Should we? – we’ve looked at mixing them, how about splitting them up, is it needed?
Should we separate cardio and strength? What benefits does it have and when is it best for our performance?
We covered the benefits of mixing of cardio and resistance, let’s flip the coin and take a look at why it might be advantageous to separate them.
When we looked at how to combine cardio and strength it really came down to it depending on our overall goals, separating them works in a similar way, shocker I know!
Let’s look at how we can gain from separating them, how it can be advantageous for certain goals and some ways of programming it in.
Why separate them? – it allow us to focus specifically on them individually, we can of course do both and we’ve covered that, however when we are programming them specifically it can be advantageous.
Let’s use running as an example, should we be training for a longer distance event having a dedicated session for cardio would be appropriate.
Like wise, long walks for cardiovascular health would be another example, doing this later in the day away from a strength session would make sense.
This would help too keep session time to a minimum and make it specific to the overall goals:
Training for a half marathon?
We would have a number of dedicated run days, we can then intersperse strength workouts on our rest days to supplement our running activities, this could also include longer stretch sessions after the strength work or having targeted strength sessions.
When considering the use of cardio as a healthily lifestyle a similar profile can be adopted, with the advantage of being able to do these on the same day.
We could for example, strength train in the morning, followed by a walk in the afternoon. This would allow recover time and for the pace to be set by how we are feeling for that particular session, feeling energised we could pick the pace up or go a little further, likewise if we are shorter on time we could do a quicker walk or not go quite as far.
Either way the separation allows us to focus on the activity with a sole purpose on full energy and not as a multipart activity.
Now to add a bit of science, in the examples we have mentioned cardio after strength, currently studies show that for the most part strength before cardio is preferable.
There are exceptions the most notable is when we are training for a racing event, such as a running race, in this example strength should come after so we have full use of our energy stores for the main goal.
It’s also worth noting that if we can (training resistance) this is slightly better suited to a non-run day, rather than two workouts in a single day, where possible.
All in all, separating can assist in reaching your goals, where time allows, as always the main goal is to maintain movement.
Need help with programming for your goals? – Chat to one of the team here at SF info@spikefitness.co.uk or 07597215652.