First part: Lot of people who workout barely do any cardio, there’s even this belief that cardio will make you lose muscle mass, but unless you’re an athlete it’s completely ridiculous to worry about that. The people that are in the best all around shape are very often not the ones who look the most fit or that are the strongest. We need fat on our body as an energy reserve, just doing cardio doesn’t build enough muscle mass to slow down the effects of aging on it, just building muscle mass without doing cardio means your heart might be the weakest link in your body…
Second part: Not sure, I guess they mean that it takes a while to not feel fine from the damage accumulated from not taking care of yourself and by the time you don’t feel fine anymore most of the damage is irreversible… I guess it’s true for many things… If you damaged your knees from being overweight for a long time, suddenly losing weight won’t make the cartilage reappear for example…
Meh, this is not a great take. Resistance training is unambigiously great for the heart, nearly as good as aerobic in isolation. A runner who doesn’t do resistance training is in roughly the same position as a weight lifter who doesn’t run (both seem to reduce risk by 30-70%)
However, aerobic and resistance together seem to be better than either in isolation.
Additionally, resistance training has a number of additional health benefits outside of cardiovascular health, to the point that I would say that doing resistance training in isolation is functionally a better use of time for your health than aerobic exercise.
Ideally, you should do both.
The only time this is not true really is when the individual is taking PEDs which do increase risk of heart failure.
Now you have me paranoid. I am pretty fit and active, and I certainly have plenty of fat on my body as an energy reserve. It’s 90% cardio though. My weight training is just roughhousing with two kids climbing all over me basically.
I have never personally placed value on bulking up. My legs are already huge from running/cycling and while my arms are not especially big, they’re wiry and plenty strong enough for my normal needs.
Do I really need to think about weight training as well? To reiterate: I don’t care about looking like Arnold Schwarzenegger, I just want to be pretty fit and active in my 80’s for future hypothetical grandkids.
It’s all a balancing act, without changing the activities you do you start losing muscle mass in your thirties. The good news with kids is that most love climbing so that can be a great activity to do with them if it’s available around where you live and you don’t like weight training.
If you already run and ride you’re ahead of most, so don’t get too paranoid about it!
https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/preserve-your-muscle-mass
