Many people you find at the gym today recognize that the right combination of exercise and nutrition is conducive to fat loss, increased muscle strength and increased energy. That’s why they are at the gym. When your body is at peak efficiency, your energy levels are higher in nearly every aspect of life. When you look better, you are more confident, and your increased self-discipline affects everything you do positively. Research has shown that exercise also improves your mental acuity and prevents the development of diseases like Alzheimer's and senility.
These facts explain why so many people are attracted to aerobic training at the gym. Cardiovascular exercise strengthens the heart, lungs, and blood vessels so they all work more efficiently. When you’re at the gym training your body to meet high levels of aerobic endurance, you increase the efficiency of your entire body and gain benefits like lower blood pressure, lower ‘bad’ cholesterol, higher ‘good’ cholesterol, decreased incidence of heart attack and stroke, decreased risk of osteoporosis, decreased risk of most types of cancers as well as an increased life span overall. The long list of benefits from aerobic cardiovascular exercise makes it one of the most popular choices at gyms across the nation today.
Conversely, many people at gyms tend to shy away from weight training because they think they get everything they need from the aerobic exercises alone. However, the data shows that people who lift moderate amounts of weights regularly also share many of the same characteristics and health benefits as those people who train exclusively with cardiovascular exercise. Since weight training increases the overall strength of the muscles in the body, weight lifters not only get stronger, they benefit from a decreased risk of bone fractures as well. These benefits have led some people to believe that lifting weights alone is the fastest and best approach to fitness.
However, combining the two approaches might be the better solution. Combining aerobic exercise and strength training creates a system that works together to develop and build the strongest, healthiest body possible. The aerobic cardiovascular exercise strengthens the lungs and allows the body to build up stamina and endurance. The weight training employs that stamina to help build stronger muscles over longer periods of time. This allows the muscles, the skeleton and all of the organs inside to work more efficiently together as a whole. Combining the two disciplines together during your gym workouts may be the best method of developing the strongest and most efficient body you can possibly achieve.