Which Workout Helps Cholesterol More: Weights or Cardio?

6 min read

SO YOUR DOCTOR said to include exercise in the lifestyle changes you’re making to get your cholesterol under control. But what kind of exercise, exactly, should you be doing?

Both cardio and weight training affect your cholesterol in different ways. Ultimately, “you need both aerobic and resistance types as they complement each other,” says Neil Smart, PhD, Professor in Exercise and Sports Science at Australia’s University of New England. He knows: he’s the author of a review of studies published in Sports Medicine that clarified that each type of exercise acted on cholesterol in slightly different ways.

And overall, workouts are useful: Exercise lowered participants’ LDL (“bad” cholesterol) by about 7 milligrams per deciliter (mg/dL), reduced artery-clogging very low-density lipoprotein (vLDL) by about 4 mg/dL, and took down triglycerides by about 8 mg/dL on average. Working out increased HDL (“good” cholesterol) by about 2 mg/dl.

Those might not seem like huge takedowns (or lifts, when it comes to HDL, which you want to be high). But here’s the thing: In addition to all of the aspects of cholesterol that exercise affects, it can do what drugs and diet can’t: It can raise HDL, he explains. That’s important, because that’s the marker that usually needs extra help. Virtually everyone with high levels of harmful lipids has low HDL, says Smart. While low HDL is half the problem with their cholesterol, it’s comparatively harder to fix with medications like statins.

Here’s how each type of exercise can help improve your cholesterol:

How Cardio Affects Cholesterol

CARDIO—AEROBIC ACTIVITIES like walking, running, swimming, and cycling—not only reduces total cholesterol, LDL, vLDL and triglycerides, it starts working on your blood fats right away. These workouts burn triglycerides in your bloodstream as fuel.

Then, over time, consistent training acts on both LDL and HDL. Here’s how it works:

To Take Down Your LDL

Regular aerobic activity alters LDL cholesterol so that it clears out of your blood more easily and causes less harm while it’s there. Specifically, cardio:

• Helps break down fats in your blood by boosting enzymes (including one called lipoprotein lipase) that do that kind of work.

• Gets LDL out before it turns nasty. Cardio turns up your cells’ LDL receptors so you clear more LDL from your blood before it has time to oxidize and damage the lining of your blood vessels. “Oxidized LDL cholesterol is the kind that’s dangerous,” says Sara K. Rosenkranz, PhD, a professor of kinesiology and nutrition sciences at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas.

• Reshapes LDL particles so they’re less dangerous. If you have high LDL, the particles themselves are small and dense, making them more likely to settle into artery walls, explains George A. Kelley, DA, FACSM, a Research Professor in the School of Public and Population Health at Boise State University. “Exercise seems to make them more puffy, less dense, and those have been shown to contribute less to atherosclerosis.”

To Raise Your HDL

Aerobic exercise can increase HDL by about 10 percent and improve its function, says William E. Kraus, M.D., Professor of Medicine at Duke University. Cardio workouts:

• Reduce HDL particle size. Exercise helps your body produce small HDL particles, which are especially good at removing cholesterol before it has time to form dangerous plaques in your blood vessels, says Kraus.

• Improve HDL’s ability to remove bad cholesterol from your blood. Docs call this process cholesterol efflux. “At high intensities or in high amounts, exercise seems to increase our ability to efflux, so it makes your HDL function better,” says Mark Sarzynski, Ph.D., an associate professor of exercise science at the University of South Carolina. In other words, exercise gets blood pumping through your blood vessels, which might stimulate more HDL to get to work, he says.

How Weight Training Affects Cholesterol

Research also suggests that lifting at low or moderate intensities (about 50 to 75 percent of your one-rep max) might improve HDL levels by increasing the activity of enzymes that help HDL shuttle artery-clogging lipids to your liver for disposal.

How Much Do You Need to Work Out to Change Your Cholesterol?

Note that more time does seem to equal extra benefits. Smart’s research showed that adding just a minute to each workout session could raise HDL by 2 mg/dL over an average of 12 weeks.

Adding more sessions helps, too: Each extra weekly cardio workout reduced triglycerides by about 8 mg/dL. There’s probably a plateau at some point, but we don’t know how many weeks it will take, says Smart. Most studies lasted about 12 weeks, with a range of 3 to 52 weeks.

For resistance training to help with cholesterol, lift two to three times per week. Do one to three sets of eight to 10 exercises at about 40 to 80 percent of your one-rep max for the big muscle groups: arms, legs, chest, and back, suggests Kelley. Rest for two to three minutes between each exercise and between each set.

The more you exercise, the more results you’ll see. If you’re consistent, you might improve your lipid numbers in four to eight weeks, says Kelley.

Exercise Is Important—And So Is Food

“EXERCISE’S EFFECT ON LDL cholesterol is relatively small as compared to some of our other established treatments, medications, and diet changes, but it’s still meaningful,” says Dr. Rosenkranz. Regular aerobic activity can drop your LDL by 5 to 10 percent, she adds. Cardio and weights raise HDL about the same amount.

Of course, when you’re looking to change your cholesterol, you can’t stop there. The old rule still applies: You can’t outrun a bad diet.

“Even if you’re exercising an hour a day, there are still 23 hours of the day that really matter for metabolizing things, including fats and lipids,” says Sarzynski. Combining exercise and diet changes can help you reduce your LDL by 20 to 30 percent, says Rosenkranz. If you eat better and move more, you might lose body fat, which can also slash high cholesterol levels.

Exercise and diet also improve insulin sensitivity and chronic inflammation, reducing your risk of arterial damage from elevated cholesterol, says Kelley.

Of course, cholesterol isn’t the only endpoint in terms of how cardio and weights help your cardiovascular health. “Exercise is going to improve a lot of other things as well, such as blood pressure, blood glucose control, body weight, and body composition,” says Smart. That adds up to a reduction in your overall risk of heart disease, and that’s the whole point.

If you have genetically high cholesterol, lifestyle changes alone might not lower your numbers enough to avoid lipid-lowering medication such as statins. However, they might help you start with a lower dose, says Rosenkranz.