Short On Time – Cardio Or Weights? What Should You Do?
With life getting busier by the day, one question many individuals wonder is if their workout is going to be cut short, what should they do – cardio or weights? Should they focus their efforts on one in favour of the other, or can you do a mix of both and still derive good benefits?
Here is what you should consider.
Overall Goal
Obviously the first thing that needs to be looked at is your overall goal. If you’re looking to train for a marathon for instance, obviously doing the cardio training is going to take priority. If you must get better at something, that is what needs to be done when things get cut out.
Moving on, if you’re goal is muscle building or fat loss, in either case you should choose weight training most of the time. While you may not burn the same number of calories during your session of lifting, you will do more for your metabolism during that time which will enable you to lose weight faster over the long term. Plus, if you don’t continue with your weight lifting while you’re also dieting, you could risk losing lean muscle mass.
How Much Time Do You Have?
Next, you should also consider how much time you available. If you’ve only got ten minutes, you’re not really going to do much lifting anyway because you must warm-up first. When this is the case at hand, you’re likely better off to go with a brief yet intense session of cardio (say 5, 30 second max out sprints followed by 60 seconds of rest, with a minute to warm-up and a minute to cool-down).
If you have twenty minutes though, then you can warm-up for five minutes, choose 5 different exercises to complete one solid set of (say bench press, deadlift, squat, row, and shoulder press) with one minute rest in between, then do 5 minutes of stretching and ab work.
Will You Be In Later During The Week?
Finally, the third thing to think about is whether you’ll be in later on in the week to do more workouts. If this is happening regularly then you’re going to have to find a very fast yet effective workout program to fit in your schedule.
If it’s just a one time occurrence because something has come up, then you can switch out one of your lifting sessions for cardio if you like provided you can make it up later on in the week and still maintain an appropriate amount of rest.
You want your weight lifting sessions to be as intensely focused as possible, so being sure you devote maximum energy and time, when you can to them is important. If today is just a day it’s not happening, it’s fine to forgo it just try and make it up at a later point during the week.
So, to answer the question on what you should do if you’re short on time and it’s an either or situation, choose weights unless you can do that weight session later on during the week. You don’t want to start sacrificing on your weight workouts, but cardio is something you could do without, if you had to.
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