Can Strength Training Count As Cardio?

count blank as blank? What do I mean by that? Well, it's a question I get all the time, and it's a little more complicated just in its format. It's a little more variable because there are variables within there, but it's essentially, Hey Tom, can I count blank? Is my cardio? Hey? Tom? Can I count blank as my strength? Workout? What do you think the two words are? Well, it depends, but it really doesn't in that We're gonna get right to

the exercise science here. We can get right to the response that your body has to what you just asked me about. I mean, that's pretty cut and dried. I'm gonna try to keep this episode short and sweet. A tough time doing is and if you have listened to prior podcast. No, but you definitely have questions related to this topic. And it's a great question because if people are asking it, they know that they need to do it right. So I want to do strength workout out

does it count? I want to do my cardio? Does this count? And what are specifics here? Well, I mean there's so many because there's so many options. But that's again, it's a good thing. I love this question, but it may be the following. Can I count swimming as my strength workout? Can I count golf as my cardio workout? Now we get into are you walking? Are you in a cart? How many holes are you playing? Can I

count tennis as my cardio workout? That always begs the question from me singles or doubles, And if they say doubles, they say no, and then they get angry, and of course I'm kidding. But again we're gonna go to the exercise science. The body's response to that mode that you're asking me about. Common question is can I count running as my leg workout? My legs strength work out? Oftentimes? And then one that is often thrown into both categories, and I talk about this and my book Beat the

gym that was inten wow while back. But when it comes to yoga, I'm often asked, can I count yoga as my cardio workout? And or can I count yoga as my strength workout? And if I'm being totally honest, as I always am, oftentimes when it's yoga, I'm not asked. I'm told. You know, I'll be having a discussion with someone and find out what I do and they'll say, oh, yeah,

I do yoga for cardio. It's my cardio and my strength. Yes, but no getting ahead of myself, right, So it does come down to the science here, and it comes down to this people and jump way ahead. It comes down to living our best lives. So I could obviously say yes, people say does this count? Sure you can count for whatever you want. Sure you want to count your map plates as you know cardio and endurance. Sure count for

whatever you want. But but that would be doing that person a huge disservice and that's not what I do. And so we're gonna get to the science. We're just gonna look at certain elements of this question and break it down so that you can start to put together your plan. And I want that plan to be as varied as possible. I want you to do so many different things, but I want you to know and start to realize that the response your body has to those

different things answers this question. That's pretty easy. You don't really need any fitness tech to answer the question. Your body is really smart, and your respond to it, your your perception of it. We'll tell you just about all you need to know, alright, quick break, When we come back, can I count my strength workout as cardio? And many other questions like that, but basically, what is cardio and what is strength? And how much should we do? All right? And how do we do that so that it works

for us as individuals? All right? Quick break, we'll be right back all right talking about can I count my strength to workout as cardio? So that's a specific one I have received, and it's pretty specific in this realm of this specific question, but it goes to again, the real question here is doesn't have the same effect, doesn't have the effect? Does it have a cardio vascular effect? Right? And so when people ask about strength, can I count

my strength work out his cardio? And I just received a question right along these lines, very specific with circuit training. And as I've talked about, my first original fitness videos were just that self produced before I did all the other ones for other people. But I said, how do I give people like you, and specifically my wife at the time. If I were designing a workout for my wife super busy, you know, works, does it all? What

would I do it with circuit training? And the first video was forty some odd minutes body weight and dumbells circuit training format, so that there was a cardio vascular effect. But this is such a perfect way to kick this off and to start. You know, when you go to a doctor, a specialist, and you're deciding on whether to do surgery or something, you can often say to that person, if you were me, would you do it? Or if if you know, if I was your husband or wife,

what would you recommend? And so the very fact that I designed the workouts that way showed that, yes, I was trying to build some cardio vascular effect into that workout. But would I have said to my wife or would I say to my wife that that's all she needed to do? Were those workouts as far as cardio goes? No? No? So can you get a cardio vascular effect from that that type of strength workout. Yes, is that all you should do for cardio? No? And that's where we're gonna

get to here. Okay, So when we talk about cardio, we're talking about raising our heart rates. You know, I try to keep it as simple as possible on first level discussion of this. Cardio exercises raising our heart rate. Strength exercise is challenging our muscles. And if we go to cardio, our heart is a muscle. We need to challenge it. Do we need to challenge it really hard every time we do cardiovasco exercise. No, that's the wrong way to do it. You don't want to interval train

every single day. That will be a problem. You will get injured, you will get sick, you will overtrain. That's not how we evolved. And the same thing holds true with strength. We want to challenge our muscles, all of our muscles. Do we want to go all out every time? No? No. And so when we are deciding on whether something qualifies as cardio or something qualifies as strength, we want to look at our body's response to it. So let's use yoga because that is thrown into both camps now as

many different forms of yoga. And again I'm gonna keep this very basic, broad level and I'm gonna just start. I'm not gonna get into any studies for this discussion, but John Hopkins just a discussion on this very topic, the yoga heart connection. Right, So can I count yoga as my cardio? Now people will talk about, hey, I do this specific form of yoga. Maybe it's hot, yoga gets my heart rate up, that's cardio. That should be enough, well, Courney,

John Hopkins, and many others. It's it's just not is there a cardio vascar effect, of course, but if you put a heart rate monitor on you would see that for the vast majority of these type of workouts, you're not getting that cardiovascular effect that you would from other forms. Okay, and I'm just gonna quote directly from John to Hopkins, Uh, the yoga heart connection. Yoga as exercise. They say yoga can improve flexibility, muscle strength, and balance because it's not

a form of aerobic exercise that raises the heart rate. However, you shouldn't count the time you spend doing it as a part of your recommended weekly total for moderate to vigorous physical activity. Now, many yoga people argue with me about this, and that's fine, and listen, I don't need to be right. I want the best for you. You can count anything for whatever you want. But I'm just going by what I read, what I experience the science.

When you put a heart rate monitor on and you see the effects of that form of exercise, what does it do? And it doesn't compute the same way. But let me just quickly say this, and I'm gonna vote again from Johns Hopkins, they say yoga as heart booster. Beyond offloading stress, practicing yoga may help lower blood pressure, blood cholesterol, and blood glucose levels as well as heart rate, making it a useful lifestyle intervention. I'll go away further

than that. You know, look at those benefits. By the way, those are the same benefits you get from cardio vascular exercise, but not the only ones, not the only ones. And that's a huge part of this question. There's so many benefits of exercise, cardiovascular and strength training. That's what this podcast and all my books are about. But when you limited to just one, you say, yoga is my cardio.

That's that's my cardio. That's a problem. We want to mix up all our forms of movement and hit all five components of fitness us and within that do it at different intensities. Okay, So that's really a huge part of this discussion. You know, people say gardening. You know, I garden for five hours. I'm super sore after. Can I count that as my strength training part of it? Are there strength benefits? Absolutely? Is that all you want to do? No? And as I say that, you go, well,

people have different goals. But the lifestyle we live, our modern lifestyle and our weaknesses and imbalances, we need more. I mean, yes, I always go to the evolution two Blue Zones type books and things like that. We have to look they don't have to. I I believe it's a huge problem with so many of the approaches to fitness and wellness and nutrition and exercise, is that we're not looking at how we evolved. Kind of important in

my opinion. But you could make that arguments as actually many people do, who say we should you know, run like certain animals, You go, well, they have four limbs and eat a certain way when we really didn't. So kind of twisting and perverting the evolution. But it's very simple to say, and it's true. You know, people who live in blue zones, people who live to be a hundred and beyond and thrive generally don't go to the gym. But they're also not sitting all day long, not even

close to sitting all day long. So that's where it's a little apples to orange is in regards to what we need to do to counter the effects, the ridiculous effects of the lifestyle that we have made for ourselves. All right, so back to yoga. Yoga's phenomenal on so many levels. But what I tell someone like my wife that that's all she needed to do, that's that was her strength, and that was her cardio not if I truly as I do, wanted her to live her longest,

best life. And that goes to get a little deep into the basic exercise science osteoporosis. Right, we need to challenge our muscles and our bones more than just that. It goes to heart health. Even though you get those incredible benefits of yoga, and by no means diminishing the incredible heart benefits, but I want more. I want it's not enough. And you may have yoga as part of your repertoire. And then you may walk, and you may swim, and you may do you know, a group exercise class

twice a week total body. Now you see where I'm getting to. Yes, you can and should count these things as one of your forms of cardio and or strength. But let's go to those recommendations that are so confusing,

but we have to talk about them real quickly. You know what does the American Heart Association recommend, Well, you've heard it a million times, get at least a hundred fifty minutes of moderate aerobic activity or seventy minutes of vigorous aerobic activity a week, or accommodation of moderate and vigorous activity. Most people have no idea what that means. Most people overestimate there level of activity. In other words, low is moderate and moderate is hard. We need to

mix it up. And so when we're looking at your strength and your cardio, does it challenge you? Does it challenge your muscles when you do that form of strength work that you are trying to put into your routine as strength and is it a full body workout? That's a huge problem. So let me just go real quickly to the question can I count running as my leg workout, well, of course, holy smokes, is that going to strengthen your legs and be you know, make your legs sore? So yes,

that is part of your strength workout. But it's not enough. In other words, what I said at the beginning, we need to mix things up to balance out not only our modern lifestyle, but our weaknesses and imbalances individually. So in other words, if you just run running in and of itself, you're going to build up certain imbalances and

it's going to be a problem. So we do leg workout, specific leg workouts with body weight and machines and free weights and bands two fix those imbalances and fix those weaknesses. So do you see the theme here is yes, doubles tennis. It's a form of cardio and it's fun. And I did that podcast on how you Know. There was a study that said, well, many studies, group of studies, how

racket sports. If you look at longevity and sports, people will play racket sports live really long lives, no longer lives than most and correlation not causation, and many great as a great debate, but it's fun, it's social. These are the reasons I gave an interview on ABC News about this. It's a great topic, but it also goes to you're not gonna say, what's the least amount of

time I can play doubles tennis? Does that count? You want to do it because you enjoy it, and doubles tennis tennis, you know, racket sports and sports like that. Basketball sudden starts and stops. It's aerobic and it's anaerobic. And that's where we're gonna bring this all to. We want to vary our intensities. We don't want just enough. And as I say that, if you think that when I say we need to do more, that doesn't mean it's not enjoyable. And that doesn't mean it's an hour

in duration necessarily at all. It's the totality of the overall movement, how many minutes you move, and how you strengthen that entire body in different print ways. I do body weight exercises, I use machines, I use bands. I do a little bit of everything, not a lot of one thing. And I will constantly remind you of that excessive moderation works. Okay, let me just grab that swimming as my strength work out. Another great way to look

at this swimming awesome form of cardiovascar actors sercise. For so many people it means to keep from drowning. For me, but I do it because it's different, and for me it's a huge flexibility just overall, like body massage as I'm struggling through the water, but your body is supported by the water. So it is actually not a great form of strength. Do you build strength? Of course you do. If you just did swim and nothing else, you would

run into problems strength related. I mean you can go to the extremes, you know, NASA and the issues they have with space is the body is not being stressed in the right way, and that's a huge problem. So a lesser example of that is swimming and the body being supported in water. So again a phenomenal form of cardiovascular exercise. I would throw it into the flexibility category as well, But you need to do strength training so

it doesn't count. All right, quick break, When we come back and put it all together and tell you how to put together your plan that you can do wearing lifetime that you enjoy, we'll be right back. All right, we are back talking about can I count my strength workout as cardio? It's basically looking at what is cardio, what is strength? And how much of it do we need?

And at what intensities? And this is why I do all the different shows for you on why we should do hills, why you should do intervals, why you should do steady state, why when you read these dopey articles on you know, here's the one way to do it. You know, Oh, cardio makes you fat one of my favorite ones. Hate the term. Don't even you know you you aren't fat, you have fat. It's a great way to look at it, right. We all want to be a healthy weight, but you want to mix up all

of the above, the intensities and the workouts. But at the end of the day, it does come down to in so many different ways. Okay, so eighty percent of the time you do something you need. The other eight percent of time you try to eat healthy. At the time you do whatever you want. Right, you can argue with me about that simple math and break it down again,

number of days in the year, blah blah blah. And most people do it the opposite, eating healthy twenty percent of a time eighty percent at a time there they're not, and slowly work your way to that then it's eighty percent of time your workouts, your cardio should be moderate, easy to moderate. That's great news. So you're golfing your doubles tennis, that's great and that's enjoyable. And then twenty percent of the time you want kind of not kind

of you want to go anaerobic. You want some breathless exercise in there. And that may be singles tennis, that may be a hard doubles tennis, that may be you know, whatever it is for you getting on a piece of exercise equipment. And this is the short workout people, this is the twenty minutes. Actually, I did a phenomenal thirty minute basic workout the other day on the treadmill. Ten minute warm up, one minute sprint, one minute walk. I repeated that nine times and a four minute cool down.

I think that was the math. Yeah, four minutes, I believe thirty minutes, breathless for sixty seconds, recovered for sixty nine times three minutes, three minute cool down with the other one. You get my point. So when you're trying to determine if something is strength or cardio, just remember that this is the long term and you don't want to short change yourself and oftentimes you know the answer. You know the answer, and when you mix it up,

you ask the question less often. In other words, if you're doing many forms of cardio, if you're doing many micro workouts throughout the day, some core workouts five minutes here there, some body weight exercises here, they're going to the gym maybe a couple of times a week. Then you're good. Then you're less likely to ask this question. But I want to reiterate one final time. When you find the plan you love, you're not gonna ask this question.

Not in the same way. I mean to understand the physiological aspect to it, but oftentimes it's people again trying to get around what they need to do, and it's prehab versus rehab. As I've said, right, you gotta think long term, and that's the hardest thing for so many people to do. We live in the here and now. We don't think about our health until it's challenged. And so let me give you the final simple breakdown. You generally want two to three strength specific work outs per week.

Now you can do more, as many of you listeners do, as I know, but that's for the basic looking better, feeling better, living longer, being injury free, being able to

do what you want quality of life. Two to three full body strength workouts, and it's got to be where it challenges your whole body muscularly okay, And I know there's gray areas as I say this, there will still be questions, but I think deep down, you know, deep down, you know now whether it's machines or bands or free weights, body weight, mix of all the above at the same time, two to three times a week. All right, three cardio, three specific cardio. We can go you know I put

I pushed that, or you know I went longer. I went for that three mile walk, I did that thirty minute bike ride. I took that forty five minutes zomba class. This is get your heart rate up extended period of time or the interval side right, so steady state, longer, intervals, shorter, and then one or two other. What do you mean by other? For me, that is plots yoga a different discipline that works on yes, aspects of cardio and strength,

but it's also flexibility and cognitive training, meditation. We need to be as active as possible. We need to mix it up. We need to focus on the five components of fitness, body composition, how much muscle and excess body fat you have, flexibility, muscular strength, muscular endurance, and cardio respiratory endurance. We need to do our strength, need do our cardio, We need to work on flexibility, and we need to eat a healthy diet so our body composition

is healthy. And this is about being active. So can you count your strength workout as cardio? Yes? Does that mean that's all you should do? No? No, it can be fun. You need to find what you enjoy and when you do. As I did as a coach in my final years of really coaching people specifically, it wasn't making people do more, It was making them do more variation and do less of just one thing. And that can be you. In other words, that intrinsic motivation where

it feels good, and that's what it's about. Enough. This is more complicated than I thought it would be, but it's really not. It's just tough to kind of impress upon those of you who think it has to be work that it can't be fun. Kennon should be fun and not work. All right, Questions comments reach out. Tom h Fit is Instagram. Tom h Fit is Twitter Fitness Disrupted dot com. Can email me through the site, follow, subscribe,

whatever way you can follow. This show greatly appreciated. The Micro Workout Plan is my most recent book, and thank you. These these things topics are tough, but they're rooted in science. And again I think, deep down you know, deep down you know. And the final thought is this with whatever your plan is, is it working. Whatever you're counting is your cardio, whatever you're counting is your strength? Is it working?

Do you feel good? Are you relatively injury free? Are your numbers when you go to the doctor good, Then you're good. It's your plan, it's your mix. Thank you for listening. I am Tom Holland this is Fitness Disrupted, Believe in Yourself. Fitness Disrupted is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.