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47. The Busy Person’s Blueprint for Fitness That Actually Fits Episode 2: Cardio vs. Strength — What Actually Moves the Needle?

• Adam Kelley • Episode 47

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The battle between cardio and strength training has raged for decades, but what if both sides are missing the point? After 30, our bodies begin a metabolic shift that changes everything about how we look and feel – losing up to a pound of muscle yearly while potentially gaining a pound of fat. This silent transformation explains why so many of us struggle despite doing "everything right."

In this illuminating deep-dive, we uncover the science behind effective fitness for busy professionals who don't have hours to spend in the gym. While cardio delivers crucial cardiovascular benefits (even simple walking reduces disease risk dramatically), strength training creates the metabolic machinery that transforms your body from the inside out. By preserving lean tissue, elevating your resting metabolism, and improving nutrient partitioning, resistance training acts as your body's defense system against age-related decline.

The research is clear: those who combine both training modalities in even modest doses experience the lowest all-cause mortality rates. But how do you balance them when time is your scarcest resource? We break down practical, tiered approaches for any schedule – from minimum effective dose (2-3 strength sessions weekly plus walking) to more comprehensive routines for those with additional time and motivation. The key insight? Consistency trumps perfection every time.

Whether you're trying to lose fat, gain energy, or simply age well, understanding how these training modalities complement each other creates a blueprint for lasting results. Let's build a fitness approach that respects your life while delivering the health, confidence and strength you deserve. Ready to create your perfect training mix? We're here to help whenever you're ready.

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Speaker 1:

So once you hit your 30s, you naturally start losing muscle mass unless you train for it. So and this is proven in studies after the age of 30, we typically lose about a pound of muscle mass per year If we're not strength training, resistance training and getting an adequate protein and adequate sleep, and we also typically gain a pound of body fat per year if we don't have our nutrition in check and those other three things as well. So you can see where that heads really, really quickly.

Speaker 2:

Welcome to the Win On Purpose podcast From health and fitness, business, personal development, relationships and more. We promise you will find inspiration to help you win on purpose in all areas of your life journey. Now for your host, adam Kelly of your life journey.

Speaker 1:

Now for your host, adam Kelly Welcome, welcome. Welcome back to the Win On Purpose podcast, where we help busy people build strength, confidence and health that lasts without burning out. I'm your host, coach Adam Kelly, owner of Transform Health Initiative, and this is our second episode in our series, the busy person's blueprint for fitness. That actually fits. So in our last episode, we uncovered the minimum effective dose, right, you remember that if you didn't listen, make sure you go back and listen MED, minimum effective dose, and how little you really need to do to start seeing results. Okay, so, like I said, you want to check that episode out if you didn't listen yet.

Speaker 1:

And today, though, we're digging into a question that comes up all the time, which one actually matters more, and it's usually in the context of fat loss, cardio or strength training. So you've probably heard some passionate arguments on both sides, I can imagine. So let's clear the confusion, cut the noise and lay out the facts. All right, let's break this thing down. So this first part is the health versus aesthetic divide. Okay, cardio and strength each bring powerful but different benefits. So cardio helps your heart, your lungs, your circulation, your energy levels and endurance, and strength typically impacts your shape, your metabolism, your hormone profile and how well your body handles fuel. Ok, so let's start with the health side. Not crazy cardio, but just brisk walking five times a week can lower your risk of heart disease, stroke, type two diabetes, depression and even dementia. Walking, not even running. It's that simple, guys, and it's that powerful.

Speaker 1:

Now let's flip to body composition. Okay, this is usually what most people want to know about how your body looks, feels and functions. This is where strength training takes the lead and this is where I get excited, because I love lifting and I love strength training. So resistance training does a few very important things that we're going to talk about. It preserves lean tissue while you lose fat. Okay, so people who just do cardio or they just use nutrition to lose body fat and they're losing weight, if they're not strength training, getting aqua protein and getting quality sleep, then they are losing a ton of muscle mass with that fat, which is going to make you look way worse. You'll just be smaller, but not look the way that you're wanting to look, I promise.

Speaker 1:

Resistance training elevates your resting metabolic rate, so that's basically how many calories that your body burns before you ever move a muscle. So this is also called BMR, your basal metabolic rate. Again, it's how many calories your body burns just to keep the lights on, just to keep your organs operating, your blood pumping through your veins, your brain functioning before you even open an eyelid. Okay, that's your resting metabolic rate and it elevates that. So guess what that means? You actually burn more calories even when you're sleeping, when you have more muscle mass in your resistance training. It also helps improve how your body partitions and utilizes calories.

Speaker 1:

So a big part of the carbs that we eat well, all of the carbs that we are, converted into glucose. That glucose is now in your bloodstream. That's blood sugar, and that is grabbed by insulin that's released whenever you eat those carbs. Whenever that blood glucose hits your system, the insulin is the transporter. It picks it up and it shuttles it to three typically different places, typical different places that's your liver, that's your fat cells and that's your muscle tissue. So, the more muscle tissue you have and your resistance training, so you're emptying that energy source because glucose, glycogen.

Speaker 1:

Glycogen is what's stored in your liver and in your muscle. Glucose is what's in your bloodstream and that's what's shuttle, it's transformed, basically, and it goes into your fat cells. So, um, when you strength train, resistance train, you deplete that glycogen that's stored within that muscle. And when you do cardio as well, especially more intense cardio, so you deplete that glycogen out of that muscle. So guess what's going to happen now when you eat carbs and that blood glucose is in your system? Well, if your liver doesn't have glycogen stored because it released it to give back to your muscles, then it's going to fill up your liver first, but then, if your muscles are not tapped off on their glycogen storage, then it's going to shuttle that glucose into the muscles, because your muscles are responsible for keeping your body moving.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so it's shuttling that into the muscles. Now your muscle is up, taking more of it to utilize it, which is a good thing. So guess where it can't go now? To your fat cells, okay. So this is why it's so important, for, you know, partitioning nutrients and and keeping our blood sugar in control by having more muscle tissue and lastly, that we're going to talk about it helps tighten and tone your overall shape. It gives you that body you want to see. When you see that fit girl or that fit guy and they've got the body that you want and you're like man. I wish I looked like that. I wish I had the confidence they do. I would almost promise you. They are strength training and probably doing some sort of cardio and keeping their nutrition in check. Okay, that's just what it is. So if your goal is to lose fat and look more defined, then strength is your primary lever. Okay, both matter, but how you prioritize them depends on what you're trying to achieve. So this next part we're going to go into is the power of muscle. This is my favorite part. So let's zoom in on this idea of muscle as your metabolic engine, not just to look good in a shirt or look good in a bathing suit, but as your metabolic engine. So once you hit your 30s, you naturally start losing muscle mass unless you train for it. So and this is proven in studies, after the age of 30, we typically lose about a pound of muscle mass per year if we're not strength training, resistance training and getting an adequate protein and adequate sleep. And we also typically gain a pound of body fat per year if we don't have our nutrition in check and those other three things as well. So you can see where that heads really, really quickly, hey guys, real quick before we dive back in.

Speaker 1:

At Transformed Health Initiative. We're not just in the business of workouts and meal plans. We're here to change lives, one transformation at a time. That means that helping real people people like you rebuild their health from the inside out in a way that actually fits their real life. Because here's the truth. You don't need another extreme program. You've been there, you've done that. You need a system that respects your schedule and restores your confidence and equips you to win in your body, your mind and your purpose. If you've been listening and thinking, I would like that kind of change, but I don't know where to start. You don't have to figure it out alone. We love to hear your story and show you what's possible. No pressure, no push. You can grab a time to talk in the link in the show notes. Let's build a plan that actually works for your life. All right, let's get back to it.

Speaker 1:

So that muscle loss that's happening whenever you're losing that muscle each year, or again from our example before, where you're losing weight but you're not strength training and getting in protein and sleeping well, so you're losing muscle and fat. That muscle loss. It slows down your metabolism again, all of those calories you're burning at rest because of that, you know, bump in your resting metabolic rate, that goes down. The uptake of that glycogen into your liver and muscle goes down because they stay full, because you're not utilizing that resource. So now more of that blood sugar is getting shuttled into fat cells or staying in your bloodstream, causing all kinds of problems like pre-diabetes, diabetes, type 2, that kind of stuff. It weakens your structure, makes you more fragile, makes you weaker, you know, make you not able to catch yourself as well, brace yourself as well. It increases your risk of injury and by quite a bit and way more than actual strength training does itself.

Speaker 1:

Cause a lot of people think that, like, your risk of injury goes up big time with strength training. But it actually is not that high at all If you're training properly, with good form, good technique, you're not being an idiot. You're doing things the way it needs to be done. You're working with a fantastic coaching team that helps you do that. Uh, you know low key. A fantastic coaching team that helps you do that, you know low key. No, shame plug there.

Speaker 1:

Then your risk of injury during training is actually very, very low. It's the risk you have when you're doing everything else in life where you're not thinking about how you're moving. That is your highest risk of injury. And if your muscles are weak and they can't support your skeletal system very well, then your risk of injury is way, way higher. All right, and that muscle loss makes it harder to keep fat off, even if the scale stays the same. So this is why you'll see people say you know, I weighed the same I did 10 years ago, but my body doesn't look or feel the same at all. It's because the muscle is missing. All right, strength training corrects that. There's some things that it improves. This is pretty cool, guys. So some things that strength training improves or building muscle improves is bone density, something we don't think about. So protecting us against osteoporosis and you know, those type of degenerative diseases that happen as we age and bones get brittle. Strength training can actually reverse that and definitely prevent that. Strength training can actually reverse that and definitely prevent that. So, no matter what age you are, that's every reason you need right there so you don't fall and break a hip or, you know, trip and break your wrist because you tried to grab yourself on the door. You know that kind of stuff.

Speaker 1:

Posture helps improve your posture. Naturally, you don't have to try to train your posture, but by just strengthening your back, strengthening your your neck, strengthening your supporting cast, you improve your posture, which gives you less neck pain, less back pain, all that stuff. It helps improve your core stability. So that's your framework, your foundational framework that keeps your body intact. It helps you move, it helps you do different tasks. That's so important to your overall strength and health. It helps with hormonal function so making sure the right hormones are being released at the right time so important. And it helps with the ability to stay active and independent as you age.

Speaker 1:

And by golly, is that not so important? And do we not see this problem all the time where people spend the last 20 to 30 years in a chair or in a bed because they're too broken down in order to be a part of society, and that's terrible. We don't want that for our family, we don't want that for us. So this is how we make the change, and muscle building is very efficient. You don't need long sessions. You just need like two to three full body workouts a week, with progressive resistance Okay, where it's getting more challenging each week, and you can stay there for pretty much your whole life and get you know almost all, if not all, of the health benefits of strength training, resistance training. So this is why nearly every THI client, every person we work with, regardless of their goal, has strength as a core part of their routine, because, you see, it's so much bigger than how your body looks. It's not necessarily just to bulk up unless that's your. So much bigger than how your body looks. It's not necessarily just to bulk up unless that's your goal, but to protect your body, or to protect the body that they or you are working so hard for. Okay, we want to make sure that we can keep going Like who cares if we lose the weight, if we end up hurting ourselves because we're too weak or if we're just have too low of energy to move around because our metabolism so slow, because we don't have that metabolic, that metabolic machinery built that's keeping our metabolism high.

Speaker 1:

So next we're going to talk about longevity. Okay, what about longevity? I know that's like the hot ticket right now, and been for a while. How do I extend my life? You know what's going to help with longevity? So, guys, this is where it gets like really interesting. All right, this is exciting stuff.

Speaker 1:

So when researchers looked at people who did only cardio, they found some pretty great reductions in disease risk. All right. When they looked at people who did only strength training, they saw strong improvements in body composition and insulin sensitivity. All right, can you? Can you pick up where I'm going with this? So I'm. When they looked at people who did both, even in the modest doses, they had the lowest all-cause mortality of all, the lowest risk of death prematurely of all. In other words, combining cardio and strength training leads to the longest, healthiest life possible, and it doesn't take hours.

Speaker 1:

You don't have to live at the gym. Life possible, and it doesn't take hours. You don't have to live at the gym, although I do feel like I live at the gym sometimes, because my office is inside of our private training facility here in Moore, oklahoma, where we help our clients build the bodies they want, learn how to train properly, improve their health, feel better, do it the right way, in person, with people that have years and years of experience of not only transforming their own health but helping dozens and dozens of other people transform theirs. So, yeah, I pretty much live at the gym, but it is what it is. You don't have to, because you're not me, so don't spend all your time at the gym, guys not necessary.

Speaker 1:

So even just two strength training workouts per week and a few brisk walks each week can significantly improve both your lifespan and your health span. So if you don't know the difference between lifespan and health span, I feel like I covered this on one of my first episodes. But if I haven't, I'll go back and look, just because I'm mentioning it now and probably put my foot in my mouth, and if I haven't, then I'll do an episode in the future about lifespan versus healthspan, because it's very important to know the difference and there's a bigger gap now in our society than there ever have been between people's healthspan and their lifespan. So important stuff. But all of that that we've talked about so far, that's the power of a hybrid approach, applying both of them together to get maximum results and benefit. So how to balance both when you're short on time? Okay, very important for us busy individuals who don't have all day to be in the gym. So what does this look like in real life when you've got kids, you've got work, you've got stress and a million other things going on? Let's break it down by tiers, by levels of time and energy.

Speaker 1:

Okay, I want to give you a few different examples that you can try implementing. So tier number one, level number one is two to three days per week, okay, minimum effective dose. So start with full body strength workouts. You don't have to break things up, just go on there, do one exercise per muscle group. You know two to three working sets. You're good to go. Even 30 to 40 minutes can be effective if you're focused and you're progressing. You're not in there on your cell phone the whole time in between sets wasting time taking selfies. You're not just going in there and doing whatever you feel like doing based on how you feel that day. But you know, if last week you did, you know, three sets of 12, you're going in, today you're trying to do three sets of 13. So you know that you're progressing.

Speaker 1:

And even on off days you can sprinkle in 20 to 30 minute walks. You know nothing, nothing crazy, nothing intense. You can go in the morning, lunch break, evening, doesn't matter. You know. And you may ask well, what if I miss a walk? What if I can't get all those walks plus the training? It's no big deal, all right, just stack consistency over time. This is not about perfection, it's about getting a little bit better over time, you know, and that that's where life lifestyle truly sets in.

Speaker 1:

So tier number two level number two this is the next level of four to five days per week. So now we can layer in one high intensity cardio session, like you know, a HIIT session, high interval, high intensity interval training, sorry. So something like an intense bike ride, a jog, incline walk on a treadmill where you're really pushing the pace, or a short interval workout. Still, keep strength as your foundation. Don't let that get in the way of your strength training. Strength training should come first, then your cardio and then your high intensity HIIT training if you want to, if you can handle that. So a typical week might look like this you know, three strength training sessions per week, two to three cardio or walking sessions and then, as an option, one like recovery or mobility.

Speaker 1:

Today, that's something that we emphasize here, because that just keeps things moving, keep things limber, keeps you feeling good, helps promote healing and recovery even faster, but totally optional, and you know this is all flexible and it works All right. And then tier number three this is more advanced routines. Okay, totally optional here. Totally optional here If you've got the time and you truly love training like the coaches at THI were kind of crazy and we would train eight days a week if our bodies would allow us. We just love it. Then you can obviously go further.

Speaker 1:

But don't mistake more for better, All right. Sometimes just doing enough consistently can way outperform doing everything inconsistently Okay If you can do a whole lot. It's like multitasking. You know you can't be great at anything with multitasking. You may be okay at several things, or you can be phenomenal at one thing. All right, same concept. So that's why we customize this inside THI for each person individually their life stays, their schedule, their recovery, their goals, everything. Okay. We make sure that we address everything with people and customize it to what they need, not what everybody else needs, because it's probably not going to work for them. If it works for you, you're not them, they're not you right. So here is your takeaway for today. This is what you can do with this.

Speaker 1:

Okay, cardio and strength training are not rivals, all right. They're actually teammates. They're buddies and you need both of them on your team, you know. If you actually want the best health outcomes, that is so. Strength builds your engine, builds the machinery for burning fat, improving hormones, improving energy, improving the way you look. Cardio keeps your fuel lines clear. It keeps your heart pumping, keeps blood circulating through your body and improves your lung function. That brings in oxygen, which is also an energy source at times, you know, it helps keep things moving in the body, helps improve your digestive track and your GI situation, how well you digest food, how well you're shuttling nutrients to different parts of the body and together they move the needle in your health, your body and your life. They make a great team, and teamwork makes the dream work.

Speaker 1:

If you're one of my clients, you've heard me say that a billion times. So there it is again, and when you've done it in the right dose at the right time for your goals, you will feel the difference, I promise. So if you want help figuring out what your perfect mix in, then let's talk. All right, no pressure, no push, just strategy. You can message us directly or you can use the link in the show notes. We are here when you are ready. All right, until next time, do something good for yourself, something good for your health, something good for those that you care about and, whatever you do, make sure you win on purpose. Talk to you next time.