You don’t need traditional cardio to improve your aerobic fitness.

For a long time we’ve been told that we need to run or cycle in order to improve our aerobic fitness. Consequently, resistance training has never been considered a proper modality to improve cardio fitness. It doesn’t help that aerobic fitness is usually tested on a treadmill or a bike.

Your muscles can tell what you do. They just adjust to the stress that you put on them. There was a review paper that was published earlier this year that looked at all the evidence. They reported that training with resistance at a proper intensity would create the same response as traditional endurance training.

They concluded that performing a set of resistance training to failure can improve cardio fitness. You see, pushing a muscle to its limit will entice it to improve its endurance. That means more mitochondria and a switch to more enduring muscle fibers. You muscular system will always try to make its job easier.

Looks like it comes down to the same message. Work hard and you’ll get the results. You either perform more repetitions of the same exercise. Or you aim to perform your circuit in les time. I’ve done it last fall and it works well. You can find my results from the Sept, Oct and Nov 2011 posts.

Steele et al, Resistance Training to Momentary Muscular Failure Improves Cardiovascular Fitness in Humans: A Review of Acute Physiological Responses and Chronic Physiological Adaptations. JEP online, 2012;15(3): 53-80.