I am currently going to the gym 3-4 days a week for one hour. Would it be better to do one hour of cardio on one day and one hour of weight training on the other? Or can I continue to do a half hour of cardio and a half hour of weight training on the same day? Please advise.
- Lynn

Hi Lynn,

Assuming your goal is to look and feel your best while improving your health (and not to run a marathon) then I would say your best bet would be to do 30-40 minutes of weight training followed by 15 minutes of “cardio.” Always do the strength work first – this rule applies to everyone – and don’t get too caught up in the hour-long workout. People have a strange fixation with that time frame and tend to think if a workout lasts less than an hour that it is not a workout. This is an absolute falsehood. I do 12-minute workouts when I am pressed for time and I assure you that they would challenge the most dedicated gym rat. I believe that cardio is really overdone in today’s world. Twenty or 30 minutes of traditional steady-state cardio done three days a week is more than enough.  An hour is surely overkill (a topic I’ll address in the near future).

Now, I know I said to do only 15 minutes of “cardio” after weight training above… If you are wondering what the quotes are for and why there is a discrepancy in the time frames I just recommended, let me explain. Despite popular opinion, your time is best spent doing two things: strength and interval training. These two things will have a much greater benefit to your cardiovascular system than what today’s culture has dubbed as “cardio.” It is a myth that weight training does not offer cardiovascular benefits. Steady-state cardio is not the best form of exercise for your heart and it is surely not the best type for improving your appearance either. Marathons are considered to be the ultimate expression of cardiovascular endurance and I seldom run across a marathoner with a physique I’d like to have myself. 

Interval and burst training are much more effective at offering cardiovascular benefits and in aiding fat loss and take about a third the time of a traditional cardio session. So ideally, Lynn, you could do 15 minutes of cardio at the end of your workout in the form of interval training, shortening your workout from 1 hour to 45-55 minutes. That’s a savings of 15-60 minutes a week. Sound good?

As for how to perform interval training, it is actually quite simple to get started. When beginning it is best to use a stationary bike at the gym, or in your home if you have one.  The reason is that you can set the difficulty level and adjust your RPMs accordingly while going through your intervals. To perform interval training simply pick a work-to-rest ratio and desired workout duration and begin.

For example, if you choose to interval train for 15 minutes, doing one minute of work for every minute of rest you would simply get on the bike and choose a level – you will stay at this same level for the entire 15-minute workout. Then:

• Pedal at a moderate pace for one minute and note your RPMs
• At the end of the first minute try and do 150-200% of the RPMs you began with for a minute straight. For example, if you did 50 RPMs for the first minute you would do 75 to 100 RPMs for the second minute
• Repeat these steps as many times as possible for 15 minutes, switching back and forth from low intensity (rest) to maximum intensity. In this case you would end up doing 8 minutes of low intensity cardio and 7 minutes of high intensity cardio

Feel free to play with these and work through a variety of work/rest ratios. I prefer a ratio of 30 seconds high-intensity work to 60 seconds of moderate work. Find the ratio that is right for you.