Strength Training vs. Aerobic Exercise

The biggest difference between these types of exercise is the effect they have on the body. Strength training, like lifting weights or using resistance bands, builds muscle and helps it function properly. Aerobic exercise, like running or swimming, is designed to strengthen the heart and help the body use oxygen better. Both are good for your overall health, just in different ways. Here, we take a deep dive into how aerobic exercise compares to strength training in terms of improving endurance and health benefits, and share why a combination of aerobic exercise and strength training should be a cornerstone of your fitness plan.

What is aerobic exercise?

Aerobic exercise is any form of aerobic exercise that keeps your heart pumping for a sustained period of time. Short for cardiovascular training or physical training, aerobic exercise increases your heart rate and breathing, facilitating the flow of oxygen through your blood vessels to fuel your movements.

Running, swimming, biking, rowing, and brisk walking are some of the most popular aerobic exercises, but it can also include dance aerobics, hiking, aerobics, and HIIT. Even walking up and down stairs repeatedly can be considered aerobic exercise. As long as you move at a moderate to fast pace, breathe faster, and sweat—even if it’s a small amount—you can consider it a form of aerobic exercise.

How often should you do aerobic exercise?

Medical experts recommend getting at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise per week. Depending on your schedule and exercise preferences, that can be broken down into 30 minutes five times a week, or shorter sessions of 10 to 15 minutes a few times a day. The most important thing is to find an aerobic activity (or activities) that fits your body and your goals, and most importantly, to stick with it.

What are the benefits of aerobic exercise?

Aerobic exercise does have a lot of benefits, from increased fitness levels to improved mental and physical health. “Aerobic exercise helps improve the body’s ability to deliver blood and oxygen to the muscles and strengthens the heart and lungs,” Ben says. Here are just some of the core benefits of aerobic exercise.

1. Aerobic exercise keeps your heart healthy

Research shows that regular aerobic exercise can increase your heart rate and improve overall cardiovascular health, helping to prevent heart disease and other non-cardiovascular diseases, such as diabetes, osteoporosis, and even colon cancer.

2. Aerobic exercise boosts your immune system

Aerobic exercise can help you fight disease, and even small amounts of exercise can boost your immune system. A 2009 study of 13 young men found that 20 minutes of aerobic exercise (ranging from low to high intensity) helped activate the immune system and increase the number of white blood cells in the body. While low-intensity exercise was beneficial, high-intensity aerobic exercise had a stronger effect on participants’ immune cells.

3. Aerobic exercise boosts your mood and energy levels

Do you feel high after a workout? That’s your endorphins starting to work. Aerobic exercise can boost the production of endorphins, and studies show that it helps boost your mood and improve your overall mental health.

What is strength training?

Strength training, also known as weight training, weightlifting, or resistance training, is any form of exercise that uses resistance to build strength. This resistance causes the muscles to contract, which over time builds strength and endurance, allowing you to grow more muscle.

The weight, or resistance, can come from free weights, such as kettlebells or dumbbells, weight machines, resistance bands, or even your own bodyweight.

Unlike aerobic exercise (cardio), strength training is typically anaerobic, meaning it doesn’t use oxygen for energy, but instead breaks down glucose in the body. There can be crossover between aerobic and strength training. For example, if you do a particularly intense strength training session that gets your heart rate up, this could also be classified as aerobic because your body also uses oxygen for energy. HIIT can be a great hybrid workout, depending on the exercises you do and for how long.

What Are the Benefits of Strength Training?

Like aerobic exercise, strength training has a host of benefits for your mind and body. “Strength training helps you build muscle, provide support for your daily life, and boost your metabolism,” Ben shares. Here are three main reasons why you need to make strength training a part of your workout routine.

1. Strength Training Builds Muscle

Building and sculpting muscle is the hallmark goal of strength training. Through a process called hypertrophy, new muscle cells grow over time, replacing fat with regular strength training. Since muscle tissue is considered more metabolically active than fat (meaning it requires more fuel to power it), an increase in muscle mass means you’ll burn more calories over time. Building muscle also helps increase your resting metabolic rate, so you’ll continue to burn those calories even after your workout is over.

2. Strength Training Improves Bone Health

Any form of strength or resistance training helps boost bone health and improves bone density. Stronger bones mean you’re protected from injury and less likely to develop osteoporosis or osteopenia. A recent study showed that just 15 to 20 minutes of weight training three days a week can improve bone density.

3. Strength Training Relieves Stress and Boosts Mental Health

Just like aerobic exercise releases endorphins and endocannabinoids that make you feel good after a workout, strength training has also been found to improve mental health. In addition to helping reduce symptoms of depression and anxiety, it can also boost confidence and improve the mind-body connection.

How Aerobic Exercise vs. Strength Training Maintain a Healthy Weight

Both aerobic exercise and strength training can help you burn calories, boost your metabolism, and maintain a healthy weight, but they work in different ways.

Aerobic exercise can help you burn calories while you work out, and burn fat at a certain intensity. While aerobic exercise may burn calories faster than strength training, it only works during the workout. Strength training is long-term, builds muscle mass over time, boosts your metabolism, and burns calories even when you’re not in exercise mode.

In fact, both aerobic exercise and strength training are necessary to maintain a healthy weight and overall health. Depending on your fitness goals, combining aerobic exercise and strength training can really help you reap all the benefits. It takes advantage of all the ways your body can output power, including improving overall aerobic capacity, learning how to work hard despite fatigue, improving your fitness level, and building strength through a full-body experience.

Do cardio first or strength training first?

The order of cardio or strength training depends on your fitness goals. For example, if you want to burn more calories and fat, do weightlifting first and then cardio, and the same goes if you want to build strength. If you want to improve your endurance for competition, do cardio first and weightlifting last.

If you are doing upper body strength training, you can start with either, and for lower body strength training, try weightlifting first and then cardio. The most important thing is to make sure you maintain balance and don’t overtrain. Slowly adapt to your new schedule and gradually improve as you go. Make sure you schedule rest days as well.

If you have any injuries or health issues, always consult your doctor before starting any new routine. Balance your workouts with plenty of stretching, warm-up exercises, and cool-down exercises.

How to Combine Aerobic Exercise and Strength Training

Each type of exercise has important health and fitness benefits, so by combining aerobic exercise and strength training, you can get the best of both worlds and enhance your workouts. A healthy combination of strength and aerobic training will allow your body to function at its best, allowing the two systems to complement each other rather than compete.

If you think this all sounds great but don’t know where to start and how to plan your cardio and strength training, a structured boot camp-style program can help take the stress out of planning. It’s a very effective way to exercise and use your time efficiently.

In a boot camp, you can focus on unilateral training, doing exercises on the floor that target the posterior chain or back to improve running ability, or doing squats and front core exercises to match hill climbing. Plus, by quickly switching between the exercise bike or treadmill and the mat, your heart rate will stay elevated and your adrenaline will be pumping.

If boot camp doesn’t appeal, there are other options.

HIIT (high-intensity interval training) workouts have the best of both worlds and are so effective that studies have found that just two weeks of HIIT is equivalent to six to eight weeks of endurance training.

Combine two of your favorite workouts with another for five to ten minutes each. Schedule some workouts that are primarily cardio and some that are primarily strength training.

Focus on strength training for different muscle groups each time. Cycle through your legs and glutes, core, arms and shoulders, then repeat.

For aerobic exercise, schedule low-, medium-, and high-intensity aerobic activity throughout the week.