Cardio vs weight training: Which is healthier? Which burns fat more efficient? (Part 14)

This will be the final discussion of the whole cardio/weight training topic. I may split it into two parts, as I will discuss about the most effective way to build muscles with superior biological capabilities. Please bear with me in this final post, as this WILL be, the most important part of the whole cardio vs weight training discussion.

Building muscles demands skill, dicipline, and experience, not to mention knowledge, instinct, logic and certainly a degree of obsession. An obsessive commitment to endure pain in order to achieve the goal of physical excellence is one quality that has characterized atheletes and warriors for thousands of years. 

Now, people who obssessively  engage in long, exhausting exercise routines in an attempt to gain muscle mass often find themselves losing muscles instead. When this occurs, obviously it's a sign of something is wrong, but nevertheless, it is common to see how obsessive individuals adamantly or too hard to break attitude, continue with their familiar routines, regardless of whether they're effective or not. 

An athelete who wants to discover why his approach doesn't work must understand the real effects of various training methods on the muscle's capacity to perform. Revolutionary concepts are presented such as muscle shifting and how to develop a super muscle with superior biological capabilities. 

You have to realize, muscle size is only one of many factors that affect muscle performance. In fact, big heavy muscles sometimes compromise performance, particularly endurance and speed, as is often the case with long distance runners or sprinters. 

Muscle gain, is likely part of a survival mechanism that helped humans gain strength via adaptation to stress. Survival is the most dominant driving force of life. The body will initiate any inherent mechanism needed to improve chances of survival, including muscle gain or even muscle waste. 

Survival, depends on performance, and performance depends on more than just muscle size. From a survival point of view, what really counts is overall power. The word "power", is often confused with strength. While we admire strength and size, we sometimes fail to understand that muscle size has only a limited correlation with muscle power.

Power, is the total sum of all performance capabilities, includign strength, speed, velocity, endurance and elasticity. In other words, muscle power is defined as the balance among all related performance capabilities. Below are the brief description of the performance capabilities.

Strength - Resistance to weight load

Velocity - Explosive impact (acceleration of force)

Speed - Rhythm of repetitive moves per time (slow to fast)

Endurance - Resistance to fatigue

Elasticity - Stretched muscle resistance to breakdown

All of the above factors contribute to muscle power, although they may seem somewhat contradictory. For example, speed seem to antagonize strength, and strength seem to antagonize endurance. Apparently, the rules of survival dictate priorities. For instance, if one needs to be fast, light and mighty to survive, the body will develop lean muscles with high speed and velocity's explosive impact. Light weight boxers are one good example of this category.

On the other hand, strength gain requires exercise routines that maximize resistance and minimize endurance. Indeed, the common opinion among bodybuilders and powerlifters is that aerobics slows muscle gain. For the purpose of strength and mass gain, performing sets of five to ten reps is recommended. In fact, it has been suggested that even one super heavy set would be enough to stimulate muscle growth.

Now, as I've told many of my colleagues and friends that what are the differences between doin long duration endurance training or steady state cardio, comparing with specific short duration high intensity weight training? One of the main reason, stimulation of different type of muscle fiber. When one tend to run on a treadmill or do jogging for let's say 45 or 60 minutes, he or she is mainly stimulating the slow twitch muscles, instead of the fast twitch muscle fibers. Does it matter? Whats the difference? Keep reading.

Wonder why marathon runners or long distance cyclists or most endurance atheletes are mainly gaunt and have minimal muscle mass? And why sprinters, basketball players, boxers have totally different body composition with much more powerful, robust, muscular physique? Sprinters don't have to train for hours and hours and yet they have lower body fat then marathon runners. Let me enlighten you with the real facts about cardio/endurance exercise and high intensity weight training. I will explain how these types of exercises can have different stimulation for different muscle fibers.

Muscle fiber types are commonly classified as fast twitch  or slow twitch. A fast twitch fiber can generate more force, velocity and speed than a slow fiber. Muscles with a high percentage of fast twitch fibers are inheritently stronger and faster than muscles consisting mostly slow twitch fibers. Most importantly, a fast twitch fiber is capable of gaining more mass than a slow fiber.

For that reason, bodybuilders are usually interested in developing muscle with a high percentage of fast twitch fiber to maximize muscle mass and strength gain. However, I will share with you also on some of the importance of slow muscle fibers. Slow fibers are more resistance to fatigue and higher mitochondrial capacity. It also has high collagen content and are therefore more elastic and resistant to tear and wear. Simply stated, both fast and slow twitch fiber types are critically important for both short and prolonged actions. The question is, if you would want to develop super muscles and improve overall health and performance as well as stimulate metabolism, what specific types of exercise should we do? How all these can be achieved? In the next final post, I will discuss on how to develop super muscles, muscle gain and waste, preservation of active muscles, as well as muscle shifting. Stay tuned.