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? 

You don't necessarily have to do an awful lot of strength training to have enhanced results; Westcott's groups did 15 minutes of strength training and had pretty dramatic results.

 My personal favourite for a beginner is the "starting strength" template of 3 exercises, 3 sets of 5 reps; which can be done in 20-40 minutes if people aren't getting in your way :)

 Edit: And there's no such thing as doing it wrong. There is only "exercise that helps you reach your goals" and "Exercise that doesn't help" - and varying degrees within the help/doesn't help space.

 If something isn't quite as high on the "helps" scale as something else, but is a lot higher on the "exercise I'll actually stick with" scale, pick the one you'll stick with ;)

Personally I would rather walk, run or hike than just about anything else.

But what I want to know is why do some of you insist that aerobic activity does not build muscle?  One is carrying their entire weight around.  Let me tell you, hike a few 14ers over the course of one summer and you will be leaner and much stronger all over.  And yes, you will build muscle.  One simply can not carry around 1XX or 2XX lbs around and not gain muscle. 

lol @madamq, l have been logging around these 2XXlbs and no muscles to show till l started lifting weights recently.

This arguement works for a cardio junkie with a weight lifting problem like me....best of both worlds...lol

Original Post by melkor:

You don't necessarily have to do an awful lot of strength training to have enhanced results; Westcott's groups did 15 minutes of strength training and had pretty dramatic results.

 My personal favourite for a beginner is the "starting strength" template of 3 exercises, 3 sets of 5 reps; which can be done in 20-40 minutes if people aren't getting in your way :)

 Edit: And there's no such thing as doing it wrong. There is only "exercise that helps you reach your goals" and "Exercise that doesn't help" - and varying degrees within the help/doesn't help space.

 If something isn't quite as high on the "helps" scale as something else, but is a lot higher on the "exercise I'll actually stick with" scale, pick the one you'll stick with ;)

 I think I could probably muddle through 20 minutes.  That's not too bad.  My hubby does crossfit.  I'll probably try to start doing that with him a couple times a week and drop my running down just a tad.  The stuff he does sometimes only takes half an hour or less and he really seems to be getting good results.

I'm surprised that for someone who knows a fair amount about nutrition, I'm still so clueless about the whole strength vs. cardio thing.  Looks like I need to visit your neck of the woods more often, melkor.

Original Post by madamq:

Personally I would rather walk, run or hike than just about anything else.

But what I want to know is why do some of you insist that aerobic activity does not build muscle?  One is carrying their entire weight around.  Let me tell you, hike a few 14ers over the course of one summer and you will be leaner and much stronger all over.  And yes, you will build muscle.  One simply can not carry around 1XX or 2XX lbs around and not gain muscle. 

 Couple things to note, although running and such does give your lower body a work out, you're upper body is useless, it's just extra weight to carry around, so your body will tend to scap it.

But even though you're using your lower body, the amount of force exerted at any moment is relatively small (compared to weight training), but you do it a lot. Your body's response to that is not to add muscle, it's to add mitochondria, and more capillaries to the muscle, so that it can stay in aerobic mode. For example, look at the marathon runners who compete on the world stage, even their leg muscles aren't that impressive, at least not in terms of size (in terms of endurence though, damn impressive).

Hiking is more forceful, in terms of force output from the legs, so you'll probably keep more/gain (depending on your level of fitness), and I'll admit, I don't know what a "14" is, if you mean miles or a catagory climb or what.

In any case, it's good exercise, and if you love it by all means keep it up!

Original Post by madamq:

Personally I would rather walk, run or hike than just about anything else.

But what I want to know is why do some of you insist that aerobic activity does not build muscle?  One is carrying their entire weight around.  Let me tell you, hike a few 14ers over the course of one summer and you will be leaner and much stronger all over.  And yes, you will build muscle.  One simply can not carry around 1XX or 2XX lbs around and not gain muscle. 

 These are my thoughts as well.  I bike during the summer, and I have much more power and speed at the end of the summer than at the beginning.  So those of you who say that you can't get stonger/build muscle doing nothing but cardio, how is it that my legs bulk up and my speed and power increase doing nothing but cardio?

Edited to add: While also on a 500-1000 cal/day deficit?

I think the problem is that people equate muscle mass for effectiveness and strength.  It just is not true.  Yes, body builders can have impressive strength, but so can more ordinary physiques. 

I agree, however, that one needs to add resistance to aerobic workouts to really benefit from them.  Hills and uneven terrain will do it.  But it does not take a lot, The hill does not have to be steep and terrain only has to be different but not extraordinarily so. 

Someone also made a crack about running and endorphin junkies - weight lifting releases endorphins too.  (bad speller in the am  lol)

 Sarcoplasmic hypertrophy, that is increases in the cell cytoplasm and intracellular fluid is not muscle.

 A high volume of low resistance exercise can in some cases cause sarcoplasmic hypertrophy since your legs swell with extra fluid, but that ain't muscle protein.

 Neural effects - increased motor unit recruitment of your existing muscle fibers can also increase the power output of any given set of muscle fibers.

 And what you perceive as increased race power - the ability to sustain a higher level of work output for longer - is not strength. It's vaguely possible it's strength endurance instead of a function of increased cardiovascular efficiency and general endurance, but it doesn't have any carryover to and in most cases is negatively correlated to real strength.

 Strength is increasing your peak power output, the ability of your muscles to generate maximal force. Which manifests itself in the ability to lift heavier weights. Unless you can also squat more weight for the same reps your legs didn't grow any stronger.

 Of course, strength qualities are a continuum, not completely discrete qualities. But you can't improve strength by doing endurance training, no matter how much you want this to be true.

 If you want to be very technical about it, strength training activates the mTOR protein kinease that is responsible for muscular protein resynthesis and maintenance and/or increase of muscular protein in a calorie deficit/surplus. (mTOR will only restore your muscle protein to where it was before exercise unless you have a calorie surplus present.)

 Endurance training activates the AMPK kinease - the energy-sensing reaction if you will. When cellular respiration needs are increased and energy stores are reduced from pre-exercise levels, AMPK is activated and shuts down competing energy-intensive processes until cellular energy stores are regenerated and the cardio-based muscular adaptations have taken place.

 This includes mTOR - so it's not physically possible for your body to build more muscle protein while AMPK is active. AMPK is dominant - in an evolutionary perspective it's more important to adapt to long-term energy-intensive activities by increasing efficiency at them than it is to adapt to transient peak power outpout demands.

 This sucks for a dieter by the way - the evolutionary advantageous adaptations is to make you more efficient at the energy-costly activities and reduce the energy cost of them, thus reducing the need to tap into long-term storage and facilitating sparing them.

 (Translated from Melkorspeak: your body likes being fat and adapts to hang on to the fat stores whenever the precious, precious love handles are threatened.)

 But bottom line is, what you're looking at is an artefact of your confusion about what strenght is, not that your bodys' behavior somehow defies normal human physiology.

"Of course, strength qualities are a continuum, not completely discrete qualities. But you can't improve strength by doing endurance training, no matter how much you want this to be true."

Oh boy, now you're going to make me sound like Sully.  You don't gain strength when you train for endurance but not all time spent doing "cardio", i.e. running, cycling, swimming, etc, is endurance training.  (Just as there is a cardio element to weight training.)

In cycling, one aspect of improved performance is being able to generate a high wattage at a sub LT heart rate.  There is an endurance element to this but isn't there also a strength element? If there weren't I don't think cyclist would spend as much time doing the hill repeats, sprints, and squats/lunges.  I know the only way that I can get faster going up hill is to either lose weight or increase my power output.

Well, if you look at the cute graphic from Exrx.net - which I suppose is better than my own triangle conceptualization of the continuum now that I'm thinking about it - you'll see that the power aspect is next door to the strength part of the dial, so you can tune in on a station that's somewhere between strength and power/endurance.

 Somewhere between endurance/power would presumably be more pratical for your sport, I think the strength/power bit is more of a sprint thing.

 Anyway - you can think of your own little black dot marked "ideal combination for my sport". It won't end up in the same place if you're a speed racer, road endurance, BMX'er or velodrome guy but the difference is markedly smaller than the distance between where "ideal for marathons and ultramarathons" and "ideal for powerlifting" dots would be.

 But in this case I'm somewhat a victim of my own imprescice use of language, yes - your power/endurance training has a lot more of a strength component than the equivalent marathon training would include.

Original Post by trhawley:

I know the only way that I can get faster going up hill is to either lose weight or increase my power output.

Or you could increase the amount of time you can sustain the same power output.

And just to be nitpicky, strength and power are not the same thing (ironically enough, power lifting competitions are actually measures of strength, not power). 

My apologies to the OP for getting off topic (I guess I could just PM Melkor but I'll go ahead put the question out there for everyone), improving as a cyclistis all about improving power output as measured in Watts.  Certainly there is a huge endurance factor in become a competent cyclist but all the endurance training in the world won't keep you in the pack on a fast club ride if you can't generate the watts. 

Now we know that being able to go up hill better/faster, the goal of many recreational cyclists, is a function of increasing your output of watts per pound.  You can do this by either getting lighter or by getting stronger, where stronger means that you can sustain a higher wattage output over time.  But the same is also true when riding on the flats where weight is not an issue.  When the pace picks up your wattage increases along with your heart rate and you can only hang with the pack as long as you can continue to match the power output and stay under your LT.

The way one trains for this is by doing various types of intervals primarily and also with weights.  How does this "strength", defined as higher sustained power output relate to "strength", defined as being able to lift a heavier weight? 

Original Post by floggingsully:

Original Post by trhawley:

I know the only way that I can get faster going up hill is to either lose weight or increase my power output.

Or you could increase the amount of time you can sustain the same power output.

And just to be nitpicky, strength and power are not the same thing (ironically enough, power lifting competitions are actually measures of strength, not power). 

 Well, this is what I was just asking, we know power isn't endurance so if it is not strength then what is it?

Edit:  Actually I think power is a combination of strength and endurance.

Peak power output curve, basically. You're not looking for that single high spike of a max effort lift, and the structural adaptations that are advantageous for it is somewhat counterproductive for what you're looking for.

 Your ideal strength profile is more like a mesa - power output goes up to a level and then you sustain at that level. Higher peak power production means less ability to sustain that power usually, and a max-effort peak can't usually be sustained for longer than 8-10 seconds.

 Peak power actually has less area under the curve than the sustained high power output that's ideal for your sport - you're looking to sustain that high power for at least minutes (hill sprints, race finishes) and preferably lot longer, so structural adaptations in your muscles that are ideal for this aren't the same as are ideal for the peak power output of a strength sport.

 Power lifters aren't the ones with the highest peak power outputs actually, that's Olympic lifters. If you run the numbers on the forces involved in doing a snatch with 400lbs like the heavyweights do, you'll find them to be almost absurdly higher than what a powerlifter deadlifting or squatting 1000lbs does.

Does running such as 5k, 10k, etc have a power element or is it all about endurance?

Original Post by floggingsully:

Original Post by trhawley:

I know the only way that I can get faster going up hill is to either lose weight or increase my power output.

Or you could increase the amount of time you can sustain the same power output.

And just to be nitpicky, strength and power are not the same thing (ironically enough, power lifting competitions are actually measures of strength, not power). 

 If one defines "strenghth" as being able to lift large amounts of weight disproportionate to ones body size, I would much rather be "powerful" than strong.  Power is much more useful.

 Generally when you run, you lose about 1cm off your stride length per 1-1.5K distance covered past the first 5K if you only do pure endurance training. It's why it's advantageous for runners to do some strength training in the strength/strength endurance range; 8-12, 12-15 and 16-20 reps. Over shorter race distances it doesn't make (much of) a difference, but maintaining stride length over the mid-to-long distances is advantageous to sports performance.

 Up to a point; there's a balancing act because adding more muscle mass dilutes your capilary density so your performance and endurance degrades when you don't have enouigh blood supply to keep your muscles oxygenated.

 Then there's crazy-ass ultramarathoners who need a lot more muscle mass than is ideal for endurance performance, because they're literally burning mass as they go along.

 It's a delicate balacing act and at some of the peaks of competitive performance you see 100m sprinters who won't run 200m because the results would be embarrasing, and 5K runners who won't even look at a 3K because they aren't optimised for performance over those distances.

melkor-  Thanks for the info.  You hit the nail on the head with the continum thing...  Unfortunately, a lot of responses to these posts (cardio vs. weight lifting) seem to take a black-or-white approach. 

So what are the conditions that activate the mTOR proteins?  Obviously my quads don't know whether I am using free weights or pushing a bike up a hill in a 20mph headwind, so what differences between weight lifting and cycling cause my body to choose AMPK over mTOR? 

 Glycogen depletion and sustained power output is the most important signalling thing there, far as I can tell.

 If you're depleting energy and sustaining power output for some time you're going to get an AMPK activation no matter what, and that's going to overwhelm the mTOR signal at some point. If you were out there doing hill repeats at max speed for 10-second sprints you're more likely to have a strong mTOR and weak AMPK signal and you'd get a strength training effect, but that's not a training profile that even vaguely makes sense for your sport as I understand it.

You might be surprised how important those 10 second (or less) sprints can be when you are trying to maintain contact during a fast group ride.