The difference between active jogging and more intense training, such as interval training and weightlifting, lies in the type of energy system the body uses to fuel these exercises: aerobic vs. anaerobic.
Whether or not you need to prioritize aerobic or anaerobic exercise depends on your goals, but a balanced fitness routine should include both. Learn the difference between the two types of exercise and what’s going on in your body.
Anaerobic and aerobic exercise: What’s the difference?
The distinction between aerobic and anaerobic exercise textbooks is whether oxygen is used to generate the energy needed for effort. “During aerobic exercise, the body relies primarily on oxygen to produce energy,” says Trevor Thieme of CSCS. “That’s not the case during anaerobic exercise.”
In fact, whether exercise is aerobic or anaerobic depends on its duration and intensity.
Anaerobic exercise
According to kinesian Francis Lee Smith, MS, PN1, and anaerobic movement, “It can only be done with repeating, short bursts, and requires an appropriate amount of recovery (between them).”
To work at this level, you can work hard with each burst of physical activity and work at a pace that can be maintained for up to 2 minutes. Examples of anaerobic movement include:
Most Bodi programs can be categorized primarily as anaerobic.
Aerobic exercise
On the other hand, aerobic exercise is generally performed “at a low or medium pace over a long period of time,” Smith says. In practice, it usually involves activities that last longer than 2-3 minutes, and generally covers what trainers call low-intensity exercise and steady-state aerobic exercise.
Examples of aerobic exercise include:
How the body uses both energy systems during exercise
Technically, the body does not rely solely on aerobic or anaerobic energy production.
“We use three different systems to generate energy. Two are anaerobic and one is aerobic. They are all in operation, whether they walk the dog, do knee swim, track spaced, or pump iron.” “But the intensity and duration of each match of effort determine which system is emphasized.”
Once you start exercising, your body cannot immediately meet your energy needs with the current available supply of oxygen, so you use anaerobic respiration (also known as “anaerobic metabolism”) to compensate for the deficiency known as “oxygen deficiency.”
Anaerobic breathing is one of the main sources of energy when you are experiencing repeated attacks of short-term tasks (sprint intervals, squats, curls, etc.). The reason is that its production speed is very fast, and is actually much faster than aerobic respiration, allowing it to meet the immediate high demand for energy from the muscles.
However, if the athletic match lasts for more than 2-3 minutes, aerobic metabolism (high production capacity and slow production speed) will have time to speed up and take over.
This is an overview of how three energy systems (phosphogen, glycolysis, and oxidizers) work during exercise.
Using energy systems by exercise intensity and duration
| Strength | interval | Energy systems used |
| Very expensive | 0-6 seconds | Phosphagen (anaerobic) |
| Very expensive | 6-30 seconds | Phosphagen and glycolytic (anaerobic) |
| expensive | 30 seconds to 2 minutes | Dissolubilization (anaerobic) |
| Moderate | 2-3 minutes | Dissolubilization and oxidation (aerobic) |
| low | 3 minutes + | Oxidation (aerobic) |
Anaerobic or aerobic exercise: Which is better for your goals?
“I recommend all the mix,” says Smith. “It’s important to tax your mind and body in a variety of ways,” she says. This means that a balanced exercise program for general fitness should include both anaerobic and aerobic activities as they tend to build different skills and produce different outcomes.
- Anaerobic exercise usually increases muscle mass, strength, force, and overall speed.
- Aerobic exercise usually helps build endurance and have a major impact on cardiovascular health.
Even if you are focused on aerobic goals, such as running a half marathon, anaerobic exercise can help you improve your performance.
Strength training, for example, can help runners improve speed, economy, power, time to fatigue, and even VO2 Max. On the other hand, if your main focus is strength training, doing light aerobic exercise between workouts can help you optimize your recovery.
Are you focused on weight loss? It becomes anaerobic
But if your goal is weight loss, the exercise type recommended by science may surprise you: anaerobic. “Studies show that anaerobic exercise usually results in greater fat loss than aerobic exercise, mainly because you keep your metabolism going longer after exercise,” says Thieme.
The idea loses the popular (non-science-based) wisdom that believes slow and steady exercise will win fat-reducing races. But looking back at the idea of creating oxygen vacancies, it makes sense. When doing anaerobic exercise, switching to aerobic metabolism, like when traveling for example, does not compensate for that initial oxygen deficiency.
In fact, your oxygen-deficient compounds will ultimately become oxygen debt. The process of paying off that debt will keep your body’s metabolism rising for hours (or hours according to some studies) after you stop exercising. White coats are called post-exercise oxygen consumption, or excessive phenomenon of EPOC. You may know it as the “afterbahn effect.”
In any case, the bottom line is: Aerobic exercise can burn more calories during a workout just because such workouts tend to last longer, but anaerobic exercise generally burns more calories overall.
How to tell if your workout is aerobic or anaerobic
Heart Rate Monitor
Heart rate monitors are the most accurate way to determine if you are exercising in an anaerobic or aerobic zone. “If you’re above 80% of your maximum heart rate, you’re anaerobic,” says Thieme.
Talk test
If you don’t own a heart rate monitor or have access to it, try the talk test. “If you find it difficult to speak even short sentences, or if you rate exercises above 15 on a scale of 20, you exercise anaerobically,” says Thieme. If you can continue the conversation, you are working aerobic.
In fact, if you find it difficult to talk during a nine-mile run, or if you can talk about politics with your peers during a Focus T25 workout, it may mean it’s a little more difficult. But as always, don’t forget that your fitness level is a key factor. “If you’re new to fitness, jumping into a series of 40-yard sprints is not advice, but 20-minute jogging might be viable,” Smith said.
Your goal is to walk between pushing yourself hard enough to optimize your progress and pushing yourself very hard. “A talk test will help you stay on track,” says Thieme.
