Latest / Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40 / How Lifting Weights Improves Cardiovascular Health (Better Than Cardio?) | Ep 440

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How Lifting Weights Improves Cardiovascular Health (Better Than Cardio?) | Ep 440 · Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40

• 0:01
  Philip Pape: If you've been told that cardio is the only way to protect your heart and that lifting weights is just for building muscle looking good, you are operating on outdated science, and it could be costing you years of your life.
• 0:13
  Philip Pape: Today I'm breaking down the research showing that strength training lowers blood pressure on par with medication, improves your cholesterol profile, and reduces your risk of dying from heart disease by up to 17%.
• 0:24
  Philip Pape: You'll learn why your muscles are secretly your most powerful cardiovascular organ, how to structure your lifting to get a real cardio effect without stepping on a treadmill, and at the very end, a 10-second heart rate test you can do between sets that predicts cardiovascular health better than most labor.
• 0:43
  Philip Pape: Find the hidden reason it doesn't work, and give you the deceptively simple fix that does.
• 1:04
  Philip Pape: I'm your host, Philip Pape, and today we're gonna hit on conventional wisdom about cardio.
• 1:10
  Philip Pape: Cardio is for your heart, and lifting weights is for your muscles.
• 1:14
  Philip Pape: Two separate buckets, right?
• 1:16
  Philip Pape: And if you're over 40 and you're thinking about longevity, the default advice is go for a walk, go for a jog, get on an elliptical, get your cardio in, do your heart healthy exercise, and then maybe lift a little on the side for bone density or whatever benefit, if it's even mentioned.
• 1:31
  Philip Pape: I mean, I still see many, many articles that don't even mention lifting weights.
• 1:35
  Philip Pape: They use the general term exercise.
• 1:37
  Philip Pape: And the real problem with that framing is it is incomplete in a way that fundamentally limits your results.
• 1:44
  Philip Pape: Because the research we have now, lots of research over the past decade, including a 2023 scientific statement from the American Heart Association, now confirms clearly that resistance training is safe, it's effective, it is an essential part of cardiovascular disease risk reduction.
• 2:03
  Philip Pape: It's not optional, it's not secondary, it is essential.
• 2:07
  Philip Pape: And yet, only 28% of adults meet the recommendation of strength training at least two days per week, which means that most people concerned about heart health, which we all should be, are ignoring one of the most powerful tools available.
• 2:22
  Philip Pape: And as a side note, this tool is the most powerful for almost anything related to your health.
• 2:27
  Philip Pape: So you kind of get the benefits regardless across the spectrum when you're lifting.
• 2:32
  Philip Pape: The fix is almost too simple.
• 2:35
  Philip Pape: You don't need a separate cardio program.
• 2:38
  Philip Pape: You just have to adjust how you already lift to get those benefits.
• 2:41
  Philip Pape: And you might not even have to do that.
• 2:43
  Philip Pape: Now, as a quick tangent, one of our upcoming episodes, in fact, it might be as early as next week, is going to get into strength training along with endurance.
• 2:53
  Philip Pape: Because we've had quite a number of listeners write in concerned that they shouldn't be doing cardio because there's some negative to it.
• 3:01
  Philip Pape: And that is not the case either.
• 3:02
  Philip Pape: So stay, you know, follow the show.
• 3:05
  Philip Pape: We're going to talk about that next week.
• 3:06
  Philip Pape: How do you incorporate both endurance if you enjoy it or you're competitive or whatever, along with your lifting?
• 3:12
  Philip Pape: But today, this episode was inspired by a listener, Jack R, who said, quote, I'm a huge fan of the show and I listen to it on every run I go on.
• 3:22
  Philip Pape: So what I want to hear is the differences between cardio and lifting in the long term.
• 3:26
  Philip Pape: Which one overall can burn more fat?
• 3:28
  Philip Pape: Which one is good for building more muscle?
• 3:30
  Philip Pape: And how do they hold up over time?
• 3:31
  Philip Pape: So, Jack, that's a great question.
• 3:33
  Philip Pape: And again, you are also gonna want to listen to the upcoming show called something like strength training and endurance, you know, putting them together, something like that, because I haven't recorded it yet.
• 3:44
  Philip Pape: But this one is dedicated to you, Jack.
• 3:46
  Philip Pape: So we're gonna go over that and more.
• 3:48
  Philip Pape: I'm gonna walk you through what lifting does for your heart, your blood vessels, your blood pressure, your cholesterol, your insulin sensitivity, and your longevity.
• 3:56
  Philip Pape: We're gonna compare cardio and lifting head to head for fat loss, muscle building, and long-term sustainability, which is kind of what Jack asked about.
• 4:04
  Philip Pape: And I'll show you how to program your training so you get the cardiovascular benefits from lifting without sacrificing your strength gains.
• 4:11
  Philip Pape: So whether you are currently lifting or you're on the fence, I wanna change how you think about what heart healthy exercise actually means and really have lifting near the top of that list in your programming.
• 4:23
  Philip Pape: And then if you stick around, I always have a cool tip at the end.
• 4:26
  Philip Pape: Today I'm gonna share a simple 10-second test that you can do between your sets in the gym.
• 4:31
  Philip Pape: And it's gonna give you a real-time snapshot of your cardiovascular fitness.
• 4:34
  Philip Pape: You have to do it while you're working out, but then you can use it to track your heart health over time and see how it's improving.
• 4:40
  Philip Pape: Super simple.
• 4:40
  Philip Pape: I love stuff like that.
• 4:42
  Philip Pape: All right, let's start with the single biggest risk factor for heart disease.
• 4:47
  Philip Pape: And by the way, heart disease is the number one killer for men and women.
• 4:51
  Philip Pape: So it's super important.
• 4:52
  Philip Pape: The single biggest risk factor is actually blood pressure.
• 4:55
  Philip Pape: This is where the evidence for strength training is strong enough that I wish it changed how every doctor talks to us about exercise, but you know, that's that's wishful thinking at the moment.
• 5:06
  Philip Pape: So blood pressure, let's talk about it.
• 5:08
  Philip Pape: Multiple studies, and these are meta-analysis, okay, big studies of studies, now confirm that regular strength training reduces resting blood pressure.
• 5:18
  Philip Pape: Okay, now anybody who lifts weights has seen this happen.
• 5:20
  Philip Pape: All my clients have seen this happen.
• 5:22
  Philip Pape: It's pretty cool.
• 5:23
  Philip Pape: In people who have hypertension, we're looking at systolic blood pressure drops around five to 10 millimeters of mercury and diastolic, so systolics on the top, diastolics on the bottom, of I think I have that right, of two to five milligrams or millimeters of mercury.
• 5:42
  Philip Pape: So five to ten for systolic, two to five of diastolic.
• 5:46
  Philip Pape: And a 2022 systematic review of 14 different trials found that lifting lowered systolic blood pressure by about nine and a half and diastolic by about five in hypertensive adults.
• 5:59
  Philip Pape: So adults who have high blood pressure already, who have a mean age around 60.
• 6:03
  Philip Pape: So older adults around 60 with high blood pressure.
• 6:06
  Philip Pape: Now, to put that in perspective, that is comparable to what you would expect from a first-line blood pressure medication.
• 6:15
  Philip Pape: And then younger adults in the analysis saw even larger improvements of around 13 systolic.
• 6:22
  Philip Pape: Right.
• 6:22
  Philip Pape: And this, so this is meaningful.
• 6:24
  Philip Pape: This is important because it's meaningful.
• 6:25
  Philip Pape: This could be the difference between needing your meds and not needing it.
• 6:28
  Philip Pape: And again, I've coached many, many a client who got to come off their blood pressure meds because they're lifting weights now.
• 6:34
  Philip Pape: And, you know, yes, they're doing the other things, but we're talking about lifting today.
• 6:38
  Philip Pape: And certain types of resistance exercise are especially effective.
• 6:42
  Philip Pape: And those aren't necessarily, that doesn't necessarily mean you have to incorporate them, but it could be that the way you lift efficiently includes them.
• 6:49
  Philip Pape: And what do I mean?
• 6:50
  Philip Pape: Isometric holds are one of the most effective methods for lowering blood pressure, but you also do isometric holds all the time when you're just lifting weights.
• 6:58
  Philip Pape: So you don't have to do like wall sits or hand grip exercises per se if you're doing deadlifts.
• 7:03
  Philip Pape: I mean, a deadlift is one of the most powerful isometric holds we have.
• 7:06
  Philip Pape: And if you're using, you know, decent tempo and sometimes you're using pauses and things like that, you get plenty of isometric work.
• 7:13
  Philip Pape: Now let's talk about blood vessels and endothelial function.
• 7:18
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 7:18
  Philip Pape: This is where this is the part a lot of people don't hear as much about when we talk about lifting.
• 7:23
  Philip Pape: If you are using the way we like to lift, moderate to higher, you know, moderate rep ranges, but even up to higher rep ranges, like in a hypertrophy program, and you get this extra blood flow, it creates shear stress on the vessel wall.
• 7:38
  Philip Pape: So your blood vessels have walls and there's stress on the walls.
• 7:41
  Philip Pape: And that shear stress stimulates your endothelial cells to produce nitric oxide.
• 7:47
  Philip Pape: And that causes your blood vessels to relax and dilate.
• 7:50
  Philip Pape: And by the way, nitric oxide, you might have heard of that in the context of like pre-workouts and performance enhancers over the years as well.
• 7:59
  Philip Pape: So this is a natural way to make your arteries more flexible and responsive, which is the opposite of arterial stiffness, right?
• 8:06
  Philip Pape: Stiffness is one of the drivers of, again, heart disease, which the fancy term is atherosclerosis, and heart attacks.
• 8:13
  Philip Pape: By the way, I'm not a doctor.
• 8:14
  Philip Pape: This is not medical advice.
• 8:15
  Philip Pape: This is this is what the evidence is telling us, and I'm sharing you what those relationships are.
• 8:20
  Philip Pape: I'm not giving you medical advice here.
• 8:22
  Philip Pape: The American Heart Association's 2023 statement I alluded to earlier recognized that resistance training has positive effects on endothelial function.
• 8:31
  Philip Pape: And then a couple years later, since it was last year, 2025, there was a meta-analysis on older adults that found that circuit-based resistance training significantly reduced arterial stiffness alongside improvements in blood pressure.
• 8:45
  Philip Pape: So, putting this together, your lifting sessions, yeah, they build muscle, but they also train your blood vessels to be more compliant and more efficient, which is not a surprise because lifting is a hermetic stressor that causes a lot of adaptations, right?
• 9:00
  Philip Pape: We know it adapts bone and muscle, but it's also adapting your blood vessels.
• 9:04
  Philip Pape: Your cardiovascular system is adapting to those demands.
• 9:07
  Philip Pape: And it does so the same way it does with aerobic exercise, but just through a slightly different mechanism.
• 9:11
  Philip Pape: You know, and honestly, if you do heavy deadlifts, let's say, and watch your heart rate, you'll see that you are also getting some cardio, even though it's a much shorter bursts and small amounts of time.
• 9:22
  Philip Pape: So that covers sort of the plumbing, the pressure, the pipes in your body.
• 9:27
  Philip Pape: Now let's talk about what's flowing through them because strength training changes the chemistry of your blood in ways that help reduce heart disease risk.
• 9:35
  Philip Pape: So this is pretty cool.
• 9:36
  Philip Pape: Let's talk about that.
• 9:36
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 9:37
  Philip Pape: Cholesterol and lipids.
• 9:39
  Philip Pape: So there is, there's still this perception that the only way you can improve your cholesterol is through cardio or also through food, right?
• 9:47
  Philip Pape: And we do know that reducing saturated fat, for example, seems to be correlated with that, maintaining a healthier body weight, et cetera.
• 9:53
  Philip Pape: But there's also evidence related to lifting.
• 9:57
  Philip Pape: There was a systematic review in diabetes patients specifically that found that regular resistance training increased by quite a bit the what we call the protective or good cholesterol HDL.
• 10:09
  Philip Pape: It reduced LDL, the harmful cholesterol, and then it lowered triglycerides, which is also a good result.
• 10:14
  Philip Pape: And again, they were statistically and clinically meaningful.
• 10:18
  Philip Pape: And we know that in older adults, which have been studied quite a bit when it comes to blood pressure, there are significant HDL increases on the order of like two to five milligrams per deciliter.
• 10:29
  Philip Pape: Right.
• 10:29
  Philip Pape: So that's two to five.
• 10:30
  Philip Pape: It's not huge, but it's meaningful.
• 10:32
  Philip Pape: And LDL drops of five to 10 after a few months of consistent training, independent of other variables.
• 10:38
  Philip Pape: Aerobic training, so this is like what we traditionally call cardio, probably does have a slight edge in raising HDL if you do it a lot.
• 10:47
  Philip Pape: But if you combine lifting with some cardio, that tends to produce the best overall lipid profile.
• 10:52
  Philip Pape: So this is one of the my nods to the fact that we don't want to just not do cardio, but that lifting needs to be part of the equation.
• 10:59
  Philip Pape: Some of the other things we find improve in studies about resistance plus resistance training plus cardio when adults are overweight is the lowering of Apo B, right?
• 11:11
  Philip Pape: That's a marker, marker of lip light lipoproteins.
• 11:15
  Philip Pape: And the improvement was more than either of those by themselves, either cardio or resistance training.
• 11:21
  Philip Pape: Right.
• 11:21
  Philip Pape: So that's cholesterol and lipids, you get a benefit.
• 11:23
  Philip Pape: Then insulin sensitivity, we've talked about a lot in the show.
• 11:26
  Philip Pape: And this is where lifting really, really is a huge signal.
• 11:29
  Philip Pape: The value of having and building muscle, right?
• 11:32
  Philip Pape: And stick with me because this one is just so important.
• 11:35
  Philip Pape: When you think of your muscle, can when you contract skeletal muscle, it's a sink for glucose.
• 11:42
  Philip Pape: Having the muscle is a sink for glucose.
• 11:44
  Philip Pape: So when you lift in the gym, your muscles are pulling that sugar out of your blood, essentially, and using it for fuel.
• 11:50
  Philip Pape: And because lifting builds more tissue over time, you're increasing your baseline capacity to handle carbohydrates.
• 11:56
  Philip Pape: And we had a whole episode about carbs just recently.
• 11:58
  Philip Pape: A meta-analysis found that adding resistance exercise to your routine, this was in middle-age and older adults with type 2 diabetes, led to significant drops in HBA1C.
• 12:09
  Philip Pape: That's the long-term blood sugar marker.
• 12:11
  Philip Pape: And that's compared to no exercise, significant drops, independent, at least partly independent of weight loss.
• 12:18
  Philip Pape: And I say partly because a lot of these studies, the problem is once you start having lifting weights and living a better lifestyle, you end up losing some weight, oftentimes not on purpose.
• 12:27
  Philip Pape: So it's hard to tease apart the variables sometimes.
• 12:30
  Philip Pape: But regardless, this is a huge deal for us, especially the over 40 population, because insulin resistance is one of those things that creeps up with age.
• 12:39
  Philip Pape: It's one of the central drivers of metabolic syndrome, right?
• 12:43
  Philip Pape: That's like pre diabetes, where we have high blood pressure, poor cholesterol, elevated blood sugar, extra abdominal fat, and just one hour of strength training per week, even that minimum dose was associated with a 29% lower risk of developing metabolic syndrome.
• 13:03
  Philip Pape: So again, your muscle tissue isn't just there for strength and physique, it is a metabolic organ.
• 13:08
  Philip Pape: I love, I want you to think about that.
• 13:10
  Philip Pape: It's a metabolic organ.
• 13:11
  Philip Pape: It's also kind of an endocrine organ, which is hormones.
• 13:14
  Philip Pape: It regulates your blood sugar, it regulates your insulin levels, your inflammation.
• 13:18
  Philip Pape: The more of it you have, the more resilient your metabolism is.
• 13:22
  Philip Pape: All right, so now all this ties into body composition and visceral fat, which is a pillar of everything we discuss on this show.
• 13:31
  Philip Pape: And this is where we can directly answer Jack's three questions.
• 13:34
  Philip Pape: Thank you, Jack, for the questions.
• 13:36
  Philip Pape: Another shout out to you.
• 13:37
  Philip Pape: The first one, which burns more fat?
• 13:40
  Philip Pape: All right, in the short term, cardio burns a few more calories per session than lifting.
• 13:45
  Philip Pape: In the short term, like if you just take a session in isolation of let's say 30 minutes or an hour.
• 13:50
  Philip Pape: But resistance training changes your body composition in ways that makes fat loss more sustainable over time.
• 13:56
  Philip Pape: And you tend to burn more calories, having more muscle, and you tend to carry a little bit more body weight with more muscle, all of which burns more calories that far exceeds what you're burning just from doing cardio.
• 14:06
  Philip Pape: Not to mention the adaptations you could have with cardio.
• 14:10
  Philip Pape: It's a separate topic.
• 14:11
  Philip Pape: There was a 2024 systematic review of people with overweight and obesity that found that resistance training during a calorie deficit preserves lean mass with moderate certainty and improves fat loss with high certainty.
• 14:25
  Philip Pape: Now, none of that's a surprise to us, but it means that when you're in a deficit, lifters lose just as much or more fat as cardio-only exercises, but they keep their muscle.
• 14:34
  Philip Pape: And that matters massively because that is what we want to keep.
• 14:38
  Philip Pape: We don't want to lose muscle.
• 14:39
  Philip Pape: More muscle means all the things we talk about: higher resting metabolic rate, burning more calories, uh, better health, better everything else.
• 14:46
  Philip Pape: And so, going back to what I said earlier, if you can combine some aerobic and resistance exercise, you're probably gonna have the best combination of fat loss and fitness gains than either alone.
• 14:56
  Philip Pape: And when we talk cardio, by the way, we're gonna talk more about it in the next uh episode in the episode about endurance.
• 15:01
  Philip Pape: Walking is a fantastic form of cardio.
• 15:04
  Philip Pape: So you can be highly successful with all of this if you just move and walk a lot, which is honestly a thing that many people lose as they age.
• 15:12
  Philip Pape: You know, it's often not hormones and perimetabas and all this other stuff.
• 15:16
  Philip Pape: It's you're not moving enough.
• 15:17
  Philip Pape: And I don't mean exercise or cardio, I just mean walking.
• 15:20
  Philip Pape: Okay, so that's one question about which burns more fat.
• 15:24
  Philip Pape: So I hope I answered that for you.
• 15:25
  Philip Pape: So over the long term, you're probably gonna burn more fat having muscle, but doing both training and endurance.
• 15:31
  Philip Pape: All right, now which builds more muscle?
• 15:33
  Philip Pape: That one's really straightforward.
• 15:34
  Philip Pape: Obvious answer resistance training, of course.
• 15:37
  Philip Pape: Just cardio does not provide mechanical tension.
• 15:40
  Philip Pape: It doesn't provide stress on your muscle skeletal system and beyond, you know, beyond a beginner doing it for the first week who doesn't move or something like that.
• 15:49
  Philip Pape: It doesn't provide progressive overload, nothing that you need to stimulate muscle growth.
• 15:54
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 15:55
  Philip Pape: So a cardio-only approach, you are going to lose lean mass, and that is just not good.
• 16:00
  Philip Pape: So never ever would I recommend cardio only.
• 16:02
  Philip Pape: I do recommend lifting predominantly with complementary cardio, which is strategic and it depends on your goals and what you like.
• 16:11
  Philip Pape: The other question Jack asked is how do they hold up over time?
• 16:16
  Philip Pape: And this is more of a sustainability thing, and it looks like lifting does have an advantage.
• 16:22
  Philip Pape: There was some research in Harvard that found men who did 20 minutes of daily weight training gain less abdominal fat over a multi-year period than men who did the same amount of cardio exercise.
• 16:33
  Philip Pape: And that's because lifting prevents the loss of muscle, which helps keep your fat gain at bay.
• 16:41
  Philip Pape: It dampens your fat gain and it maintains your metabolic rate as you age.
• 16:45
  Philip Pape: So then when you look over five, 10, or 20 years, strength training helps build a body that's easier to maintain.
• 16:51
  Philip Pape: That's what I mean by sustainability.
• 16:53
  Philip Pape: When we think long-term, the best exercise routine is the one you can follow for life.
• 16:58
  Philip Pape: And because lifting builds such compounding returns, we often see people stick with it for life as part of their identity.
• 17:04
  Philip Pape: Whereas cardio kind of ebbs and flows and it depends.
• 17:06
  Philip Pape: It depends.
• 17:07
  Philip Pape: Even walking, I find some people struggle to do that and make it part of their identity as easily, I'll say, as lifting.
• 17:14
  Philip Pape: But of course, it depends on the person.
• 17:16
  Philip Pape: So, Jack, the short answer for fat loss, you want to combine both, but definitely make sure you're lifting.
• 17:21
  Philip Pape: For muscle, you want to lift.
• 17:22
  Philip Pape: And for the long game, you want to lift as the foundation, but be always moving to keep your health.
• 17:28
  Philip Pape: So, doing both is obviously an important conclusion here.
• 17:32
  Philip Pape: Now, we often associate fat loss with cardio, but resistance training is really effective at improving your body composition and helping with your visceral fat, the abdominal fat, that's the dangerous fat around your organs, that also tends to drive inflammation and insulin resistance.
• 17:49
  Philip Pape: And many of us don't like it visually either.
• 17:51
  Philip Pape: There's a study in midlife women that found that 15 weeks of strength training curbed the increase in visceral fat that would come with perimenopause and menopause.
• 18:00
  Philip Pape: That's pretty cool.
• 18:01
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 18:02
  Philip Pape: So when you can reduce your visceral fat, you're gonna lower the inflammatory cytokines that are circulating in your body.
• 18:09
  Philip Pape: That's worse one source of inflammation.
• 18:11
  Philip Pape: You're also gonna reduce free fatty acids that then damage your blood vessel walls.
• 18:16
  Philip Pape: And now you improve the metabolic markers we've been discussing.
• 18:19
  Philip Pape: All right, so we've covered blood pressure, blood vessels, cholesterol, insulin, visceral fat, all improved by lifting.
• 18:25
  Philip Pape: But what about actual cardiovascular fitness?
• 18:28
  Philip Pape: What about VO2max, the metric that predicts how long you live, supposedly?
• 18:34
  Philip Pape: Can weights improve that?
• 18:35
  Philip Pape: And the answer is yes.
• 18:37
  Philip Pape: Yes.
• 18:38
  Philip Pape: But how you program your sessions determines how much.
• 18:40
  Philip Pape: And of course, it depends on why you're trying to increase your VO2 max, because a lot of people think you have to increase it way more than you do necessarily to get the benefits.
• 18:47
  Philip Pape: And there's some issues with VO2 Max on the calculation side that we can get into.
• 18:52
  Philip Pape: Now, speaking of programming, if you're trying to prioritize lifting or add in endurance work or combine both, or even prioritize endurance but still lift, and you're doing it for whatever reason heart health, body composition, longevity, enjoyment, that's exactly what Fitness Lab is designed to handle.
• 19:09
  Philip Pape: Fitness Lab is my AI-powered coaching app.
• 19:12
  Philip Pape: It gives you personalized daily guidance.
• 19:15
  Philip Pape: Like it tells you what to do every day under your nutrition, your training, your biofeedback, your sleep, your movement, all of that adapted to your goals and what is happening to your body.
• 19:24
  Philip Pape: And what I mean by that, this is super powerful.
• 19:26
  Philip Pape: The app adjusts to how you want to train and what you want to train.
• 19:30
  Philip Pape: So if you want to add circuit style sessions or endurance or runs aside alongside your lifting, it can account for that and it can create activities for you.
• 19:41
  Philip Pape: If you're recovering from an illness or surgery or you just want to focus on building strength, it will meet you at where you are and change your program mid-stride for that.
• 19:50
  Philip Pape: And right now, through February 17th, the day after this episode is out, I believe, you can still get 20% off with our winter sale at witsandweights.com slash app.
• 19:59
  Philip Pape: After that, it goes back to full price.
• 20:01
  Philip Pape: That's witsandweights.com slash app.
• 20:03
  Philip Pape: The link is in the show notes.
• 20:05
  Philip Pape: Check it out.
• 20:06
  Philip Pape: All right, I want to talk about now cardiovascular or cardiorespiratory fitness.
• 20:12
  Philip Pape: Here, this is this is like the true cardio fitness that we often talk about.
• 20:16
  Philip Pape: And before we do, just a reminder, I want you to stick around to the end because I'm going to give you real quick heart rate recovery tests.
• 20:24
  Philip Pape: It takes 10 seconds that you can do starting with your next gym session and start tracking that, in my opinion, is going to help you assess your cardiovascular health.
• 20:34
  Philip Pape: And you won't even need a lot of what we're going to talk about in this section anyway.
• 20:37
  Philip Pape: But some of you really like a lot of data, and I get it, I'm a nerd like that too.
• 20:40
  Philip Pape: So let's do it.
• 20:41
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 20:41
  Philip Pape: VO2 Max.
• 20:43
  Philip Pape: VO2 Max, this is your body's maximum oxygen uptake.
• 20:48
  Philip Pape: And it it is, it does seem to be a very strong predictor of heart health and all-cause mortality.
• 20:55
  Philip Pape: And yes, aerobic training cardio is still the most, I'll say, efficient way to improve it, especially if you want to get a really high number.
• 21:03
  Philip Pape: And and I've done a VO2 max test and it's brutal.
• 21:07
  Philip Pape: So I know you have to have really good cardiovascular fitness.
• 21:11
  Philip Pape: A 2024 meta-analysis of 38 RCTs, that's randomized controlled trials, in middle-aged and older adults, showed that aerobic training raised VO2 max by about 1.8 milliliter per kilogram per minute.
• 21:24
  Philip Pape: That's the unit.
• 21:25
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 21:25
  Philip Pape: It's if you want to dissect that, it's the volume relative to your weight, relative to time, more than resistance training.
• 21:35
  Philip Pape: So 1.8.
• 21:36
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 21:37
  Philip Pape: So if you're trying to maximize VO2 max, then classic endurance training does have the edge.
• 21:42
  Philip Pape: There's no argument there, and I'm gonna give Cardio a point on that one.
• 21:46
  Philip Pape: But resistance training improves VO2 max in a way that we don't often hear about.
• 21:51
  Philip Pape: A meta analysis in adults over 60 found an average VO2 max increase of about 1.9 from resistance training alone.
• 21:59
  Philip Pape: And in middle-aged diabetic patients, resistance training significantly improved VO2 peak alongside other health markers.
• 22:09
  Philip Pape: And this is mainly because when you are doing a moderate amount of volume, maybe shorter rest periods, you're working on that work capacity, you're getting your heart rate up as you lift, you're still lifting your heart rate.
• 22:22
  Philip Pape: You're still placing intermittent cardio demand on your body.
• 22:27
  Philip Pape: And over time, that repeated stimulus is going to enhance your heart, its ability to pump efficiently, your muscles' ability to use oxygen, your VO2 max is going to go up.
• 22:35
  Philip Pape: Period.
• 22:36
  Philip Pape: The clear winner, though, and you're going to hear me repeat myself on this, is combining both.
• 22:41
  Philip Pape: A randomized control trial in overweight adults found that 12 weeks of combined aerobic and resistance exercise improved VO2 max by 13%, way more than either alone.
• 22:53
  Philip Pape: And it concluded that a combination of aerobic and resistance training is probably optimal for comprehensive fitness and body composition improvements in aging populations.
• 23:04
  Philip Pape: So again, no surprise there that a hybrid approach could be helpful.
• 23:08
  Philip Pape: Now, some people are doing it without even realizing it, like some of the circuit weight training where you do exercises sequentially with minimal rest, that ends up being like an endurance exercise, right?
• 23:20
  Philip Pape: It ends up being a form of cardio and then it boosts VO2 max.
• 23:24
  Philip Pape: So it doesn't matter how you're doing it, is the point.
• 23:28
  Philip Pape: If you're building strength as a priority and holding muscle as a priority, there are ways that you can work out and things you incorporate in your lifting sessions that will already boost your cardio fitness and your VO2 max when combined with walking that are more than you ever need, but not necessarily as much as you want if your goal is to get that number even higher.
• 23:45
  Philip Pape: So that's the nuance.
• 23:47
  Philip Pape: Now, for longevity, all right, the big picture on this, if blood pressure and cholesterol improve, and that's super convincing that we've already talked about.
• 23:57
  Philip Pape: We also see just the big number of mortality that adults who do strength train have a 15% lower risk of dying from any cause.
• 24:05
  Philip Pape: That's all cause mortality, and a 17% lower risk of cardiovascular disease events compared to those who do not use resistance training.
• 24:13
  Philip Pape: And much of that reduction kicks in at as little as 30 minutes of lifting per week.
• 24:21
  Philip Pape: So there is a minimum effective dose that is like a step change versus not lifting at all.
• 24:26
  Philip Pape: That's why it's so powerful to just start where you're at and do it, right?
• 24:30
  Philip Pape: Just because you're not lifting two or three or four days a week, lift 30 minutes a week versus nothing, you're gonna get a lot of benefits.
• 24:37
  Philip Pape: And then when you combine that with aerobic exercise, it's additive.
• 24:40
  Philip Pape: It's additive.
• 24:41
  Philip Pape: So there was an NIH study where older adults who did both had more than 40% lower 10-year mortality than those who did neither.
• 24:51
  Philip Pape: And then they outperformed those who only did one or the other as well.
• 24:55
  Philip Pape: And the reason is the two forms of exercise, they affect your health through some overlapping but distinct pathways.
• 25:01
  Philip Pape: It's kind of like a Venn diagram where you have two circles slightly overlapping.
• 25:05
  Philip Pape: So there's different mechanisms, and the thing in the middle benefits from both.
• 25:08
  Philip Pape: Well, cardio builds your cardiac efficiency and your ability to transport oxygen.
• 25:13
  Philip Pape: Lifting, of course, preserves muscle mass, strength, and functional independence.
• 25:17
  Philip Pape: And that's independently linked to survival.
• 25:19
  Philip Pape: And then muscle strength is a predictive mortality as well, sometimes more than aerobic fitness.
• 25:25
  Philip Pape: And the only way to increase that, of course, is resistance training.
• 25:28
  Philip Pape: So now the question becomes practical.
• 25:29
  Philip Pape: How do you set up your lifting to capture these benefits in the most efficient way?
• 25:35
  Philip Pape: So you don't feel like, oh my God, I have to lift four days a week and I have to do four sessions of cardio week or something like that.
• 25:41
  Philip Pape: Because that is not the case.
• 25:43
  Philip Pape: Or else I'd have no clients and I myself would not enjoy this.
• 25:46
  Philip Pape: So we've spent three segments putting the Cardios King advice under the microscope, showing you the ways that lifting improves your cardiovascular system, your blood pressure, blood vessels, cholesterol, insulin, visceral fat, VO2 max, mortality, just such overwhelming evidence.
• 26:00
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 26:00
  Philip Pape: Share this episode with anybody who needs to hear this, by the way.
• 26:04
  Philip Pape: The fix is almost annoyingly simple.
• 26:06
  Philip Pape: You don't need a separate cardio program.
• 26:08
  Philip Pape: You don't.
• 26:09
  Philip Pape: And I say need because there's want is a different thing.
• 26:12
  Philip Pape: You don't need to add 45 minutes on the treadmill after your lifting session.
• 26:16
  Philip Pape: You have to adjust how you lift and make sure you walk.
• 26:20
  Philip Pape: And then beyond that, it's kind of a bonus, or depending on what your goals are.
• 26:23
  Philip Pape: And I'm an engineer.
• 26:25
  Philip Pape: I think of it as like you've got one system, that's your body.
• 26:28
  Philip Pape: You could either run two or three programs to improve it, which takes two or three times the amount of time, or you can modify one thing to hit everything simultaneously.
• 26:36
  Philip Pape: So we're gonna do that.
• 26:37
  Philip Pape: So the first and simplest lever is honestly rest periods.
• 26:40
  Philip Pape: Now, this is interesting because I I have two, I'm of two minds.
• 26:45
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 26:45
  Philip Pape: I would say traditional strength programs where you're purely trying to build strength with big compound lifts like squats and deadlifts, you're gonna want to rest enough to get all those reps.
• 26:57
  Philip Pape: We're talking three to five minutes per set between sets.
• 27:00
  Philip Pape: And sometimes you don't get much of a cardiovascular stimulus doing that, doing it that way in terms of total volume of cardiostimulus, right?
• 27:08
  Philip Pape: You you might, your heart rate might spike when you do the rep, the reps, but then it drops.
• 27:13
  Philip Pape: So one of the hacks is once you're going to a more of a hybrid like strength and hypertrophy program, getting some exercises in there that limit your rest intervals to a shorter time period, like 60 seconds, or even using supersets and rest pause and things like that.
• 27:33
  Philip Pape: Now, you don't want to do with everything, but what I'm suggesting is that for some of your exercises in a workout, usually more the isolation stuff toward the end, using short rest periods could be a way to jack up your heart rate and get a little bit of endurance and cardio in while you're lifting weights.
• 27:47
  Philip Pape: Why not?
• 27:48
  Philip Pape: Right?
• 27:48
  Philip Pape: It's super efficient.
• 27:49
  Philip Pape: It's super efficient.
• 27:50
  Philip Pape: Now, we've talked about conjugate on this program before, where you have two of your four days are dynamic effort.
• 27:58
  Philip Pape: And when I've done conjugate before without bands or chains, but just with a bar, the the way that you do it is through very explosive, concentric movements and very short rest periods.
• 28:11
  Philip Pape: So, and and you, so and part of it is because you're trying to build work capacity, right?
• 28:15
  Philip Pape: So even powerlifters do do this.
• 28:17
  Philip Pape: Powerlifters do want to have higher work capacity as well.
• 28:20
  Philip Pape: And powerlifters today are much more fit that I'll say than they used to be, and a little bit leaner, right?
• 28:24
  Philip Pape: They don't carry as much excess weight, et cetera.
• 28:26
  Philip Pape: Um, and there have been studies that look at like the circuit protocols with short rest, and they they definitely improve VO2 max.
• 28:34
  Philip Pape: And of course, it's kind of obvious now based on what we talked about, because it becomes an aerobic exercise.
• 28:39
  Philip Pape: Now you know what you're thinking, right?
• 28:41
  Philip Pape: If I cut my rest periods, my strength will suffer.
• 28:43
  Philip Pape: And that is kind of true if you're doing heavy compound work near your max, but that even then you can periodize.
• 28:50
  Philip Pape: You can have days for heavy work and you can have lighter, I'll say circuit style or superset style or hypertrophy style work.
• 28:57
  Philip Pape: In fact, I have a program or two in physics university that's designed on that rotational structure.
• 29:02
  Philip Pape: You might have a strength and a hypertrophy and kind of a hybrid day all in one week, which kind of serves these other goals at the same time.
• 29:09
  Philip Pape: They're very efficient.
• 29:10
  Philip Pape: And then you're not choosing between strength and cardio, you're scheduling them both in pretty efficiently.
• 29:14
  Philip Pape: So rest periods is definitely an easy hack to think about.
• 29:17
  Philip Pape: The second thing is actually compound movements themselves, right?
• 29:21
  Philip Pape: The big squat, deadlift, press, rows, exercises that use large muscle groups and multiple joints are going to spike your heart rate the most.
• 29:31
  Philip Pape: They just are.
• 29:32
  Philip Pape: I mean, I used to do CrossFit and my heart rate would get way up, you know, like to 160s, 170s, whatever.
• 29:38
  Philip Pape: The spikes came down over time as I got more fit, of course.
• 29:41
  Philip Pape: But when I do really heavy deadlifts at 80% of my max, same thing happens.
• 29:45
  Philip Pape: Same thing happens.
• 29:46
  Philip Pape: Now, I might not be doing 20 of them for 10 minutes, like in CrossFit, right?
• 29:50
  Philip Pape: And that's the difference of the volume, but you get a spike.
• 29:54
  Philip Pape: If just look at your next, do a heavy set of squats and measure your heart rate and see what kind of demand you're getting for that.
• 30:01
  Philip Pape: It's massive.
• 30:02
  Philip Pape: And anybody who's done a decent amount of reps on heavy squats knows what the heck I'm talking about.
• 30:07
  Philip Pape: In fact, it's why we sometimes fear doing like a set of eight when you get really strong and you're using heavy weights.
• 30:12
  Philip Pape: A lot of people are like, oh yeah, I'd rather do eight than five.
• 30:14
  Philip Pape: No, no, no, you wouldn't.
• 30:16
  Philip Pape: Not always, trust me.
• 30:18
  Philip Pape: Right?
• 30:18
  Philip Pape: And then you're gasping, your heart's pounding, and you're you haven't even done any cardio, but it feels like it.
• 30:24
  Philip Pape: So you definitely build work capacity that way because of the mechanisms we talked about, it we talked about.
• 30:29
  Philip Pape: So if you're just lifting in a sort of traditional way with the big movements and then using isolation exercises to complement it with the dynamic work, with the superset stuff, with the short rest periods, you're gonna get a really big benefit for that.
• 30:41
  Philip Pape: All right, the next one I want to mention is kind of related to what we already talked about, and this is more of the rep range.
• 30:49
  Philip Pape: So if you use moderate or higher rep ranges, you're just naturally going to have a little bit more endurance training built in.
• 30:56
  Philip Pape: That's just what it comes down to.
• 30:57
  Philip Pape: It doesn't have to be a circuit training or superset per se, but just the fact that you're doing a little bit lighter work for, let's say, 15 or 20 reps.
• 31:04
  Philip Pape: I mean, if you're leg pressing for 15 to 20 reps, you're gonna get a cardio benefit as you do that.
• 31:10
  Philip Pape: And then you could add finishers to that.
• 31:11
  Philip Pape: You can add, I don't care, kettlebell swings or sled pushes, farmer carries, those kinds of things people like to do, rather than a separate quote unquote cardio session.
• 31:21
  Philip Pape: If you've never done a 50-yard sled push, I recommend it.
• 31:24
  Philip Pape: It will feel like a sprint and your quads are gonna remind you about it the next day for sure.
• 31:29
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 31:30
  Philip Pape: Then we have frequency.
• 31:32
  Philip Pape: You don't have to just start going to the gym way more than you do to get the heart benefits.
• 31:37
  Philip Pape: I still am a firm believer of find the minimum effective dose, increase the volume a little bit if you can fit it in.
• 31:44
  Philip Pape: And, you know, not much more than that.
• 31:46
  Philip Pape: In other words, for the most of us that have regular lives with busy lives, and we're not trying to compete or anything like that, I would say three full body or four or five split style program, you know, uh sessions a week for most people are gonna work and where you mix in some of the elements we've already talked about.
• 32:03
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 32:03
  Philip Pape: When you do have off days, that is where extra walking or cycling or some form of cardio like that, or even sprinting, can add to your cardiovascular load without competing with your lifting.
• 32:16
  Philip Pape: We're gonna do a whole episode about this coming up very, very soon.
• 32:18
  Philip Pape: So remember to follow this show so you get that episode.
• 32:21
  Philip Pape: So a very practical template would be three days of training a week, say Monday, Wednesday, Friday, that have this built-in cardio stimulus, two to three days of longer walks.
• 32:33
  Philip Pape: You're you should be walking every day anyway, but I'm saying, like on the days when you don't lift, have something more intentional built in.
• 32:39
  Philip Pape: It could be rucking with a rucksack, could be going for a hike, could be going for a bike ride, things like that.
• 32:44
  Philip Pape: Could be putting a sprint or two in there as well.
• 32:46
  Philip Pape: And that will cover your strength, your cardio, your daily movement, and you don't even have to add extra cardio per se, right?
• 32:53
  Philip Pape: Like even in the off days, it could just be walking.
• 32:56
  Philip Pape: So if you're time constrained, this is a really efficient approach.
• 32:59
  Philip Pape: So I want to kind of wrap up here by talking about a concept called physical reserve.
• 33:04
  Philip Pape: I want you to think of it like the gap between your maximal capacity and the effort required by your daily activities.
• 33:14
  Philip Pape: Climbing stairs, carrying groceries, playing with your kids or grandkids, getting off the floor.
• 33:18
  Philip Pape: Right.
• 33:19
  Philip Pape: When you have a low physical reserve, those everyday tasks are gonna be closer to your max.
• 33:24
  Philip Pape: And that's where, and you look, some of you that are listening that are heavier, that are overweight, or maybe used to be, maybe you aren't GOP1s, it doesn't matter if you how you've lost weight, but you know what it is, right?
• 33:35
  Philip Pape: You just out of breath, your heart rate spikes, your blood pressure goes up, you're just under stress from basic living.
• 33:40
  Philip Pape: I don't want to see you living that way.
• 33:41
  Philip Pape: I don't want to see people living that way.
• 33:43
  Philip Pape: It's it's very sad.
• 33:44
  Philip Pape: I see it all the time.
• 33:45
  Philip Pape: It's it's a huge percentage of our population.
• 33:47
  Philip Pape: And that is a cardiovascular risk factor that is just right there hiding in plain sight.
• 33:52
  Philip Pape: And it's visible, it's visible, right?
• 33:54
  Philip Pape: I'm not judging somebody because they're overweight.
• 33:56
  Philip Pape: I am sad for them because I know that they care about their own their ability to do the things they want to do in life.
• 34:06
  Philip Pape: And I think this all correlates with each other.
• 34:09
  Philip Pape: And and what we talk about on the show will absolutely get you there.
• 34:13
  Philip Pape: When you build muscle and strength through lifting, you expand that reserve.
• 34:17
  Philip Pape: Right?
• 34:18
  Philip Pape: That's why I think it's so important.
• 34:19
  Philip Pape: It's not the cardio loan, isn't necessarily gonna do that.
• 34:22
  Philip Pape: The things that used to tack your system, tax your system that are physical become easier.
• 34:27
  Philip Pape: And your heart then isn't working as hard during your daily life, your blood pressure stays lower throughout the day.
• 34:33
  Philip Pape: You're giving your heart system more margin.
• 34:36
  Philip Pape: Okay, it's like over-engineering your body so it handles loads without the stress.
• 34:40
  Philip Pape: That's what we want.
• 34:41
  Philip Pape: And so, and then this matters more as we get older.
• 34:44
  Philip Pape: Once you hit 40, 45, 50, you're the default, the default is losing muscle and losing strength and gaining fat and gaining belly fat, watching that reserve shrink until normal activities then are constantly stressing your heart, which is why people get heart disease and why heart disease is the number one killer for men and women.
• 35:04
  Philip Pape: So the investment you make in training isn't just about the superficial things or the time in the gym.
• 35:11
  Philip Pape: It's one of the most important investments in your life.
• 35:15
  Philip Pape: So, whatever time it takes, which it shouldn't take very long if you listen to this show, we want you to be efficient about it, it could be the most important time you invest, other than say, though, the time in your relationships and maybe your sleep.
• 35:27
  Philip Pape: Right?
• 35:28
  Philip Pape: So then your heart doesn't have to work as hard to support you through everything else you do.
• 35:33
  Philip Pape: And that is, I'll say, the real argument for lifting as cardiovascular medicine, along with the other forms of movement we talked about.
• 35:41
  Philip Pape: All right, so that's like the main thrust of this episode.
• 35:43
  Philip Pape: Now I'm right after this, I'm gonna share that 10-second heart rate recovery test I mentioned.
• 35:48
  Philip Pape: It's a really practical tool to give you immediate feedback.
• 35:50
  Philip Pape: You could start tracking it as you train.
• 35:52
  Philip Pape: If you want to put that into practice, anything we talked about today, with personalized guidance, but without hiring a one-on-one coach, check out Fitness Lab.
• 36:02
  Philip Pape: This app is so powerful, guys.
• 36:04
  Philip Pape: We're getting amazing feedback on how it listens to you, helps you through hard times, adapts to your goals.
• 36:10
  Philip Pape: What whether that's building strength, losing fat, improving your blood markers, all of the above, it gives you tasks to do every day and it gives you coaching on exactly what's going on so you don't guess.
• 36:21
  Philip Pape: And it pulls in your data to help with that.
• 36:23
  Philip Pape: So it's 20% off now through February 17th.
• 36:25
  Philip Pape: Go to witsandweights.com slash app.
• 36:28
  Philip Pape: Link is in the show notes.
• 36:29
  Philip Pape: That's witsandweights.com slash app for 20% off.
• 36:32
  Philip Pape: All right, here's the 10-second heart rate recovery test.
• 36:36
  Philip Pape: Here's a simple test.
• 36:38
  Philip Pape: It takes 10 seconds and tells you more about your cardiovascular fitness than your resting heart rate does.
• 36:44
  Philip Pape: At the end of your heartest set in the gym, that set that leaves you breathing really heavy, check your heart rate.
• 36:52
  Philip Pape: So if you have a wearable, you could do that, or you can do it manually by counting your pulse for six seconds and multiplying it by 10.
• 36:59
  Philip Pape: Then I want you to be totally still.
• 37:01
  Philip Pape: Sit or stand still for one minute and check it again.
• 37:04
  Philip Pape: So check your heart rate right after the heavy set, check it again a minute later.
• 37:09
  Philip Pape: That difference is your heart rate recovery, your HR.
• 37:14
  Philip Pape: So if your heart rate drops by 12 or more beats in that minute, that's considered normal.
• 37:20
  Philip Pape: If it's less than 12, then based on research, this is a marker of reduced cardiovascular fitness and increased mortality risk.
• 37:29
  Philip Pape: So you want it to be at least 12.
• 37:32
  Philip Pape: And then over time, as your fitness improves from lifting and moving and being, you know, having this lifestyle, you're you should see that number go up.
• 37:40
  Philip Pape: You might start at 15 and eventually get to 25 or maybe 30.
• 37:45
  Philip Pape: It is one of the most responsive fitness markers available.
• 37:48
  Philip Pape: I don't think I've ever talked about it on the show.
• 37:50
  Philip Pape: It's so easy.
• 37:51
  Philip Pape: You don't need equipment, you don't need blood work.
• 37:53
  Philip Pape: It's called heart rate recovery.
• 37:54
  Philip Pape: Just try it at your next session.
• 37:56
  Philip Pape: Pick the most demanding set, measure your peak heart rate, wait a minute, measure how much it dropped, write it down, do it again every few weeks and see what the trend looks like.
• 38:06
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 38:07
  Philip Pape: Until next time, keep using your wits, lifting those weights.
• 38:10
  Philip Pape: And remember, every rep you do isn't just building muscle.
• 38:13
  Philip Pape: It is building a stronger heart, healthier blood vessels, a longer life.
• 38:16
  Philip Pape: I'm Philip Cape, and I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights Podcast.