In the battle between cardio and strength training, there’s no clear winner—each has unique benefits, and you need both to support longevity, heart health, and muscle strength.
Cardio exercise is any rhythmic physical activity—such as jogging, stair climbing, swimming, or dancing—that elevates your heart rate. Guidelines suggest adults should get 150 minutes of moderate-intensity cardio each week, and meeting this metric can lead to many health benefits.
1. Improved Heart Health
One of the most effective ways to safeguard your heart against cardiovascular disease—the leading cause of death worldwide—is to engage in a regular exercise routine that includes aerobic exercise (or, cardio).
Cardio strengthens your heart muscle, allowing it to pump blood and oxygen around your body more effectively. This reduces the chances that you’ll develop high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and other heart disease risk factors.
And you don’t have to do cardio every day to get results. Research shows that even “weekend warriors,” or people who exercise only one or two days per week, experience similar reductions in disease risk as those who spread out their physical activity throughout the week.
2. Better Body Composition
Body composition is a health metric that breaks down your body’s percentages of fat mass and fat-free mass (which includes muscle, bones, connective tissues, and water). A higher percentage of fat mass is associated with myriad health concerns, including diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
Regular cardio can help change body composition by burning stored fat for energy. One study found that just eight weeks of treadmill workouts yielded significant changes in participants’ body compositions, as well as other health benefits.
And while resistance training is the typical way to build muscle, cardio can also assist in boosting muscle mass.
3. Higher VO2 Max
Cardio increases your VO2 max, which refers to how much oxygen your body can take in and utilize to generate energy.
VO2 max does measure your general fitness level, but it’s also related to a number of other health factors, including heart health and longevity.
4. Stress Reduction
Many mental health professionals recommend using cardio exercise as a natural way to help manage stress and anxiety. This is in part due to the endorphins, or feel-good hormones, that are released in the brain when you do physical activity.
This stress reduction may also help your long-term brain health—research has suggested that the stress-regulating capabilities of exercise can help protect the parts of your brain that are connected to learning and memory.
When you strength train, your body works against an outside force—weights, resistance bands, or your own body weight, for example—to increase muscular endurance and strength, gain muscle mass, and build power.
Per the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), people should do strength training at least twice a week to reap meaningful health benefits.
1. Functional Strength
Weight training helps you grow your strength, but the benefits don’t stop at the gym. Functional strength—which is the strength needed to perform everyday activities, like carrying groceries or picking up heavy items from the floor—makes day-to-day tasks easier. Plus, functional strength is critical to independence as you age.
One meta-analysis of studies involving older adults found that training with resistance machines for a minimum of six weeks improved participants’ functional strength.
2. Fewer Heart Health Risk Factors
Cardio helps make your heart stronger, but weight training can be good for your cardiovascular health, too.
One 2024 review found 8-12 weeks of resistance training may improve blood pressure and body composition, in turn lowering the risk of coronary artery disease (a common type of heart disease). Results were even greater when strength training was combined with cardio and dietary changes.
3. Less Muscle Loss
Sarcopenia, or age-related muscle loss, significantly impacts longevity. As muscle mass diminishes, you become weaker and less physically capable of participating in recreational activities and executing everyday tasks. Plus, your mortality risk goes up.
Some muscle loss over time is inevitable, however, regular strength training can slow that process. Research shows that adults over the age of 70 can maintain and gain muscle strength with training and adequate nutrition.
4. Increased Bone Density
Strength training is as good for your skeleton as it is for your muscles.
Strength training may improve bone mineral density, which decreases with age. Low bone mineral density is more common in older women, and it raises your risk of fractures.
A 2022 study found that six months of strength training improved bone density for postmenopausal women who had poor bone health. However, research is mixed—other studies have found that strength training may not lead to long-term bone health improvements in older people.
5. Improved Balance
According to the National Council on Aging, one in four adults over the age of 65 falls every year, making falls the leading cause of fatal and non-fatal injuries in older adults.
If you want to maintain balance and avoid injury, a strength training routine—especially one that targets the muscles of the core—is critical. Research shows that core strengthening is positively associated with improvements in balance among older adults.
If you’re looking to grow muscle, keep your heart healthy, and boost longevity, doing both strength training and cardio is the way to go.
It can sometimes be tricky to fit both of these workouts into your schedule, so consider:
- Splitting up your workout: Instead of logging a full hour on the treadmill or spending all your time in the weight room, divvy up your workout. For example, start with 15-20 minutes of cardio and then do 20 minutes of strength training.
- Using “exercise snacks”: Sneak in multiple mini workouts throughout the day whenever you have time, such as walking for 10 minutes between meetings or doing squats while you wait for dinner to cook. Research shows that short bursts of exercise throughout the day add up and may help improve cardiovascular fitness.
- Doing a circuit workout: Circuit workouts allow you to move from station to station, performing a different exercise at each. This makes it easy to alternate between cardio—like jumping jacks or jogging in place—and strength moves like biceps curls.
- Trying high-intensity interval training (HIIT): Once you’ve established a solid foundation of fitness, you may want to add some HIIT to your routine. HIIT often includes strength-building exercises, like dumbbell squats and push-ups, but the workouts are fast-paced, so you also elevate your heart rate. HIIT is notoriously tough (hence the “high-intensity” descriptor), but it’s an efficient way to fit in both cardio and strength training.
