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Comment by 09bjb | Hacker News Reader

Weight training tends to be moderately cardiovascular. Not an out-and-out replacement for cardio, but your heart will be pumping hard at higher weights/reps. Same thing for a long session in a hot sauna. Just throwing some nearly-as-good alternatives out there for people who hate treadmills.

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Just to throw in some new terms, weight training tends to be more anaerobic, where things like distance running are more aerobic (where oxygen provides most of the energy). It's not an either/or, but more of a scale progressing from aerobic to anaerobic. Lifting more weight is generally more anaerobic than lifting less weight. And the downside of anaerobic exercise is that you can generally only do it for short periods of time.

Since I don't have a Science subscription, I can only read the summary, and they do not explain what type of exercise they required the mice do. So if someone with access can clarify, please do. But from what I know of similar "cleaning out" studies, the exercise is generally distance running. So weightlifting for a short period of time is probably not going to give you the benefit this study refers to, even if you're burning the same number (or more) calories, because you didn't do it for as long of a period of time.

In particular, dead lifts wind me every time. After a set I feel like I just ran up a few flights of stairs. Other lifts not as much, but man I have respect for the dead lift. Works damn near every muscle in your body at the same time.

Yeah, it's not aerobic at all, unless you're doing 1 set of 100,000.

Gotta be more careful with your words. There's some component of aerobic metabolism in weightlifting, even if we colloquially think of lifting as anaerobic exercise. If you start breathing harder when you lift stuff, it's because your body needs more oxygen to provide energy to your body.

Technically you're correct (the best kind of correct!) but I don't know if I'd be under the opinion that somehow doing a 5x5 (or, whatever) of Deadlifts is going to positively effect your cardiovascular system in a training sense, to the point where doing separate cardio is unnecessary.

Depending on the exertion you put forth, a different energy system is going to be utilized by the body.

* Deadlifts: ATP Creatine Phosphate

* Cardio: Aerobic

I suggest you read Tactical Barbell and TB 2 the conditioning guide(search for PDF). Contrary to popular wisdom, the two systems are not independent of each other

No, I didn't say they were. The point being is that you're not going to get great aerobic conditioning from deadlifts when compared to any other specific aerobic activity, like running.

That shouldn't even pass the sniff test, yes? If you would like to test the theory, I'll run for 5 weeks, you deadlift, then we'll test our aerobic thresholds (or whatever else you'd like to do!) :)

I hate treadmills, but going for a bike ride or a walk is awesome. I don't know why people go to the gym to run...

Sometimes the weather blows.

Probably for the same reason people go to the gym to exercise yet don't do any pushups at home: we pathologically avoid exercise, so we often must compartmentalize it away from our life to actually do it.

You can watch TV on a treadmill, something that is much harder (and more dangerous) while running outside.

Because it’s easy to set targets and measure them while in the gym, but it’s not easy to fit that kind of exercise into the day to day.

People often live too close to work for the bike ride to really be considered exercise, or too far, where they couldn’t feasibly fit it into their day.

I get it, doing exercise for free seems like a no-brainier, but not everyone’s life and exercise needs converge neatly to make it easy.

> easy to set targets and measure them while in the gym

The cost of the gym will pay for a GPS watch and heart-rate monitor pretty quickly.

But I understand that some places might be too high density or unsafe to run, or the weather is too hostile.

I'm fortunate enough to live 10km from work, so I switch up between running AND riding the distance.

There's another article on the front page that pollution increases the risk of either getting or accelerating Alzheimers, I forget which. Either way, if you live in a city, getting aerobic exercise out of doors is probably counter-productive when done for the purpose of cleaning your brain. In that case, indoors at a gym might be an option, if it's well ventilated and fresh air is filtered first.own.

Because the outside air is polluted and having to wear a air filter while exercising is unpleasant.

Because I have to watch out for traffic and pedestrians outside, and driving to a cycling/running path takes about 15 minutes anyway.

Because looking at healthy, fit people exercising gives me more motivation to get in shape.

Because I can devote more attention to my audiobooks than if I was exercising on the streets.

Because the gym is in my apartment complex, so I just go downstairs and walk 2 minutes to the gym.

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