Exercise question for you guru's.
I work out several days a week at home. I do not belong to a gym. I ride my recumbent bicycle anywhere from 1-3 hours a day. I also use a pair of 3 pound weights for my arms and I also have one of those large balls to work on my abs. Can anyone tell me what the difference is between cardio, aerobic, resistance training and strength training. I'm about 4 months out from RNY and want to be doing the best exercises at this time. There are a lot of exercises I cannot do, due to my joint disease and bilateral knee replacements. I would appreciate all help from those of you who are more active. I'm open to all suggestions. Thanks,
Jules
Jules
No expert here but cardio and aerobics are the same thing. Both work on getting your heartrate into a range where you are burning calories without overly stressing it. Strength training and resistance training are also related. Actually both are strength building, think weights or machines. You may not get your heart rate up but you are working your muscles and building them up. I have 1 knee replacement. I do Zumba, walking and swim laps for cardio. I do machines, weights and TRX for strength training.
66 yrs young, 4'11" hw 220, goal 120 met at 12 months, cw 129 learning Maintainance
Between 35-40 BMI? join us on the Lightweight board. the Lightweight Board
I'm probably going to butcher this reply, but here goes:
cardio and aerobic exercise are essentially different names for the same things with slight differences. Cardio implies the importance is on heart/blood pumping system (cardiovascular) and aerobic implies oxygen/lungs. But basically you are doing exercise at a level that will stimulate your oxygen uptake (aerobic) while exercising your cardio vascular system (heart/blood pumping). Aerobic/cardio exercise will increase your level of fitness, stamina, and VO2 max (but that's the real technical stuff). When someones doing and wondering about how to do cardio/aerobic, think of things that will make you sweat after about 10 minutes: walking at a really good clip, running, elliptical machine with good resistance, bicycling with a good resistance, stair-stepping, workout DVDs, etc.
Resistance training and strength training are of a similar nature, however resistance training is a subset of strength training. When you strength train your intent is to maintain or increase your muscle mass. Resistance training more often refers to using a resistance type of device to work your muscles (think resistance tubing, stretching bands, or isometic exercises where your resistance is yourself). When you pull or push against something that is resisting you are engaging your muscles and working them. Strength training typically involves lifting weights, either free weights (such as dumbbells, bars, kettlebells, weighted balls) or using strength training machines that target particular muscles groups. For instance chest presses (those work your pecs and your shoulders and your arm muscles), lat pull down machine works your shoulders, deltoids, and other back muscles. Strength training can also use just your body weight, think push-ups, pull ups, squats, lunges, or your compound movements that say work multiple muscle groups at once. Squats to overhead press with hand weights, that kind of thing.
At 4 months out, you should be doing aerobic/cardio exercises (to increase your fitness/stamina/aerobic capacity), plus some kind of strength training, such as weights or resistance training but something that will help you maintain your muscles (which help you maintain your posture, your metabolic capacity, and makes the excess skin look better with toned muscles underneath.
With your restriction due to knee issues, perhaps water aerobics, water walking and bicycling (which you are doing) are good ways to start. Just remember that you should keep challenging yourself to improve your fitness level, so set the resistance on the bike a bit tougher every two to three weeks, work up to it. If you do water walking, try to increase your speed at which you can do laps. That's the challenge to always seek improvement in your fitness so that your body will get more aerobically fit. Same goes for strength training. Probably lower body strength training (serious lifting) is out of the question for you, but you want to make sure you keep your range of motion good. Think of the exercises they had you doing when you where getting rehab for your knee operations. Simliar things to that. But you can work the upper body weights easily. Start small and when lifting those lighter weights becomes easy, get larger weights.
Everything you do should always seek to challenge yourself to grow stronger, grow aerobic capacity and keep improving. That's when you'll see and experience the biggest affect on your physical structure and shape and reap the benefits of having more stamina, aerobic capacity and a higher degree of fitness. Plus, harder exercise means you are burning more calories and will probably have an easier time maintaining your weight loss than if you just do it by diet along.
Of course, this is all just my opinion. But there are some great, great websites out there that can help you. Read them, learn about exercise and then go get busy!
www.livestrong.com
http://exercise.about.com/od/exerciseworkouts/u/workouts.htm
www.shape.com
www.fitnessmagazine.com
and pick up some fitness magazines if you are at the store: Health, Fitness, Shape...all have great articles and you can learn alot. Also if you google the web, limit your site searches sometimes to site:edu and you'll get Higher Ed web pages that focus the educational aspects of fitness.
Oh and another important component of any exercise program, plan is flexibilty and stretching and core/balance exercises. Stretching, yoga and pilates are all great for increasing your flexibility and preventing further/future injury. Plus each of them can be modified for personal limitation (knees, shoulders, etc).
Written a book, sorry. Good Luck Jules....take it slow, take it carefull, but take it...you'll be so glad you did!
cardio and aerobic exercise are essentially different names for the same things with slight differences. Cardio implies the importance is on heart/blood pumping system (cardiovascular) and aerobic implies oxygen/lungs. But basically you are doing exercise at a level that will stimulate your oxygen uptake (aerobic) while exercising your cardio vascular system (heart/blood pumping). Aerobic/cardio exercise will increase your level of fitness, stamina, and VO2 max (but that's the real technical stuff). When someones doing and wondering about how to do cardio/aerobic, think of things that will make you sweat after about 10 minutes: walking at a really good clip, running, elliptical machine with good resistance, bicycling with a good resistance, stair-stepping, workout DVDs, etc.
Resistance training and strength training are of a similar nature, however resistance training is a subset of strength training. When you strength train your intent is to maintain or increase your muscle mass. Resistance training more often refers to using a resistance type of device to work your muscles (think resistance tubing, stretching bands, or isometic exercises where your resistance is yourself). When you pull or push against something that is resisting you are engaging your muscles and working them. Strength training typically involves lifting weights, either free weights (such as dumbbells, bars, kettlebells, weighted balls) or using strength training machines that target particular muscles groups. For instance chest presses (those work your pecs and your shoulders and your arm muscles), lat pull down machine works your shoulders, deltoids, and other back muscles. Strength training can also use just your body weight, think push-ups, pull ups, squats, lunges, or your compound movements that say work multiple muscle groups at once. Squats to overhead press with hand weights, that kind of thing.
At 4 months out, you should be doing aerobic/cardio exercises (to increase your fitness/stamina/aerobic capacity), plus some kind of strength training, such as weights or resistance training but something that will help you maintain your muscles (which help you maintain your posture, your metabolic capacity, and makes the excess skin look better with toned muscles underneath.
With your restriction due to knee issues, perhaps water aerobics, water walking and bicycling (which you are doing) are good ways to start. Just remember that you should keep challenging yourself to improve your fitness level, so set the resistance on the bike a bit tougher every two to three weeks, work up to it. If you do water walking, try to increase your speed at which you can do laps. That's the challenge to always seek improvement in your fitness so that your body will get more aerobically fit. Same goes for strength training. Probably lower body strength training (serious lifting) is out of the question for you, but you want to make sure you keep your range of motion good. Think of the exercises they had you doing when you where getting rehab for your knee operations. Simliar things to that. But you can work the upper body weights easily. Start small and when lifting those lighter weights becomes easy, get larger weights.
Everything you do should always seek to challenge yourself to grow stronger, grow aerobic capacity and keep improving. That's when you'll see and experience the biggest affect on your physical structure and shape and reap the benefits of having more stamina, aerobic capacity and a higher degree of fitness. Plus, harder exercise means you are burning more calories and will probably have an easier time maintaining your weight loss than if you just do it by diet along.
Of course, this is all just my opinion. But there are some great, great websites out there that can help you. Read them, learn about exercise and then go get busy!
www.livestrong.com
http://exercise.about.com/od/exerciseworkouts/u/workouts.htm
www.shape.com
www.fitnessmagazine.com
and pick up some fitness magazines if you are at the store: Health, Fitness, Shape...all have great articles and you can learn alot. Also if you google the web, limit your site searches sometimes to site:edu and you'll get Higher Ed web pages that focus the educational aspects of fitness.
Oh and another important component of any exercise program, plan is flexibilty and stretching and core/balance exercises. Stretching, yoga and pilates are all great for increasing your flexibility and preventing further/future injury. Plus each of them can be modified for personal limitation (knees, shoulders, etc).
Written a book, sorry. Good Luck Jules....take it slow, take it carefull, but take it...you'll be so glad you did!
"Just keep swimming." ~ Dorrie
Thank you so much for the information. I will do a little homework and research those sites as well. Sounds like I am on the right track but need to add more than what I am doing right now. I am noticing that I have begun to excange excess weight for excess skin and want to minimize that as much as possible.
Have a great day!
jules
Have a great day!
jules
In addition to the EXCELLENT info Christina provided, here's a snapshot of how I look at it (slightly over-simplified but easy to understand):
Cardio/Aerobics: helps build endurance and burn fat.
Strength/Resistance training: helps build muscle which, in turn, burns more calories per day than fat. It builds strength throughout the body, which can also make you more effective at doing cardio. And it also helps to improve your SHAPE through the building of muscle.
But please note (lest Paul have a conniption) that you cannot choose where your body burns fat. Your body pulls fat from areas where it deems it will do the least damage to not have fat and we can't predict where those places will be. BUT exercise can give you nice legs (shapely calf muscles), it can give you defined biceps, triceps etc. And along with cardio activities (which do burn fat) strength training can help lead to a better looking, stronger, more resilient body.
Cardio/Aerobics: helps build endurance and burn fat.
Strength/Resistance training: helps build muscle which, in turn, burns more calories per day than fat. It builds strength throughout the body, which can also make you more effective at doing cardio. And it also helps to improve your SHAPE through the building of muscle.
But please note (lest Paul have a conniption) that you cannot choose where your body burns fat. Your body pulls fat from areas where it deems it will do the least damage to not have fat and we can't predict where those places will be. BUT exercise can give you nice legs (shapely calf muscles), it can give you defined biceps, triceps etc. And along with cardio activities (which do burn fat) strength training can help lead to a better looking, stronger, more resilient body.
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