Do cardio AND strength training for triple benefits....

Today's Post: Monday, 11-29-2010

Last Tuesday, 11-23-2010, AP reported study led by Dr. Tim Church of Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

This study, published this month in the Journal of the American Medical Association, tested the results over nine months of three groups each exercising for 45 minutes on three days a week.

One group did all cardio on a treadmill that became slightly more difficult due to increasing the incline during the session.

One group did all strength training.

And, the third group did progressive strength training AND some cardio.

Each group worked out for about 45 minutes at each session.

(They did have a fourth comparison group that did some stretching instead.)

The study results showed that only the group that combined aerobics and weights both lowered their blood sugar and lost weight, even though all three fitness groups reduced their waist sizes.

Since one of the biggest health risks today is developing or dealing with type 2 diabetes, which is blood sugar that is unhealthily high and tends to stay that way AND high blood sugar tends to also gradually make you fatter, this result is extremely important.

41 % of the people in the group that did both cardio AND strength training either reduced their diabetes drugs or lowered their average blood sugar as measured apparently by the HBA1C test, as compared to 26 % for strength training only, 29 % who did aerobics only and 22 % in the non-exercise group.

We’ve known that cardio exercise is important because it helps protect your heart unless you overdo it and gives you a reserve if you need to use your resulting aerobic fitness in a real life emergency situation.

(In cardio, Dr Al Sears and others have found that interval cardio where you exert extra effort or speed up but rest or slow down as soon as you begin to tire and repeat once you recover and very gradually do more over time, has many benefits. You get in shape faster. You build more cardiac capacity and reserve. And, it’s MUCH safer than pushing yourself for quite a time after you begin to feel overtired. The best news is that interval cardio can been done in less time and with BETTER results than longer, steady pace cardio.)

We’ve known that strength training is important because it helps prevent obesity and declining ability to do things on your own as you get older that require some strength.

So, since both kinds of exercise results are valuable, if you know this and all the extra benefits of exercise too, you may already be doing both cardio and strength training.

(Regular vigorous exercise done several days each week, is a very powerful heart protector. And, it literally prevents your brain and memory ability from shrinking, helps prevent obesity or end it, slows aging, and even improves your sex life.)

But this new study is extremely valuable, because it shows that some of each does MORE for you than doing either cardio OR strength training by itself FOR THE SAME AMOUNT OF TIME EACH WEEK.

This literally means that doing both each week gives you a strong EXTRA benefit.

Doing both protects your health better than doing one or the other in the same amount of time.

No matter whether you do jump rope and dumbbell exercises at home for your cardio and strength training as I do or to both your interval cardio and strength training at a gym as the people in this study did, if you do both kinds every week, it will give you a lot of extra benefit we now know. (Gyms can also show what exercises to do if you are new to it.)

So, if you haven’t already started doing some of each, cardio AND strength training, every week, consider beginning right away.