Aerobics or Anaerobics - Which is Better?

Aerobics or Anaerobics - Which is Better?

Aerobic exercise is exercise that involves or improves the body's oxygen consumption. The word aerobic means with oxygen. In addition to utilizing and improving the body's oxygen consumption, aerobic exercise also increases the body's ability to burn fatty acids during a workout session. An example of an aerobic workout would be one that consists of a warm-up, then a moderate level of exercise over a sustained period of time that works the major muscle groups, and then a cool-down. Regardless of the type of exercise, it's important to know that aerobic exercise has great benefits from fat burning to cardiovascular health and well-being.

Anaerobic training involves exercises that are intense enough to trigger anaerobic metabolism. It significantly increases the body's functionality to develop explosive power and maximize short-term energy systems. An example would be non-endurance sports such as bodybuilders who use anaerobic training to promote speed, power, power and muscle mass. This results in greater performance during high-intensity, short-duration activities.

Various physiological responses of the body will occur during aerobic exercise. A person's aerobic capacity is higher. Muscle capacity trained is increased due to the ability to utilize and mobilize fat resulting from high levels of fat-metabolizing enzymes as well as increased blood flow. The body also experiences greater development of slow-twitch muscle fibers and increased myoglobin, which is essentially an iron-protein compound in the muscle that stores and transports oxygen to the muscle. Aerobic exercise improves the body's oxygen consumption, increasing its ability to store and transport it, resulting in slower muscle twitch fibers.

There are also a number of physiological changes in anaerobic training that show the big difference between the two and the benefits of each. Anaerobic exercise increases the size of fast-twitch muscle fibers compared to slow-twitch exercise. Produces increased tolerance to higher blood lactate levels and increases enzymes involved in the anaerobic phase of glucose breakdown. Anaerobic exercise also results in increases in resting ATP, CP, creatine and glycogen levels. High-intensity strength training in sessions of 45 to 75 minutes results in increased growth hormone and testosterone levels.

Because aerobic and anaerobic training focus on very different results on the body, it is easy to assume that if you only want to train exclusively aerobic or anaerobic, the body will have to make many different adaptations.

If one were to choose to do only aerobic exercise for more than a year, their overall cardiovascular health would improve. The body would adapt to using fatty acids for energy and target the development of slow-twitch muscle fibers. Those who choose aerobics are typical 5K, 10K and marathon runners. Aerobic exercise builds endurance and those who exercise aerobically are able to exercise at a specific level for an extended period of time. What the body will not experience is a gain in overall strength. Aerobic exercise does not make a person gain overall strength, power, or explosive abilities. After a year, the body has adapted to using oxygen, burning fatty acids and being an endurance machine. After a year, the person finds it difficult to attempt anaerobic exercise such as weight lifting. However, this can happen with changing fitness goals and training.

If someone chose to do anaerobic training over a year, the body would get used to using glycogen as fuel instead of the fatty acids used in aerobic training. The body will use training to develop fast-twitch muscle fibers compared to slow-twitch ones, as well as build muscle mass, explosive power, and overall strength. Choosing anaerobic training would allow for muscle growth and fitness, but not overall cardiovascular health and endurance. Bodybuilders are a typical anaerobic training group. They have tremendous explosive power and their body has adapted to a large amount of force for a short period of time while maintaining endurance over a long period of time. Many bodybuilders use anaerobic training rather than aerobic training. Therefore, it is not uncommon to see an extremely healthy bodybuilder who cannot even run/walk/jog a quarter mile because he has had no aerobic training to improve his cardiovascular health and endurance capabilities.

Inspired by Wesley Gillespie