Cardiovascular exercise, also called aerobic exercise, is a form of exercise that increases your heart rate and deepens your breathing. High-intensity versions of this exercise produce particularly significant increases in both your breathing and heart rate. However, aerobic exercises of any intensity have little effect on muscle growth. To increase the size of your muscles, you need to perform strength-training exercises.
Cardio Benefits
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, high-intensity or vigorous aerobic activities include jogging, running, bicycling over hilly ground, swimming laps, and playing basketball or singles tennis. Like all aerobic exercises, these activities accelerate your heartbeat and deepen your breathing by forcing you to repeatedly move your legs, hips and arms. MayoClinic.com lists potential benefits of regular aerobic exercise as strengthening your heart, increased stamina, easier weight control, reduction of your risks for certain chronic diseases and lengthening of your lifespan.
Muscle Effects
Some individuals prefer high-intensity aerobic activities to moderate-intensity activities such as brisk walking and cycling on level ground, the CDC notes. Potential reasons for this preference include more rapid improvements in cardiovascular health and reduced exercise times needed to achieve these improvements. However, you will not typically gain muscle from aerobic exercise, according to SpineUniverse. Depending on your circumstances, you can actually lose muscle if you combine high amounts of aerobic exercise with diets that are low in calories.
Understanding Strength Training
To build your muscles, you need to perform strength-training activities such as weightlifting and resistance band training, SpineUniverse reports. The CDC lists heavy gardening, yoga and exercises such as sit-ups and push-ups as additional muscle-strengthening activities. To gain the full benefit of these activities, you need to perform them at least twice a week and use them to exercise all of your major muscle groups, including your shoulders, chest, arms, back hips and legs. You will also need to perform any given strength-building exercise in cycles of repeated movement called repetitions. Typically, you will perform enough repetitions of an exercise to significantly fatigue your affected muscles.
Strength Training Benefits
When you perform strength-training exercises regularly, the increase in your muscle mass can boost your body's metabolism and help you control or reduce your weight, SpineUniverse notes. Regular strength-training can also help you offset the effects of age-related muscle loss. Without strength training, you can lose as much as half a pound of muscle per year. Other potential benefits of a muscle-building program include improvements in your physical appearance and your ability to efficiently move your body during everyday activities.
Considerations
While both aerobics and strength-training exercises can boost your metabolism, SpineUniverse explains, metabolism increases from aerobics only last for a few hours after exercise. Regular strength-training exercises, on the other hand, can boost your metabolism permanently. Consult your doctor before beginning either high-intensity aerobics or a strength training program.
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