Strength vs. Cardio Over The Age Of 50

Share this blog:

When you decide to improve your health, a range of questions inevitably pop up. One of the questions I hear a lot is whether someone over the age of 50 should do strength training or cardio training for optimal health and longevity.

Now, this is a complicated question and the answer can differ from person to person depending on age, goals and medical conditions. In this blog post, I’ll attempt to answer the question if one of these two is better and, if so, when. Please keep in mind to advise a medical professional if you have any concerns about either of these activities for your personal health.

Pros And Cons Of Strength Training

First, there’s strength/resistance training. This is the type of training where you pick up a set of dumbbells or use your body weight to give the muscles and your body a difficult time. Exercises include things like squats, push-ups, and rows among others.

The great thing about strength training at a later age is that it keeps you young. By intentionally and regularly making your muscles work much harder than they need to, your body thinks this strength is needed for survival. As a result, you become stronger and this makes everyday life a lot easier. Specifically, here are the main pros of strength training.

Pros

• Preservation of muscle mass: studies have shown that strength training is effective in preserving muscle mass and strength as individuals age, mitigating the effects of sarcopenia (age-related muscle loss) (source).
• Bone health: research indicates that resistance training stimulates bone growth and helps prevent age-related bone loss, reducing the risk of osteoporosis and fractures (source).
• Metabolism boost: evidence suggests that increasing muscle mass through strength training can boost metabolism, as muscle tissue is more metabolically active than fat tissue (source).
• Functional strength: studies have shown that building strength through resistance training improves daily functional abilities, making activities like lifting groceries and climbing stairs easier and safer (source).
• Improved mental health: weightlifting has been associated with improvements in mental health, including reductions in depression, anxiety, and stress [source].
• Joint health: strengthening muscles around joints can help alleviate joint pain and reduce the risk of injuries, particularly in weight-bearing joints like knees and hips (source).
• Heart health: strength training strengthens the heart muscle, improves circulation, and helps lower blood pressure and cholesterol levels, reducing the risk of heart disease. This is typically something that’s attributed to cardio exercise, but it turns out that strength training is slightly more beneficial for heart health than cardio is (source).

Cons

The great thing about strength training is that, if you’re a healthy individual, there are basically no real cons that have been proven by scientific studies. Instead, these are the cons that are most often mentioned:

• Little excitement: strength training at home or in the gym, for some people, isn’t the most entertaining form of exercise. It requires you to do a set, take a rest, and repeat over and over.
• Intimidating to get started: for some, lifting weights or working with their body weight is intimidating. Another level of difficulty is added when people try to join a gym and are thrown off by the machines and the other people in the gym that seem to be fitter than they are.
• Injury risk when exercises are done wrong and with heavy weights: Heavy exercises (such as squats, deadlifts, and rows) performed with heavy weight and improper technique will lead to injury. However, this is the case for many forms of exercise, and taking your time to learn the technique and do so with lower weight is therefore important.

Pros And Cons Of Cardio

Doing cardio is another great way to stay in physical shape. The one thing cardio is best at, compared to strength training, is burning fat. Therefore, it’s an excellent thing to incorporate if weight management is something you’re interested in.

Pros

• Fat loss: cardiovascular exercise is effective for burning calories and aiding in fat loss, particularly when combined with a healthy diet. It does so more effectively than strength training (source).
• Mental health: aerobic exercise has been shown to reduce stress, anxiety, and depression, improving overall mental well-being and cognitive function (source).
• Endurance: regular cardio exercise increases stamina and endurance, making daily activities and recreational pursuits easier and more enjoyable (source, source).
• Longevity: numerous studies have linked regular cardiovascular exercise with a reduced risk of premature death and an overall longer lifespan (source)

Cons

• Joint pain: Engaging in higher impact activities can worsen joint pain or aggravate existing musculoskeletal issues, especially in individuals with arthritis or joint degeneration (source).
• Overuse injuries: When training volume or intensity is excessively high, there’s a risk of overuse injuries like stress fractures or tendonitis (source).

Is Strength Or Cardio Training Better For You?

Again, I’m going to make general recommendations assuming you’re in normal shape. After taking all the pros and cons into account, you may still wonder what type of exercise is best for you.

Goal: General Health Or Strength

For general health or strength purposes after 50, most studies recommend doing strength training at least 2-3 times per week. Preferably, this is combined with regular (low-intensity) cardio as well. This could be walking, swimming, or running depending on your health and fitness levels.

Strength training is recommended because it combats age-related muscle loss (sarcopenia) and, as a result, helps keep you strong. As a result, you’re less likely to injure yourself when you fall, and more likely to keep your independence as you get older.

On top of that, it has many of the same positive effects on heart health and mental mood that aerobic exercises have, but with the added benefit of being stronger. Finally, strength training exercises are performed in a very controlled manner, which means your risk of injuring yourself is extremely low.

Goal: Fat Loss

On the other hand, cardio is fantastic at helping you lose fat. That’s probably the only way in which cardio is superior to strength training. In all other ways, such as heart health and mental mood, cardio provides many of the same benefits as strength training. The only extra con that comes along with cardio is that injury risk is higher depending on the type of cardio you’re doing.

If you’re specifically looking to lose fat, then focusing on doing cardio 3 times per week combined with eating a healthy deficit of 400 – 500 calories per day should be what your routine looks like. For best results, you should also eat a healthy amount of protein (0.8 – 1 lbs per gram of body weight) to maintain as much muscle mass as possible.

Share This On Pinterest!

Stefan K.

Stefan has been vegan since 2019 and has been regularly working on his strength since the beginning of 2023. He’s on a mission to help other vegans get stronger and have all of them achieve the quality of life they deserve.