Question & Answer 7

BODYBUILDING AND CARDIO

QUESTION: I have a question regarding cardiovascular fitness and bodybuilding’s ability to provide it. Having just finished rereading Dr. Kenneth Cooper’s fine book, Aerobics (Bantam, 1968), I’m rather doubtful about weight training’s ability to provide for cardiovascular fitness. In fact, in the second chapter he states that “a body beautiful, and not much more” is about all you can expect to get from strength training. He then goes on to imply that strength training is no replacement for conventional cardio activities such as cycling, swimming, and running. What are your thoughts on this matter?

Can strength training be utilized for cardio exercise by people like me, who, though respecting what men such as Dr. Cooper say, nevertheless are not overly fond of running? And how would the program differ from your conventional strength-training program, if at all?

Answer:
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to correct some serious flaws in the reasoning of Dr. Kenneth Cooper, which I’ll attempt to address at some length in my reply. Bodybuilding, or “strength training,” has been ignorantly maligned over the years, and one of the prime reasons for this ignorance is the bias of purported fitness “experts” like Dr. Cooper. Not only is strength training capable of providing the cardiovascular fitness about which you are justly concerned (heart disease being a leading cause of death in North America and Europe), but properly conducted, can also improve other aspects of conditioning, which, all together, comprise total fitness. Many individuals are of the impression that strength training is something divorced from the heart and lungs. It was never scratched in stone that human beings can get a cardiovascular training effect only from treadmills, ellipticals, Reebok step classes, and dance aerobics. In fact, it has been proven time and again scientifically that high-intensity strengthtraining exercise will stimulate the body to produce substantial and profound cardiovascular adaptation—and many more fitness benefits besides that conventional low-intensity aerobic exercise cannot.

Of particular note is a study reported in Orlando, Florida, in 2004, at the conference of the World Organization of Family Doctors. The presenter, Erika Baum, M.D., stated that pure weight training can markedly improve aerobic fitness. She cited a six-month structured Nautilus strengthtraining program that “resulted in improvements in cardio-circulatory fitness to a degree traditionally considered obtainable only through endurance exercises such as running, bicycling, and swimming.”

According to Baum, a family physician at Philipps University, in Marburg, Germany, “This opens up new possibilities for cardiopulmonary-oriented exercise besides the traditional stamina sports.” New exercise options are desirable because some patients just don’t care for endurance exercise, which doesn’t do much to improve muscular strength and stabilization. Baum reported on thirty-one healthy but physically unfi t subjects aged twenty to forty-five, including eight women, who completed a Nautilus weight-training program involving two or three thirty- to forty-minute sessions per week for six months. Their aerobic capacity, assessed on a graded treadmill exercise test, improved by 33 percent over the course of six months. Meanwhile, mean body weight declined from 171.51 pounds to 149.25 pounds. Resting heart rate dropped from a baseline of 68.5 beats per minute to 65.6. Heart rate measured three minutes after cessation of a maximal exercise test declined from a baseline of 108.7beats per minute to 103.1, with a larger decrease in women than men. This study clearly established that high-intensity strength training, performed properly, challenges the cardiovascular system more than enough to keep it healthy.

Another study conducted in 1985 by Dr. Stephen Messier and Mary Dill, of Wake Forest University, and published in the science journal Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport (56: 345–51), is equally noteworthy. Researchers measured the aerobic conditioning benefi s on thirty six male college students who employed one of three training approaches: (1) strength training in high-intensity style on Nautilus equipment, (2) lifting free weights in the traditional style, and (3) a running program. All subjects trained three times per week for ten weeks. The findings showed that the Nautilus group, who trained in a high-intensity fashion, exhibited the same aerobic adaptations that the runners did. The real kicker here is that the running group trained 50 percent longer than the Nautilus group—thirty minutes per session, compared with twenty minutes per session—establishing empirically that running was less efficient at stimulating cardiovascular benefits than strength training performed in circuit sequence. Performing “aerobic” training 50 percent more did not result in 50 percent more cardiovascular benefit—or even 10 percent more; it resulted in “0” additional benefit.

More recently, scientists working at McMaster University, in Hamilton, Ontario, discovered that a two-minute workout (consisting of stationary cycling for four thirty-second intervals at high intensity, with a four-minute break between intervals) performed on alternate days three times a week, for a total weekly exercise time of six minutes, resulted in “a doubling of the subjects’ aerobic endurance levels after two weeks.” The lead researcher, Professor Martin Gibala, stated, “We thought the findings were startling because it suggests the overall volume of exercise people need to do is lower than what’s recommended.”

Indeed, instead of working out for twenty minutes, three times a week (minimum)— the protocol that most personal trainers and exercise specialists have been recommending for decades—this study showed that as few as four total sets lasting no more than thirty seconds each sufficed not merely to improve human cardiovascular function, but to double it!

Future testing of this procedure might well conclude that one such session per week, and perhaps even one or two thirty second intervals, will produce similar or better results. Given that your heart and lungs can’t tell whether you are working at maximum intensity on a stationary bike, as in the study, or at a leg press (or a lat pull-down or a shoulder press, for that matter), such results would, by extension, be obtainable by doing a high-intensity strength training set, resting for up to four minutes, and performing another set—as outlined in this book—until four such sets had been completed.

In fact, it is my opinion that the cardiovascular training effect that can be obtained using resistance training is superior to that of any other type of exercise. There is also a growing amount of medical opinion to the effect that all of the supposed cardiovascular benefit to be had from exercise is a result of the muscles’ becoming stronger, so that the heart doesn’t have to work as hard, resulting in a lower pulse rate during more strenuous activity.

According to cardiologist Henry Solomon, M.D., from his book The Exercise Myth:

Most of the improvement in functional capacity due to exercise is not even directly related to the heart. It is due to an effect on the peripheral muscle cells whereby they more efficiently extract oxygen from the blood.

Bruce Charash, M.D., current head of cardiology at Lenox Hill Hospital, in New York City, agrees. From his book Heart Myths: When patients participate in exercise programs, they often assume that their heart becomes stronger. This is not the case. Physical training results in a sense of well-being because of other effects. It improves the efficiency of the muscles. It improves the hormonal tone of the body. It improves the control of sugar in people with diabetes. However, exercise will not make the heart beat more strongly. According to a study by Goldberg, Elliot, and Kuehl, at the Human Performance Laboratory (Division of General Medicine, Oregon Health Sciences Services, Portland, Oregon, published in the Journal of Applied Science Research vol. 2, no. 3 [1988]: 42–45):

Traditional, non-circuit weight training for both the athlete and the general population can be viewed as a method of reducing myocardial oxygen demand during usual daily activities. This cardio-protective benefi t allows the individual to perform isometric exertion combined with dynamic work with lower cardiac oxygen requirements, and, thus, improvement in cardiovascular effi ciency. Although standard methods of weight training and strength acquisition may not improve running, cardiovascular benefits do occur.

Doug McGuff, M.D., in his excellent online article “Health Related Issues” (ultimate- exercise.com), states: Equally important in cardiovascular health are peripheral adaptations.

These are adaptations that actually occur within the working muscles that have indirect benefit for the cardiovascular system. The reason a frail 80-year-old gets more winded climbing a flight of stairs is not necessarily because their cardiovascular system is weak; it may be more due to the fact that their muscles are weak. A muscle is divided into segments called motor units. A motor unit is a group of muscle fibers all supplied by one motor nerve. If a motor nerve sends a signal to a motor unit, all the fibers in a motor unit will contract with 100 percent effort. Let us say that it takes a hundred units of work to climb a flight of stairs. If our 80-year-old’s motor units all contain one unit of strength, it will take 100 motor units to provide 100 units of strength to get up the stairs. The 80-year-old’s heart will have to pump hard enough to support the working of 100 motor units. If, however, my motor units each have two units of strength, it will only take me 50 motor units to provide 100 units of strength. My heart will have to pump hard enough to support the working of 50 motor units. If, through proper strength training, I double my strength, then each motor unit will have four units of strength. At this level, I will only have to recruit 25 motor units. At this level of strength, my perceived effort is much lower.

Now, there are other factors involved that make this example imperfect. Increasing muscle size means more weight may have to be carried, or the body’s cooling efficiency will be slightly less. However, the general idea still holds true. Proper exercise not only stimulates central cardiovascular changes, it stimulates peripheral muscular changes, which allows you to do more work with less stress to the cardiovascular support system.

McGuff elaborates on this point in another essay, entitled “Paradigm Shift for Exercise” (ultimate-exercise.com): Despite its profound effects on the cardiovascular system, resistance training still has its major impacts through peripheral adaptations, mainly in terms of increased muscle strength. We have all told our patients that just performing activities of daily life (walking, taking the stairs, yard work) can preserve our cardiovascular health. Unfortunately, the agerelated loss of muscle (sarcopenia) can undermine our ability to carry out those activities. Resistance training can prevent and even reverse sarcopenia. [Rogers M. A., and W. J. Evans. “Changes in skeletal muscle with aging: effects of exercise training.” Exercise and Sport Sciences Reviews 21 (1993): 65–102.] Furthermore, as a muscle becomes stronger, fewer motor units will have to be recruited to perform a given task, thus reducing the demand on the cardiovascular system. Clearly, the best kind of exercise is the kind that will tax the musculature the most; this will create a powerful cardiovascular stimulus, while producing hemodynamic changes that minimize the risk of cardiac ischemia and also produce the most profound peripheral changes in the form of muscle strengthening.

This would explain why a scientific study conducted at West Point Military Academy in 1975 revealed that a high-intensity strength-training program performed on Nautilus machines stimulated the body to produce outstanding cardiovascular benefits (measured by more than sixty different tests to determine aerobic fitness) from workouts lasting as little as eighteen minutes. In other words, high-intensity strength training has your aerobic bases covered. It’s now been documented that, to produce the most profound changes in cardiovascular endurance, exercise has to be intense and brief (as in the McMaster study). The question that logically arises is: how frequently should one train to allow such adaptive responses to take place in the cardiovascular system? The revolutionary study conducted at West Point may be taken as a guiding example of the benefits of once-a-week training. Arthur Jones, the creator of Nautilus machines and the man who trained many of the cadets in the West Point study, addresses this subject in his essay entitled “Maximizing Aerobic Potential”:

Properly performed, which they seldom are, strength building exercises are not a “good” way to improve cardiovascular condition; they are, instead, by far the best way to improve cardiovascular condition. . . . you move almost immediately from the end of the first exercise to the start of the second exercise, with almost no rest between the two exercises, then you will increase both strength and cardiovascular condition; in fact, that style of training, properly performed, will lead to a level of cardiovascular condition that is far higher than you could ever produce by any amount of jogging or any other cardiovascular exercise.

Such a style of exercise simultaneously provides anaerobic exercise for strength building and aerobic exercise for improving cardiovascular condition. . . . Once you reach the target rate of exercise you will find that your pulse rate remains at a very high rate throughout the workout, far higher than you could ever maintain with any sort of aerobic exercise; yet your muscles are being worked anaerobically, as they must for strengthbuilding purposes. . . . We used this style of training during research conducted at the United States Military Academy, West Point, twenty-two years ago, and the results were so outstanding that Dr. Kenneth Cooper refused to believe them, refused even though his own people performed all of the pre and post testing. Average strength for the test group increased by 60 percent in six weeks, while their cardiovascular condition reached a level so high that Cooper refused to believe it, a level he could not reach in six years of aerobic exercise . . . producing the best possible results requires such a style of training no more than once a week. During the research at West Point, we trained the cadet subjects three times each week but used this “no rest” style of training only once each week. I hope this explanation will put to rest some of the baseless “anti-strength training” bias against bodybuilding exercise and its effect on our cardiovascular system that has posed as gospel truth within the bodybuilding and fitness industry.

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