Use These 3 Steps to Find the Perfect Balance of Cardio and Strength Training
By: Marx D.
Tags: Exercise, Running, Fitness, Strength Training, Health

Use These 3 Steps to Find the Perfect Balance of Cardio and Strength Training

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The right balance between cardio and strength training can be difficult to find.

I’ve bounced around a lot between doing more cardio or doing more weights until I recently found the perfect combination. It took me a while to find it because it’s unique to my body type.

Typically, people are either ‘runners’ or ‘meatheads’ who do strength training and might include a few cardio days. This happens because it’s difficult to switch between cardio and strength training in the same workout. Also, doing one takes away from the impact of the other during the same workout.

For example, many trainers will say not to do a lot of cardio after you strength train because it diminishes your workout. Instead of destroying your muscles with just strength training, you double down and tire out your entire body.

This is why you might see someone who just lifted weights walking on a treadmill after they lift as a cooldown.

This is toxic for a fitness routine because it leads your exercise routines down a path that leans too far one way for either cardio or weights. Unless you’re trying to focus on one more than the other, your routine should be a perfect balance of both so your body can benefit the most.

The problem with this is everyone’s body is different. Some people need more cardio than weights to look and feel great. Others might need the opposite.

It can be difficult to find the right balance in your workout routine but these steps will help.

1) Analyze Your Body

This is the part that I skipped over at first. Analyzing your body will help you to make a better exercise routine.

This should be done in two ways:

Short-term analysis

Long-term analysis

Looking at my body under these two different scopes helped me understand how my body reacts to different types of workouts.

My long-term analysis was that I was always on the thinner side my entire life and lifting weights helped me add muscle to my bones in my early 20s. It helped me understand that my body really takes to cardio and sheds weight quickly. However, I know I can add weight and muscle if I focus on it.

My short-term analysis told me that in the last few years, I hadn’t contributed as much cardio and my body was changing because of it. It helped me understand that even though my body reacts well to cardio, it doesn’t mean that I can slack off on it by only including one cardio day a week.

By analyzing my body in these ways, I was able to start down the path of changing the workout routine.

2) Change Your Existing Routine

I started with the workout routine that I was already using at the time and went from there. You don’t have to do this, but it helped me a lot because I didn’t have to build my new routine from scratch.

The first thing you’re going to need to do is remember to keep what works. If you like doing chest day on Mondays, keep it that way. Don’t change any aspect of your workout routine that has been working well.

After that, remove any cardio days and break days. Doing this will open up your schedule and make space for rearranging your routine. After everything is done, you can put your break and cardio days back in where they fit best.

After this step, you should only have the days that have been working well for you and some holes in your schedule. If every day was already working well for you and you don’t have holes in your schedule, I’m not sure why you decided to read this article, your routine is obviously fine.

Once you have some holes in your schedule, figure out what’s missing. For me, I was missing a leg day, a shoulders day, a cardio day and a break day. All I had scheduled still was a chest day and an arm day.

From here, it’s time to rebuild. The rebuilding process is different for each person, but this is how I did mine.

I changed my leg day into a full-body workout day that included a cardio session. This way I was sure to hit my legs, get some cardio in and work on my shoulders. I made sure it was a day I had more time so I could do everything.

This worked for me because it was a combination of cardio and weights that was deliberately done to wear my entire body out. From here, I kept innovating and added in a day specifically for cardio because my short-term analysis told me I needed more cardio.

At this point, I had four days covered and two days left to plan because I knew one day would be my break day. For me, I decided it was best to balance out the last two days with another cardio day and then a dedication day. The dedication day is a day that I decided to dedicate to any workout of my choosing depending on how I felt.

I decided to roll with this workout for a month and the results were amazing. Not only was I feeling better, but my body was looking the way I wanted it to as well. It’s because I was on an exercise routine that was optimal for my body and I was thriving off of.

3) Make Tweaks

If the workout changes you implemented weren’t a complete success, you might find yourself making tweaks to the schedule. I didn’t do this at first but found myself doing it after the first four weeks.

It was nothing major, but I found that the dedication day kept turning out to be another cardio day. This led me to officially changing my schedule to be three cardio days, a chest day, an arm day, a full body day and a break day. It‘s been working out great for me.

This is just what worked for me to balance my cardio and strength training. Every person is different and so is every workout. I’ve been thinking about tinkering with my routine even more and possibly swapping in another break day instead of a cardio day.

Your workout routine should be an ever-changing schedule. Your short-term analysis of yourself will change over time and so will your body’s needs. Continually analyzing and tweaking your exercise routine will help you maintain a workout schedule that works the best for you.

It’s important to balance cardio and strength training with a workout schedule and to have confidence in it.