Another great article thanks. I just need to get my wife to read it because every time I tell her to ditch the cross trainer and pick up the weights I get “but I want to lose a bit of weight not bulk up with muscle”. Just one question though. I always work to failure but as I’m getting stronger I find that (for example) I used to hit failure at around 11 dumbbell curls but lately I can reach around 14. Should I just keep going and hit failure after more and more reps or increase the weight so failure always comes at around 8-12 reps?

Thanks

Deadlifts and squats are compound movements that tax the whole body. Taking multiple sets of these movements to failure will stimulate huge improvements to the cardiovascular system. If you disagree, then you simply have not trained using these exercises to a high level of intensity. Anyone who trains this way will tell you the same thing. After a few sets of squats, I literally have to lie on the floor for a few minutes before I can get up and move on. My heart and respiratory system are racing like crazy. So your comment about weight training being a very isolated thing is simply not true.

And I can run a lot more than 100 feet, no problem at all lol. It’s not an issue. I’m very fit indeed. I’m sure all my readers can too.

If you’d like more on the issue by a real scientist, I’d ask you to look up Dr. Doug McGuff and his work. He calls the benefits from weight training alone “Global Metabolic Conditioning”, which is a perfect name for it. To quote him…

“The concept of Global Metabolic conditioning is just my own answer to the aerobics movement which has so successfully tied itself to cardiovascular conditioning. Questioning the aerobics movement was inspired by the work of Ken Hutchins (developer of SuperSlow-tm and now Renaissance Exercise ). When I looked at the big picture of metabolism, the notion that the aerobic pathway was preferentially linked to the cardiovascular system just seemed silly. Further, the attempt to isolate this component of metabolism sacrificed conditioning in the other components of metabolism that had enormous biologic importance.”

While I agree with most of your article, a blanket statement like ‘cardio sucks’ and is not needed is a little strong.
While it is absolutely, as you say, not required to achieve a lean, ripped body. And can be, in the case of ectomorphs/hard gainers be detrimental to their gains.
It can be a useful tool though, for those who want to compete where stage condition is around 3 to 4% bodyfat(the leaner you get the more the body wants to hold onto its body fat stores) so yes it can be beneficial, or even necessary here.
As you state you will get cardiovascular adaptations from resistance training, but not to the same degree as you will from cardiovascular specific or aerobic training, so I guess it depends on your goals.
But as you say while you’re trying to add lbm and you still want to perform cardio, HIIT or sprint training in definitely the way to go.
Just look at the difference between sprinters and long distance runners.
Sprinters are lean and ripped, and while long distance runners are lean they are usually thin and wirey, that should tell you all you need to know 🙂

Liked the article Mark, just not a fan of the ‘cardio sucks’ statement 😉

First of all, you are not citing the study itself, you cite a news website.

This is the actual study you refer to:
https://jap.physiology.org/content/98/6/1985

Secondly, the exercise performed in the study was a compound movement exercise: cycling; which uses every part of the legs and also your arms and core, all at the same time. You fail to mention this critical point.

It seems you let people think the study was made on WEIGHT TRAINING, which is a very isolated training, very different from the compound exercise used in the study.

Then you tell people to just quit on cardio because:

“Weight training IS cardio. And it’s a better form of cardio…than cardio”.

That is not true, at least not the way you show on your training system. In your system you tell people to make a set and then rest as much as 4 minutes. You are talking about isolated exercise.

Man that is really a very dangerous statement. Many people really need to improve their aerobic capacity for healthy reasons and if they believe that :

“Weight training IS cardio. And it’s a better form of cardio…than cardio”.

You are facing people getting heart attacks.

We used to do it as you say 20 years ago and the results were that we couldn’t run 100 feet without extreme suffocation.

Now we have high intensity interval training but it requires that you use your entire body in a single exercise, or as much of your entire body as possible.

These exercises maximize muscle growth I advise you to tell your subscribers to use HIIT those are short routines,
You can be great with 20 to 30 minutes and like 4 days a week.

Other possibility, is to combine HIIT at the same time within your routine using as much as possible parts of the body other than the ones you are exercising on your WEIGHT TRAINING.

ALSO WEIGHT TRAINING CAN BE GREAT CARDIO BUT NOT IN THE WAY YOU SAY It can be used in non stop circuits of different exercises for cardio benefits.

I think that so far no one has taken seriously the part of :

“Weight training IS cardio. And it’s a better form of cardio…than cardio”. (At least the way you advise it)

But if some one does and thinks he is in great aerobic shape and tries to take it to the test you may be starting to get in trouble

OTHER THING YOU COULD TRY IS MAKE YOU OWN AMATEUR (SORT OF SPEAK) STUDY AND TRY DIFFERENT COMBINATIONS AS I MENTION YOU COULD USE WEIGHT TRAINING BUT IN A DIFFERENT WAY IF YOU ALSO WANT TO USE IT FOR CARDIO.

Just curious about your thought. Thanks as always!