BLOG: How to Choose: Weight Training, Cardio, HIIT or EMS?

Weight training, cardio, HIIT or EMS
Tip: EMS training does it all, plus, it's a whole-body workout in just 20 mintues. 

AUGUST 15, 2018 by EMMY SCHNEIDER-GREEN 

If there’s one thing the health and fitness world has no shortage of, it’s endless (and often conflicting) advice on which workout program to choose.

While one bodybuilding website may have you believing it’s all about weight training and pumping iron, another site may have you ditching the weights in favor of cardio, and yet another source may convince you it’s all about the yoga and low impact workouts. With this slew of styles of approaches out there, how is anyone to know what’s best when it comes to optimal health? Should you be prioritizing getting your heart rate up with cardio, or ditching it in favor of resistance training with weights? Let’s cut through the hype and break down which each is good for, and how to create the ideal plan for you and your goals.

The long and short of it is, as always is the case when it comes to your health—there’s truly no one-sized-fits all approach to fitness. While standard convention wisdom basically equates cardio to weight loss and weight-training to muscle growth, the reality isn’t quite that simple.

In a general sense, a major and indisputable perk of a good cardio session is that it will torch calories—the exact amount depending on your own body weight, as the more you weigh, the more you will burn during say, 30 minutes on the treadmill. The type of cardio also makes a difference. Most experts break it down into two primary types: steady state (think walking at a consistent pace on a treadmill, or a moderate bike ride), or HIIT, high intensity interval training (were you are working out for less time overall, but engaging in very short bursts of intense exercise, alternating with less intense to let your heart rate recover). HIIT style training burns more calories in general, in less time than a steady state cardio session, meaning you may get greater results with less time at the gym.

While cardio no doubt is valuable in terms of caloric burn, which can thereby help you slim down over time, an intense weight lifting session or EMS (electro muscle stimulation) workout doesn’t just burn calories during the workout, but will boost your metabolism for hours (even days) to come. And thats the bottom line.This means that long after you’ve left the gym, your body will continue to burn extra calories for up to 38 hours post-workout, studies have demonstrated. This means that if you’re consistently weight training, your body is continually torching extra calories round the clock. Not only does resistance training turn your body into a calorie-burning machine, it also helps to recalibrate your body’s muscle-fat ratio. This is a fancy way of saying that as you convert fat into more lean muscle, your basal metabolic rate (the number of calories you would inherently burn doing absolutely no activity in a day) will increase as well.

Since weight-training aids in more of a total-body reshaping, whereas a cardio-only approach just helps you to essentially shrink your body, it’s definitely the approach you want to take if your overall goal is more to tone/shape up your body, rather than only wanting to shed fat/pounds. If you’ve ever had the goal of toning, you simply can’t achieve it without picking up some weights or engaging in a workout such as EMS—since cardio alone won’t be able to give you that full body transformation and reshaping. EMS training will in fact give you your best bang for your buck, a whole-body strength and cardio workout in just 20 minutes. 

It’s also worth noting, if you’re female, don’t feel the resistance-training! Doing traditional weight lifting or an EMS personal training session won’t make you bulky, as is often feared—since the female body simply doesn’t have enough testosterone to bulk up. It will however make you strong, increase your metabolism, and give you more definition. The simple truth.

At the end of the day, whether fat loss, muscle gain, or just overall improved health is your #1 goal, a varied approach is generally best. Strictly cardio can be tedious, taxing on the body, and ultimately isn’t the best way to achieve optimal toning and fat loss, compared to an approach like EMS or weight training, which will develop the entire musculatory system.  One noteworthy benefic to EMS training is that you’re able to get the benefits of both a traditional cardio session as well as weight-training all in one, and within a mere 20 minutes you’ll achieve what you’d need an hour and a half to do in a traditional gym. So here’s to a fitter, stronger you, with more time to do what you love outside of the gym!

FITtec. - Fitness For Life

Filed Under: , Creative Writing,