interesting article on strength training vs. cardio

Thought I'd share this great article on the pros and cons of strength training vs. cardio for weight loss with those who are interested... 

EDIT: I copied and pasted the article right in here. cuz the links wasn't working.

Metabolism Boosting Techniques CAN YOU REALLY BOOST YOUR METABOLISM? Burn calories--even while you sleep!--with a little strength training. Sounds great. But does it work? By Amby Burfoot
From the August 2004 issue of Runner's World 

Let me say right up front that I'm a big fan of strength training. Muscle is sleek and sexy, and I wish I had more. Muscle is also functional; it helps you do stuff. More muscle can help you run faster, for example, or slow down the nasty effects of aging, or get you an invite every time one of your friends needs to move heavy furniture. The problem is, strength training has been vastly oversold as a metabolism-boosting calorie burner. It's time for a reality check.

First, let's do a quick review of Metabolism 101. To lose weight, you want to increase your total calorie burn, which scientists call TEE (total energy expenditure; get ready for a parade of acronyms). To raise your TEE, you need to increase one or more of its four key parts: BMR, TEF, PAEE, and EPOC. Got that? Don't worry, I'll explain.

Your basal metabolic rate, or BMR, is essentially the calories you burn at rest. Also called resting energy expenditure, your BMR is important because it makes up a large percentage of total calorie burn, but unfortunately you can't do much about it. Your BMR is mostly determined by your genetic makeup and body weight. The only big-time way to boost your BMR is to gain weight, which will do nothing to help you wiggle into a bathing suit. 

The thermic effect of feeding (TEF) is otherwise known as the energy your body expends while digesting food. The TEF is generally about 10 percent of your daily calorie burn, and can be nudged a little by eating multiple small meals, drinking more stimulant beverages (like coffee, tea, or Red Bull), consuming more chile peppers, and eating more protein.

Your physical-activity energy expenditure, or PAEE, is the sum total of your workouts, plus other activities like walking the dog, climbing stairs, and break dancing. It can be anything from zero to a substantial number, depending on whether you're more enamored of your sofa or your running shoes. Your PAEE is the most important part of your daily calorie burn, because you can actually do something about it. 

The excess post-exercise oxygen consumption (EPOC) of your workout is also known as the "afterburn," that is, the extra calories you burn after exercise. It will be zero if you don't work out, and a smallish number if you do.

Now, let's return to the supposed calorie-burning benefits of strength training. We'll start with a ridiculous review of two strength-training books that was published in The New York Times last year. The Times story quoted one author, Adam Zickerman, at some length. In his book, Power of 10: The Once-a-Week Slow Motion Fitness Revolution, Zickerman says that a single 20-minute strength-training workout burns as many calories as 25 miles of running. As he told the Times: "Three extra pounds of lean muscle burns about 10,000 extra calories a month, just sitting around."

You've probably read similar claims, which often sound like this: "Every pound of new muscle burns an additional 50 to 100 calories a day." Or "Muscle burns calories even while you sleep."

If you believe any of this, you might also want to try doing long runs in your sleep. It would sure beat that damnable alarm clock buzzing on weekends. While some personal trainers promote the calorie-burning power of muscle, most reputable experts don't. In her book Ultimate Fitness: The Quest For Truth About Exercise And Health, Gina Kolata talked to Claude Bouchard, Ph.D., a world authority on virtually all things related to obesity. His response: Sorry, but muscle actually has a relatively low metabolic rate at rest. 

Bouchard is likely familiar with the article "Dissecting the Energy Needs of the Body," from a 2001 issue of Current Opinion in Clinical Nutrition and Metabolic Care. This article gave me new respect for my kidneys, which burn 182 calories per day for every pound they weigh, and for my brain, which clocks in at 110 calories for every pound it weighs. But my muscles, damn them, are lazy. They burn six calories per pound, barely edging out fat's two-calorie burn. In other words, if you lose one pound of fat and replace it with one pound of muscle, your net gain in calorie burning is four calories a day. Enjoy the celery stick.

What Works

If you're interested in boosting your metabolism to lose weight, aerobic training such as running and walking (and bicycling, swimming, Nordic skiing, snow shoeing, step climbing, elliptical training) is a better investment than strength training. Here's why, with all figures taken from the authoritative "Compendium of Physical Activities." Let's say you have time to exercise for 40 minutes a day. You weigh 150 pounds, and you can do either 40 minutes of modest running (8:30 pace) or 40 minutes of moderate strength training. The tally:

Physical-activity energy expenditure (PAEE): The running will burn 522 calories, the strength training 136, largely because strength training involves too much sitting and resting between lifts. Advantage: Running, by 386 calories.

Excess post oxygen consumption: EPOC was once thought to give your metabolism a decent boost, but the experts have grown more conservative in their estimates. Most now believe that EPOC burns an extra 20 to 30 calories, about the same between aerobic and strength-building exercise, with both dependent on the length and intensity of your workout. Advantage: Running still leads by 386 calories.

Basal metabolic rate: As noted earlier, BMR isn't easy to change, and increased muscle seems to boost it by just four to six calories per pound. Also, it isn't easy to create muscle, a dirty little secret that's rarely discussed. Eating spinach and lifting weights don't guarantee you biceps like Popeye. Women in particular won't find it easy to build muscle, due to their low testosterone levels. Still, I'm in a charitable mood, so I'll give strength training 30 extra calories a day, because you might be diligent enough to add several pounds of muscle, and that muscle will burn a few extra calories every time you chase the kids, the bus, or a basketball. Advantage: Running's lead has slipped to 356 calories per workout.

And there it stands: If you want to boost your metabolism to lose more weight, run (or walk) around the block as much as you can.

But first, eat less. The experts from the American Dietetic Association and the American College of Sports Medicine all agree, generally advising a 500- to 1000-calorie-a-day reduction. Without this--that is, with exercise alone--few people succeed in their weight-loss efforts. Weight loss works best when you: (1) Eat less; (2) Add exercise to increase your daily calorie deficit; (3) Keep exercising to keep the pounds off.

The more you exercise, the better. The National Weight Control Registry has followed more than 5,000 people who have lost at least 30 pounds and kept it off for more than six years. Their secret? They burn almost 400 calories a day in exercise, mostly by walking. This takes an hour or more a day, but by running you can cut that time almost in half.

When you're done, spend a few minutes on strength-training exercises. Strength training really is good. It adds variety to your workouts, rarely causes injuries, and can build extra muscle to go with the enhanced aerobic fitness that comes from continuous exercise. 

And then there's the part about looking sleeker and sexier, and who can argue with that? 

Typical Runner's world, always ready to misinterpret research and fight against straw men to somehow imply that their endorphin habit has any relevance to health.

 No-one in the lifting community who knows what they're doing takes Zickermann or Slow-burn seriously, which is why it's such a disingenous choice to put an obviously loco crackpot up as representing the "strength training" side.

Check out this point/counterpoint article and the studies referenced there, even a fairly basic strength training program increases your RMR by 6.8-7.7% after 3-4 months of consistent training. Which is not something running has ever been able to do in any study I've ever come across. Running increases your calorie burn while you're doing it, and that's pretty much it.

 While EPOC is much, much less than it's cracked up to be, the 50-60kcal total you can expect from strength training still beats the 0 from running and the 10-20 from sprint intervals hands down.

 As for calories burnt during a workout - Sully called it. Amby's argument is nonsense, she's basing her entire premise off the calorie burn equivalent of Weight Lifting - (Free Weight Nautilus or Universal-type), Light or Moderate Effort, Light Workout, General) which is pretty much not relevant to the training effort of anyone since it burns less calories than Vacuuming.

 I have no idea what sort of workout that would entail, but I can assure you that it isn't strength training as is commonly understood. Maybe it's something like what the Pink dumbbell Brigade gets up to, but even there I have my doubts of the accuracy of the calculations.

 So her entire article is based on arguing against a straw man fallacy using faulty assumptions about the effects of strength training and incorrect data about the calorie consumption during exercise.

 Par for the course for what Runner's World publishes, and pretty standard for Shape, in other words.

 I've posted this quite often:

 Consider these studies:

D, DE, and DES demonstrated a similar and significant (P <= 0.05) reduction in body mass (-9.64, -8.99, and -9.90 kg, respectively) with fat mass comprising 69, 78, and 97% of the total loss in body mass, respectively. -
Kramer, Volek et al. Influence of exercise training on physiological and performance changes with weight loss in men.

and Hunter et.al. : Resistance Training Conserves Fat-free Mass and Resting Energy Expenditure Following Weight Loss. In the Kramer study, a third of the weight loss in the diet-only group was muscle(2.98 kg, or 6.5lbs) and the diet+cardio exercise group also lost significant muscle(1.98kg or 4.35lbs), while the diet+cardio+strength training group mostly retained theirs, losing 0.297kg or just shy of 0.6lbs of muscle.

In addition to Wayne Westcott. PhD's study of resistance training versus endurance training (Westcott, W., Fitness Management. Nov., 1991.) - in addition to the effect on fat loss, Westcott documents the phenomenon known as 'newbie gains' where beginners to exercise can add muscle even in a calorie deficit. Also check out Resistance Weight Training During Caloric Restriction Enhances Lean Body Weight Maintenance (Ballor, D.L., Katch, V.L., Becque, M.D., Marks, C.R., American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. 47(1): 19-25, 1988.) - and this weights-only study too that shows the expected result - weight training without dieting won't do jack for you when it comes to fat loss.

 I can't think of anyone I've ever met who've ever gone on a diet to lose muscle and preserve fat.

 In the Kramer study, diet only participants lost 14.6lbs of fat, the diet+cardio participants lost 15.4lbs of fat, and the strength training participants lost 21lbs of fat.

 In other words, the addition of aerobic exercise/running did bugger all to enhance the results in the desired dimension.

 'course, exercise on its own doesn't work. At all. Without diet, nothing whatsoever worth mentioning happens; and with diet in place there's no need for cardio at all as the calorie deficit is created through diet in any case, not through aerobic exercise.

 Don't pull a Trhawley and think I'm saying "don't do cardio" here. With the addition of some aerobic exercise to your life you can have a calorie deficit without unduly restricting intake which I think is a net benefit even if the effect from diet or diet+cardio is exactly the same

Fat Loss Depends on Energy Deficit Only, Independently of the Method for Weight Loss
Strasser et.al.Ann Nutr Metab 2007;51:428-432 (DOI: 10.1159/000111162)

Whether you expend 500cal in low-level aerobics or just not eat them in the first place makes no difference to your weight loss efforts. So even if you were to take Burfot's BS numbers on face value, they're still irrelevant; the calorie burn during exercise is largely irrelevant to weight loss.

 It's the post-workout structural and systemic adaptations that can hinder, help or be neutral to your fat loss efforts, and the cardio exercise systemic adaptations are neutral or counterproductive to fat loss. While strength training radically enhances the fat loss, assuming isocaloric deficits.

 Anyway, my advice has always been, and hasn't changed - program in your training according to your goals. If you're an endorphin junkie who needs your running fix to feel right, well, okay, but don't confuse your drug habit with health.

 If you're after increased endurance performance your training needs aren't going to be the same as someone going for increase sprint speed or who is looking to boost their vertical jump. Or someone looking to lose fat.

 If you're after fat loss, for maximum efficiency your program must start with a sensible strength training regime; once you've got that in place you do as much or as little cardio as you've got the time and the inclination to do.

Original Post by melkor:

 While EPOC is much, much less than it's cracked up to be, the 50-60kcal total you can expect from strength training still beats the 0 from running and the 10-20 from sprint intervals hands down.

 There was also a study mentioned in NROL4W that showed that while EPOC doesn't burn that many extra calories, the makeup of calories burned after lifting (the ratio of calories from fat to calories from glycogen) shifts drastically towards fat for a long period of time after lifting.

Original Post by trhawley:

Cardio = Aerobic

Some cardio is aerobic, some cardio is anaerobic. 

I consider myself much more educated now!  Thank you for all the great information.

I've replaced my food obession with an obsession for weight training.  Whether or not it is a better workout then running didn't matter to me.  What mattered is that I enjoy what I'm doing, and the health benefits have been well worth the time, dedication, and yes.... some pain!  Love the burn!

I found that strength training gave me substantial benefits in my cardiovascular endurance. I don't long distance run very often, I don't really like it. But after strength training and sprinting for half a year I was able to run a 10k in under an hour, without having gone for a long run in over 2 months... Not an easy thing to do I might add.

A good point to mention too... while strength training will also increase your endurance, practicing endurance won't increase your strength.

I was really hoping Melkor would chime in.  ...you know your stuff, my man.

Absolutely great stuff Melkor.

I thought it was nice at the end how you said to first establish your weight lifting/ strength training regimen and then, if you have time, add running.

A lot of what I have read and heard from personal trainers is that the best workout schedule is one that combines both aerobic and anearobic workouts (weight lifting + running or something.) Though what you are saying is mostly similar, you're putting much more weight on the lifting part (no pun intended.)

Original Post by floggingsully:

Original Post by trhawley:

Cardio = Aerobic

Some cardio is aerobic, some cardio is anaerobic. 

This is essentially true depending on your definition of cardio.  But typically when discussing exercise on these forum and in other media the term "cardio" is used to refer to aerobic exercise.  So as not to be confusing to others I suggest you do the same.

The article is right on the money.

Original Post by trhawley:

This is essentially true depending on your definition of cardio. 

A 'cardio' activity is an activity that puts a stress on the cardiovascular system, is there another definition of cardio?

Original Post by trhawley:

But typically when discussing exercise on these forum and in other media the term "cardio" is used to refer to aerobic exercise.  So as not to be confusing to others I suggest you do the same.

You're suggesting I use incorrect terminology just because everyone else does? 

Original Post by floggingsully:

Original Post by trhawley:

This is essentially true depending on your definition of cardio. 

A 'cardio' activity is an activity that puts a stress on the cardiovascular system, is there another definition of cardio?

Original Post by trhawley:

But typically when discussing exercise on these forum and in other media the term "cardio" is used to refer to aerobic exercise.  So as not to be confusing to others I suggest you do the same.

You're suggesting I use incorrect terminology just because everyone else does? 

Oh get a room, you two.

Original Post by trhawley:

The article is right on the money.

 You really think this is right on the money?

Original Post by rebeccalamvocals:

You weigh 150 pounds, and you can do either 40 minutes of modest running (8:30 pace) or 40 minutes of moderate strength training. The tally:

Physical-activity energy expenditure (PAEE): The running will burn 522 calories, the strength training 136, largely because strength training involves too much sitting and resting between lifts. Advantage: Running, by 386 calories.

Original Post by floggingsully:

Original Post by trhawley:

This is essentially true depending on your definition of cardio. 

A 'cardio' activity is an activity that puts a stress on the cardiovascular system, is there another definition of cardio?

Original Post by trhawley:

But typically when discussing exercise on these forum and in other media the term "cardio" is used to refer to aerobic exercise.  So as not to be confusing to others I suggest you do the same.

You're suggesting I use incorrect terminology just because everyone else does? 

 Well, we used to call it aerobic exercise but now every assume that that means jumping around in a dance studio to disco music, whence the switch to the term cardio to describe aerobic exercise.  But go ahead dance to your own beat if you want to.

Original Post by floggingsully:

Original Post by trhawley:

The article is right on the money.

 You really think this is right on the money?

 Yes.

Original Post by trhawley:

Original Post by floggingsully:

Original Post by trhawley:

The article is right on the money.

 You really think this is right on the money?

 Yes.

You might want to re-read post #21. 

Original Post by floggingsully:

Original Post by trhawley:

Original Post by floggingsully:

Original Post by trhawley:

The article is right on the money.

 You really think this is right on the money?

 Yes.

You might want to re-read post #21. 

 How many hour a week do you weight train and how many calories does this burn?  Please provide the break down.

Fat Loss Depends on Energy Deficit Only, Independently of the Method for Weight Loss
Strasser et.al.Ann Nutr Metab 2007;51:428-432 (DOI: 10.1159/000111162)

Whether you expend 500cal in low-level aerobics or just not eat them in the first place makes no difference to your weight loss efforts. So even if you were to take Burfot's BS numbers on face value, they're still irrelevant; the calorie burn during exercise is largely irrelevant to weight loss.

Well, Going with an assumption that my HRM can accuratly measures calorie burn while weight lifting (If this is a false assumption, I'd love to know, feel free to correct if it needs correction)

Yesturday's 45 minute weight lighting session burned 578 calories.  Which translates to 770 calories/hr

Todays's 30 minute Elliptical burned 520 calories.  Which translates to 1040 calories/hr

The article quotes "Physical-activity energy expenditure (PAEE): The running will burn 522 calories, the strength training 136, largely because strength training involves too much sitting and resting between lifts. Advantage: Running, by 386 calories" This is for a 40 minute period.

The article suggests that only 204 cal/hr are burned weight lifting.  I burn 100 cal/hr sitting watching TV. 

The numbers in the article seem way off, as such, so must the conclusion.

Original Post by trhawley:

How many hour a week do you weight train and how many calories does this burn?  Please provide the break down.

I weight train for about 3 hours a week.  That's about 400 calories/hour (since I'm female and weigh ~150 pounds) which has been confirmed with heartrate monitor.  If I were to run at 6mph instead, CC tells me I'd burn 675 calories/hour (however, I *hate* running so that's unlikely to happen unless someone chases me for an hour or I take up soccer again).  That gives running the advantage by 275 calories/hour or 183 calories in the 40 minutes suggested.  The article is seriously underestimating the calories burnt by weight training.  It's also ignoring body composition.  I seriously doubt that I would have maintained all of my muscle mass while losing 30 pounds of fat had I taken up running instead of strength training.

Incidentally, I'm not anti-cardio.  I *love* riding my bike, rollerblading, hiking, etc.  It's just running that bores me silly.

Ok, so susiecue & lemonjello, you don't like her numbers but you know from your own numbers that her general principle is right in that you do burn more per minute doing your cardio than you do during your weight lifting.  No?