By Paul Rogers, Weight Training Guide
I've touched on the subject of how weights and resistance training impact on heart disease, but perhaps not highlighted it specifically. It's well established that regular physical activity can reduce your risks of heart and lung disease. This is reflected in the national exercise guidelines.
These guidelines recommend doing aerobic and resistance exercise. But what if you decide to do just weight training as your favored form of exercise? Is any exercise as good as a combination of weights and cardio?
Probably not. Cardio provides us with a different set of advantages to weight training. The regular, steady-state nature of cardio builds a strong circulatory system (arteries and capillaries) and improves lung function, resting heart rate and oxygen delivery. Weight training also does some of these things and no one would deny that a regular weights program will get you fitter than if you did nothing. And, of course, muscle and bone strength and general flexibility can be improved.
But if your weight training is too centered on heavy lifting with little movement and high pressor effects, (which tend to cause narrowing of blood vessels) -- and you don't do some cardio -- you might not be training in an optimal way for heart health. I'm making a somewhat loose distinction here between static weights programs and those that have useful movement combined with weights -- various circuits and metabolic programs like Crossfit for example.
The idea that weight training can reduce 'arterial compliance,' a measure of arterial elasticity and flexibility (and that this may compromise cardiovascular health), has some scientific substantiation, although not quite conclusive and still under experimental observation across different groups.
The bottom line is that you can probably keep your blood vessels and arteries expanding and contracting in good fashion by ensuring you do your share of cardio in any training program. It may seem like a distraction if you're a big boofy guy or gal who wants muscle and strength and little else, but over a lifetime of training, you might do well to note this simple precaution.
Walking fast helps you to live long
source: weighttraining.about.com
