevating your heart rate that do not challenge your circulatory system. They just get your heart rate up. Cardio challenges the heart, the lungs, the circulatory system.
00:48:20
Speaker
So let's go back to our topic. Our ability to produce force is a limiter to our ability to be as strong as possible. And therefore, strength training primarily enhances our ability to produce force. Okay, the limiter tells you what the adaptation is probably primarily going to be. So let's talk about cardio. Cardio challenges
00:48:44
Speaker
your heart, your lungs, and your circulatory system's ability to produce energy for exercise. Therefore, if you are limited in your cardio respiratory endurance, your main limiters are going to be your heart, your circulatory system primarily, not necessarily your lungs as much actually, your heart
00:49:06
Speaker
your circulatory system. And so it is then also the case that how strong you are, how much force your muscles can produce, is typically not a limiter to cardiorespiratory endurance. What does this mean? It means that by training our hearts, lungs, and circulatory system to be better at supporting energy production during exercise, we have to challenge our heart, lungs, and circulatory system
00:49:33
Speaker
so that they get better at it. Getting stronger is not going to enhance our heart, lungs, and circulatory system ability to support energy production. Not to say that it's worthless. Definitely strength training is really important. Specifically, I'll talk about running. It prevents injury first and foremost. And second, it can also improve running economy so that we can perform the mechanics of running using less energy, which will allow us to run faster and longer.
00:49:59
Speaker
But if I just strength train, my cardio is not going to get better from that. I've got to engage in activities that challenge my heart, my lungs, and my circulatory system.
Personal Experience and Insights
00:50:08
Speaker
So let's talk about HIIT now, because it kind of lives in the middle, in the in between. HIIT can be limited
00:50:16
Speaker
actually by both. It can be limited by our strength. If we aren't strong, HIIT's going to feel hard, but it can also be limited by our cardio respiratory endurance. If we have low levels of cardio respiratory endurance, HIIT's going to feel hard. Even though CrossFit is not high intensity interval training, it shares so many similarities with it, especially the workout of the day or the MetCon that you do in CrossFit.
00:50:39
Speaker
It's intense work, not a lot of rest. Some wads are shorter or called sprint wads, right? Where we're going to move a little quicker, maybe lift a little heavier load. Other wads are more like marathon wads where we're probably going to lift lighter weights and we're going to do more reps or we're going to...
00:50:56
Speaker
effort for longer periods of time. So when I first started doing CrossFit, I had been already doing quite a bit of strength training for several years, maybe seven years I'd been strength training, regularly and consistently. But I had not been engaging in cardio respiratory endurance exercise.
00:51:13
Speaker
So the first year of CrossFit, where I was really only doing CrossFit and then also strength training at home and then doing my yoga and things like that, it was rough from a cardio respiratory endurance standpoint. I would get super gassed, winded, like doubled over hands on knees, gasping for breath, okay? Then about six months ago from today, I started running. And I joined a run club.
00:51:40
Speaker
And I started running about 10 to 15 miles a week. By the way, I have a history with running and my work with CrossFit made it so that I could kind of jump in and start running like 10 to 15 miles a week. I definitely don't recommend that if you've never run before to start running 10 to 15 miles a week, that would probably be a lot, a lot too much. Um, but I was prepared in other ways to start running that much. And then I've since built up to now my mile is about 30 miles a week.
00:52:04
Speaker
My experience of CrossFit is completely different. So we're kind of putting CrossFit wads and Metcons in the bucket of HIIT. I believe by far my primary limiter to my ability to perform well in CrossFit, even though I don't really care about my performance in CrossFit, I do it because it's fun and it's a great way to exercise. But it was primarily limited by my cardiorespiratory endurance.
00:52:28
Speaker
And as soon as I got in better shape, my cardio got better, I just started seeing so much progress in my times for the workouts. I was in his ghast at the end. I didn't need to take as much rest in something like
00:52:45
Speaker
It's a workout called an AMRAP, where you do as many reps as possible or as many rounds as possible of some exercises. And you're given a time limit. And basically, you have to choose when and how much to rest, depending on how your respiratory rate is, how you're feeling. And I would have to take much longer breaks and stop
00:53:04
Speaker
and walk around, sit down sometimes, then stand up and keep. And now I just don't have to rest nearly as much because my heart, my lungs, and my circulatory system are better capable of supporting energy production, right?
00:53:19
Speaker
My strength, on the other hand, I wouldn't say it got much better from doing CrossFit. In fact, I would say there were some months where I only did CrossFit and I didn't strength train at home because I kind of go in waves with stuff like that. And I would say I probably lost some strength because when you go to CrossFit, you do different exercises and you
00:53:36
Speaker
You're not working in a progressive manner necessarily. I mean, you're engaging in these met cons, you're engaging in these, these high intensity kind of exercise formats and sometimes doing a buildup, but week to week, you might back squat the first week of the month and then not do it again, depending on the days you go, right? Cause every day is different. So for other folks, it's the opposite, right? They start doing CrossFit and their bigger limiter is their strength.
00:54:00
Speaker
so their cardiorespiratory endurance is less of a limiter. The thing about CrossFit and exercise that falls into the HIIT bucket, if you only did cardio, you wouldn't really make any improvements to your strength.
00:54:16
Speaker
will make some improvements to your strength. Likewise, if you only did strength training, you probably wouldn't make any improvements to your cardio respiratory endurance. With HIIT, you will. Like I said, I started running 10 to 15 miles a week because I had already been doing CrossFit for two years. My cardio respiratory endurance was not terrible.
00:54:33
Speaker
It was pretty decent actually by that time. But the moral of the story is that if you want to get much stronger or if you want to make a big improvement to your cardiorespiratory endurance, HIIT is probably not the best way to do that. It's going to make you somewhat better at both up into a point where you might actually outgrow HIIT
00:54:54
Speaker
and decide, you know what, I really want to focus on my strength and get much stronger than I can be from HIIT, and I'm going to engage in a progressive strength program. Or, you know what, I want to be in much better cardiorespiratory endurance than what I know I can achieve through HIIT. Therefore, I'm going to start doing aerobic conditioning at the gym, or join a rung club, or join a swim team, or whatever it is. So similar topic, let's talk about transference or overlap and divergence.
00:55:23
Speaker
specificities. So something that has transference is like a format of exercise that has overlap in terms of adaptations and performance benefits to another format of exercise. Or even an exercise to an exercise, right? Or a mode to a mode. Divergence is the degree to which two forms of exercise are
00:55:45
Speaker
specific and do not have overlap. We've already kind of talked about this, but we're putting it in slightly different terms. Strength has high transference. It has a lot of overlap to hit, right? If you go into doing high intensity interval training, exercise, having already spent some time strength training, you're going to be better for it.
00:56:08
Speaker
Strength has low transference, low overlap to cardio. However, like I said, it's super important for injury prevention and it can improve things like running economy. Strength has the highest overlap with strength, duh, right?
00:56:24
Speaker
So in the bone density course, we do the deadlift, the conventional deadlift, but some similar exercises to the deadlift are, we also do the Romanian deadlift, which is a deadlift, but less range of motion, slightly straighter knees. And then we also do straight legged bridge holes, which is a hamstring exercise, isometric, right? Where we work the hamstrings from a shorter muscle length, right? All three exercises work the hamstrings.
00:56:51
Speaker
to varying degrees of the glutes, right? The back or posterior chain. And all three exercises have much more overlap to the deadlift despite their differences than running. Of course, if we want to be strongest at the deadlift, we should do the deadlift.
00:57:09
Speaker
not the RDL, not the straight legged bridge, but both the RDL and the straight legged bridge are a lot better choices to improve deadlift performance than running. The adaptations that we get from running are very specific to cardio respiratory endurance performance and there's very little overlap or transference to strength.
00:57:32
Speaker
Now HIIT actually has a moderate transference to strength and cardio, but HIIT has the highest overlap with HIIT. Now this is kind of as long as you are doing roughly the same kinds of exercises
00:57:45
Speaker
every time you engage in high intensity interval training. So the CrossFit paradox is that while you are doing different exercises every day, the exercises are all kind of roughly the same. There is a select amount of exercises that you can expect to do at CrossFit. You don't do every exercise under the sun. There are no kettlebell flows at CrossFit, right? HIIT could involve exercises though that involve very different muscle groups.
00:58:13
Speaker
What that means is that if you're doing primarily a hit format that has a lot of push-ups and kettlebell swings, that may not have a whole lot of transfer to hit workouts that have a lot of box jumps and jump roping. It just depends. Hit can also have stronger reliance on different energy systems. It can be shorter, more intense workouts that force you to use more anaerobic energy systems primarily or
00:58:39
Speaker
the high-intensity interval training session might involve longer workouts that keep you primarily reliant on aerobic systems of energy production. So what determines the specificity of the work you're doing includes the muscle groups you're training but also the intensity level you're training at. And I gave a little bit of an example of that in terms of CrossFit having
00:59:03
Speaker
like shorter wads and longer wads or sprint wads and marathon wads. You're going to get better at marathon wads by doing marathon wads.
00:59:10
Speaker
versus you're gonna be better at sprint wads by doing sprint wads because they train and condition your body using different energy systems. Okay, so when I poll the audience in Instagram, they asked, can you gain strength from HIIT? Hopefully by now you can answer that question, which is you can, to a point, if you've arrived already quite strong, will you be able to build strength beyond that baseline level that you've acquired?
00:59:38
Speaker
I don't know, probably not. I can think of much better ways to do that, which would involve strength training. When I poll the audience, they asked, what if I only do strength training? Well, I would say if you only do strength training, you're probably not engaging in the type of exercise that is going to enhance your cardio respiratory
01:00:01
Speaker
endurance, and as I said at the top of the show, VO2 max, which is the primary way we measure cardio-respiratory fitness, is probably not going to be changed at all from strength training. Therefore, if you want to meet the physical activity guidelines in order to stave off chronic disease and enhance your longevity, I would say that you should make time to do both types of exercise.
Combining Strength and Cardio for Health
01:00:27
Speaker
you should try to do strength and cardio on a weekly basis. We'll talk a little bit at the end of this episode about how you might go about doing that, but I think that probably will need to be a separate episode. Okay, so we're still talking about transference, overlap, and divergence specificity. Let's talk about cardio. So cardio has high transference to hit, per my example with CrossFit, where once I started running regularly, my CrossFit performance improved. It has fairly low transference to strength,
01:00:55
Speaker
But here's what I'll say I've noticed is that since engaging in running, I've noticed that I don't need as much rest between sets during strength training, which just tells you that because my body has gotten better at producing energy aerobically or aerobic system is
01:01:11
Speaker
the system that we lean on primarily for recovery, I'm recovering faster during my rest periods and strength training because I've enhanced my cardio respiratory endurance. So while I say there's not a lot of crossover, what I mean is that I haven't been able to put more weight on the bar.
01:01:26
Speaker
because I'm running. No, I haven't gotten stronger from running, but similar to how string training has synergistic benefit to something like running where it improves your running economy. And string training is important for athletics and all forms of cardio risk for endurance training because it reduces your injury risk. It just makes your tissues more tolerant to the loads of those activities.
01:01:46
Speaker
Similarly, cardio respiratory endurance enhancing that capacity may make it so that you can recover faster from your sets. This is just going to allow you to be able to fit more volume into your workouts, right? You won't need to rest as long. And more volume in terms of strength training means we get stronger. Volume is one of the most important things that we progressively overload when we build strength.
01:02:10
Speaker
So cardio has high transference to hit, low transference to strength with that caveat, and cardio has the highest transference to cardio, duh. Even modes that are different, right? So rowing and cycling will make me better at running than deadlift swell. Okay, and let me repeat this again as a kind of reminder, which is that if you're sedentary, if you're coming to any form of exercise, having been mostly sedentary for a while, all forms of exercise,
01:02:40
Speaker
will have noticeable transference to all capacities. So it's possible that running will make you stronger physically. It's also possible that strength will enhance your VO2 max or will enhance your cardiorespiratory fitness and likewise
01:02:55
Speaker
Engaging in activities like yoga and Pilates or even walking more could also enhance your strength and your cardio respiratory and fitness because just being physically active is going to enhance capacity if you have prior to that not been physically active. However, it's important to recognize that these adaptations will tap out very quickly. You will not continue to be able to make progress and say strength by doing cardio or cardio by doing strength.
01:03:24
Speaker
or strength and cardio by doing yoga or Pilates. You will have to get more specific. Hit, as we discussed, is kind of a little bit of both. Hit's probably gonna move the needle a lot more on your strength and your cardio than yoga or Pilates. But again, you are probably also going to tap out eventually. Okay, here's another student question that I got in my stories health-wise. Which is the best if I only have time for one?
01:03:54
Speaker
Again, kind of similar to the previous student's question, I don't think you should choose. I think that you should make time to do both. Because if you think about it, saying you don't have time for both is a little bit like saying you don't have time to live as long as possible.
01:04:12
Speaker
Which if you think about it is sort of a trippy thing to think about, right? Like we have to make time to live for more time or we have to make time to perform what I like to call weekly human maintenance. Now, life is busy and we have kids and we have jobs and we have demands and we have sometimes we're sick, sometimes we're taking care of someone who's sick, right? There's all kinds of reasons why it would be difficult to exercise
01:04:40
Speaker
for 75 to 150 minutes and due.
01:04:43
Speaker
two times weekly whole body strength training, but maybe you can kind of work it into your commute. Maybe you can choose to take the stairs, like several flights of stairs to kind of get in that more like vigorous activity, maybe just in like a five minute bout, or maybe you can actually just think a little bit more in an organized way about how you would like to be spending your time. Because if you're getting your 10,000 steps, while that's good for you, run the talk test.
01:05:12
Speaker
If you're able to sing stanzas, it's probably not moderate. It's probably more in the line of easy. Here's where I want to say that you might be able to save some time on the strength training side of it because a lot of people think, oh, two times a week, so it must be at least an hour each time, right? No. Whole body strength training means you're covering the major muscle groups. So you're doing probably these types of movements. You're doing exercises that involve upper body pushing and upper body pulling.
01:05:39
Speaker
You're doing exercises that involve squats or lunges and exercises that involve hinges like bridges or hinges like deadlifts. You could probably fit whole body strength training workouts like that that cover those bases into as short as 25 to 30 minutes, no joke.
01:05:59
Speaker
If you do that twice a week, that's potentially less than an hour of your time. I've got three episodes that are recorded for you on these topics. How often should you strength train per week? That's episode 46, episode 32, load and volume. When is enough enough? When is it too much? And then episode nine, what are the best exercises for strength? All three of those would be good ones to listen to and I'll link them in the show notes. This pertains also to a student who asks, what is a good regimen for strength training?
01:06:23
Speaker
Basically you want to cover the basis of the major muscle groups and you want to do that in a whole body way twice a week. We talked about what does moderate and vigorous mean in terms of conditioning type exercise. We talked about the talk test. So if you can have a conversation, but you can't sing,
01:06:40
Speaker
Right? Like whole stanzas. You're probably in the moderate category. Your heart rate is elevated, right? It feels moderately challenging. Something that's vigorous is harder than that. And you can't really say more than a couple of words. We can also use RPE, which we've discussed a lot on this show. RPE stands for Rating of Perceived Exertion. It's basically one out of 10. So if you are at a one, you're sitting on the couch doing nothing, you're sedentary. If you're at a 10, you're max all out as hard as you could possibly imagine working. That's how hard you're
Measuring Exercise Intensity
01:07:10
Speaker
working.
01:07:10
Speaker
When we're talking about moderate intensity, we're probably talking about an RPE 5 or 6. Definitely not sitting on the couch, but also pretty far away from maximum effort. If we're talking about vigorous, so talk tests is like maybe you can only speak a few short phrases before you need to catch your breath, we're probably in that 7 to 8 range.
01:07:31
Speaker
It's getting significantly harder, but we're still not max effort all out. So RPE can be a fantastic way to ensure that we're getting the dose right on an individual level. Because if you think about it, you can give two different people
01:07:50
Speaker
the same workout, whether it's a conditioning workout or a strength workout. And one person might say, on a scale of one to 10, that was a 10. And another person might say, oh, no, that was like a three or four. And what that means is that that program was excessive for one person and insufficient for the other one. In terms of the types of training stress each person experienced, and then also the types of adaptations they're going to expect to see.
01:08:20
Speaker
Know that below a 5 out of 10 on the RPE scale does not meet moderate intensity exercise. So here's where I like to think about when I used to teach private yoga. I'm sure if you do teach either Pilates or yoga privately, you're familiar with the student who likes to talk a lot.
01:08:39
Speaker
So maybe you encourage them not to talk, you're like, hey, could you just focus? Or you don't say it that way, but you're like, you try to get them to focus, you try to get them to kind of feel inward. But what if they were actually engaging in exercise that forced them to not be able to talk so much, right? And that they aren't, they came to you for yoga and Pilates. But what I'm trying to say is that oftentimes we can talk a lot while we're doing yoga.
01:09:04
Speaker
And while we're doing Pilates, we might not be able to for other reasons. There are coordination aspects of those exercise formats. And I know yoga is more than exercise, right? Yoga is a cultural, spiritual tradition that originates from India, but it also can classify as exercise.
01:09:20
Speaker
skill and coordination components of those two formats of exercise that would probably make it hard to talk because you literally do have to concentrate. But it's interesting to think about the inability to talk from the standpoint of respiratory rate, the talk test, versus from the standpoint of having to actually concentrate on the coordination of the activity you're engaging in, right?
01:09:39
Speaker
And I think that this is where we sometimes confuse what makes yoga asana challenging with like why cardio respiratory endurance training is challenging or why strength training is challenging. They're different kinds of challenging. And while yoga, and I'll just speak about yoga because that's my wheelhouse, while yoga can result in enhancements to strength, probably more so than cardio, it probably won't do that for very long before you kind of tap out on those adaptations or that.
01:10:09
Speaker
formats ability to provide enough stress to yield those adaptations. Similar to walking, we have our episode 22 called, do you really need 10,000 steps per day? Like I said, walking is not bad for you. It's really good for you.
01:10:25
Speaker
But how hard is it and how much time is it eating up in your week to go for walks when there might be a better way to organize your time to make sure that you're meeting the level of demand your body needs to experience to result in the types of adaptations that you'd want your body to undergo in order to stay healthy? All right. Another student in stories asked,
01:10:50
Speaker
How do I fit it all in these buckets? And this person actually used the word bucket, which I like. It seems like exercise could easily be seven days a week. Here's where we'll talk about the fitness fatigue model. The fitness fatigue model developed by a guy named Roger Bannister is really just a model for understanding the relationship between fitness, those physical adaptations, those adaptations that we're looking to promote through exercise. We're understanding the relationship between fitness
01:11:20
Speaker
and then fatigue, which is the temporary and reversible reduction in exercise performance, right? So paradoxically, when we stress our bodies in order to make our bodies stronger, have better endurance, there will be a window of time between the stressor and the adaptation in which we will experience fatigue, in which we'll actually experience a decrease in performance.
01:11:47
Speaker
So if we're working to get stronger, after we strength train, we actually are weaker for a very short amount of time until we actually become even more stronger than we were when we were initially doing that strength training about. Same thing with enhancing endurance, right? We engage in cardiorespiratory endurance training, and then the next day we see a decrease in our cardiorespiratory endurance until the following day when we see an enhancement.
01:12:14
Speaker
the fitness fatigue model. So whatever unique characteristics make you you, including age, including individuality of your particular strengths and weaknesses, including training age, including just genetic ability, right? Bouts of exercise or series of exercise bouts will cause your body to adapt in certain ways. And with that, there will also be a temporary
01:12:44
Speaker
fatigue cost. You have to allow your body to recover after a bout of exercise in order for those positive adaptations to be able to take place.
01:12:58
Speaker
What this means is that we can't probably exercise seven days a week unless we have built up our work capacity to be able to tolerate that. But in the beginning, especially when we're just starting out, two days a week of strength training is more than enough. If we want to continue to drive changes to our strength, we may need to add more days or more volume. And when it comes to cardio respiratory endurance training, a lot of people, and I agree with this,
01:13:26
Speaker
proponents of three days a week. So three days a week seems to be a good starting off point. Now here's where I want to mention the fatigue cost of HIIT. If HIIT classifies as conditioning and more traditional steady state cyclical
01:13:47
Speaker
modes of cardio like running, cycling, and swimming also count as conditioning. I think the most important difference, apart from which one you prefer, is to take into consideration the fatigue cost of HIIT. First of all, HIIT is probably happening at that vigorous intensity level, whereas more traditional forms of cardio can happen at that more moderate level of intensity. Additionally,
01:14:17
Speaker
Hit, if it's using calisthenics and weights, is going to also bring into it its own type of fatigue, probably a higher amount of fatigue body-wide than what you would experience if you just did a steady state.
01:14:36
Speaker
cyclical mode of cardio. Why is this important to consider? Well when you're experiencing fatigue, which I defined using extra scientific
01:14:47
Speaker
terms like a temporary decrease in exercise performance. What the heck does that mean? It actually means you feel tired. It means that you might not feel like working out, actually might feel like resting. It might mean that you have some muscle soreness, right? It might mean that you just want to keep it light that day after a bout of exercise, whether it be strength or conditioning. So if we're using hit as our form of conditioning, take into consideration how the fatigue from that hit
01:15:15
Speaker
workout might then be interfering with your ability to get exercise in throughout the week in the future. If you're sore for two days after doing your HIIT workout, you might run out of days where you feel fresh enough to work out. It might be in your best interest
01:15:36
Speaker
to let go of the hit or maybe not do it so much so that you are prioritizing recovery and you are therefore able to exercise more, which hopefully more means just meet the minimal effective dose or meet the minimal effective dose that you need to continue to enhance your fitness. So take into account that oftentimes hit comes at a higher fatigue cost. Recovery might take longer and this might eat into your weekly schedule in terms of being able to fit in.
01:16:04
Speaker
your other exercise like your twice weekly strength training and your other aerobic activity that you would like to accomplish.
01:16:13
Speaker
Now I know I said that HIIT can confer strength benefits. And if that's the case, if HIIT is kind of doubling up as conditioning and strength, I would definitely have my eye on progressive overload as it pertains to your HIIT workouts. So make sure that you're writing down how much weight you're actually lifting in the HIIT workouts and have an eye on progressing load over time. Because I think what can happen a lot of times is we go to do our HIIT workout
01:16:41
Speaker
And we just keep grabbing that same 15 pound kettlebell, that same 10 pound kettlebell, that same maybe 20 pound dumbbell, and we never actually move beyond that weight. So if you are indeed using HIIT as a form of strength training, you should be lifting heavier weights in your HIIT workouts.
01:17:00
Speaker
You should be doing upper body pushes and pulls that get progressively heavier. You should be doing lower body work that gets progressively heavier. And if it's not, that might be an indication that your HIIT workouts are not actually strengthening you as much as you might think, even though you feel really sore the next day.
01:17:19
Speaker
because muscle soreness is not always an indication that we got stronger because you can actually feel really sore muscularly speaking after doing cardio endurance exercise and cardio endurance exercise is not strength training. How do you program strength with cardio? That's probably also a topic for another episode, but in general you want to start
01:17:45
Speaker
with the higher intensity exercise, which is going to be strength, probably. If you're doing both types of exercise on the same day, if you can leave a couple of hours between the strength and the conditioning, do it.
01:17:58
Speaker
If you can't do the strength first, then do the conditioning. Make sure that your conditioning is in that moderate category, not in the vigorous category. If it's same day is what I would recommend. If you're doing vigorous intensity conditioning, maybe put that on its own day, right? So there you go.
01:18:16
Speaker
Despite it being a lot, I hope you got a lot out of this episode. But basically, let's put the conditioning back in strength and conditioning and make sure we're challenging our cardio respiratory system sufficiently to maintain health and longevity. And also know that oftentimes the amount of time we need to spend doing these forms of exercise is much shorter than what the internet makes out. So definitely listen to the episodes that I
01:18:44
Speaker
I told you I'd pop into the show notes. Check out the show notes for other references that I mentioned as well. And be sure to get on our wait list for bone density course, Lift for Longevity, if you'd like to receive exclusive wait list only discounts for 2024, the 2024-2025 cohort.
01:19:06
Speaker
Finally, if you appreciate the time and energy that both Sarah and I put into researching and curating the information that we present to you in these episodes, please do leave us a review and tell us what you think.
01:19:23
Speaker
leave us five stars while you're at it. And if you want, you can also request a topic for future episodes. Of course, also subscribe. And if you can think of anyone in your sphere that you think would like this podcast, let them know about it. All right. Thank you so much for tuning in and listening to this week's episode. We will see you in two weeks. Goodbye.