It’s a New Year, and all the media is awash with fitness regimes. Most suggest blending an aerobic exercise with resistance training-but if you don’t have the time to do both, what’s the best one to go with?
Current thinking has resistance training as the more effective exercise for losing weight or staying trim-but a new study suggests the reverse. Aerobic exercise is the better option for those who just want to be healthier and have less fat around the heart. Resistance training should be reserved for those who want to develop muscles, say researchers from the North Carolina University.
They split a group of sedentary adults, aged between 18 and 70 years, into one of three groups: aerobic only, aerobic and resistance, and resistance only. The groups all exercised for roughly similar periods of 45 minutes, three days a week. Although those who did both types of exercises shed the most pounds, those who did resistance only actually put on more weight because of an increase in their lean body mass. In fact, the two seem to counter each other to some extent, and the smartest option is just to do aerobic exercises.
(Source: Journal of Applied Physiology, 2012; 113: 1831-7).
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