Minimal Intensity or Elevated Intensity: Aerobic or Anaerobic Exercise session

Article by Avi Marents

Aerobic exercise seems to be a core component of many fitness programs, especially beginners workout routines. But, would the addition of anaerobic exercise be beneficial? A fundamental question centers around aerobic vs anaerobic exercise and the benefits that each offer. The contrast is really low intensity vs high intensity. In general, most people consider aerobic exercise a fat burning cardio activity of low intensity. Most do not know much about anaerobic exercise. Anaerobic exercise also includes a high intensity portion, such as strength training or an HIIT program.

Aerobic literally means “with oxygen.” Oxygen is required to keep muscles in motion for a long period of time. Muscles use this oxygen to burn fat. Aerobic exercises include activities that are long duration and low to moderate intensity, including jogging, swimming, cycling, or skiing.

Anaerobic, on the other hand, means “without oxygen”; of course, your body will still need oxygen during anaerobic exercise but your muscles do not receive enough to keep up the extremely intense pace. Without the oxygen, your muscles are forced to burn glycogen, a component of carbohydrates. Exercise that is intense and of short duration is considered anaerobic activity, such as weight training or sprinting.

Aerobic exercise has a number of health benefits. Your heart, lungs and blood flow are improved with a minimum of thirty daily minutes of exercise, which, in the end, means a longer lifespan. These are among the other benefits:

1. Losing weight

2. Increasing endurance

3. Improved immune system

4. Reduced risk of obesity, heart disease, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, stroke, and certain types of cancer

5. Improving circulation and the cardiovascular system

6. Increasing beneficial cholesterol while decreasing harmful cholesterol.

You can also benefit from anaerobic exercise. Anaerobic exercise makes your muscles stronger and helps decrease body fat. A strength training routine allows you to build muscle mass, increase bone density, decrease body fat, and provides many of the same overall health benefits as aerobic exercise. Another popular anaerobic program is called an HIIT routine, which is a series of short bursts of highly intense activity followed by short periods for recovery. It has been demonstrated that this sort of exercise increases metabolism after the routine, which results in more calories burned than with a low intensity work out. There’s also the release of HGH, a hormone that promotes fat loss and muscle gain. You’ll also enjoy an improved aerobic capacity and much better cardiovascular system.

As you can see, both aerobic training and anaerobic training each have unique benefits. As such, both have great benefit as part of an exercise regimen. But, a beginner should start out with an aerobic exercise regimen. To perform high intensity anaerobic training, you must have a good aerobic base built up. More advanced work out fans often wonder if they should favor one variety of exercise over another. For most of these regular exercisers, aerobic activity often seems far too easy and doesn’t seem to provide any real benefit, especially when compared to anaerobic exercise. No matter how advanced you are in your programs, your exercise program should include both, since there are many significant health benefits to be gained from both the high and low intensity exercises. Also, you need to avoid performing anaerobic exercise too often, as that often leads to overtraining or burnout.

Next time you choose between aerobic vs anaerobic exercise, remember that the difference is really low intensity vs high intensity. Aerobic training is low intensity, long duration and anaerobic training is high intensity, short duration. Aerobic exercises like walking or jogging offer numerous health and cardiovascular benefits while anaerobic exercises such as a strength training routine or HIIT routine generally allow for more efficient fat burning and muscle building.