A lot of people looking to bulk up and build muscle do not do cardio. The thought is that cardio will impair or even reduce your muscle growth. Just look at marathon runners! The “no cardio” thinking is not 100% true. People looking to build muscle and make big gains should not completely dismiss cardio, they just need to approach it correctly. Let’s break down what you should be doing and how often.
An important factor with building muscle is losing fat. Let’s look at the cardio and fat burn chart from my Cardio for Fat and Weight Loss post (check it out for a breakdown of the chart below). In that post, I went over how a higher heart rate (HR) burns more overall calories, and therefore more fat. I’m going to use the same logic here, but turn it up to 11!
HR % from max
|
% fat burned from total calories burned
|
65 -70 %
|
60 %
|
70 - 75 %
|
50 %
|
75 - 80 %
|
35 %
|
80 - 85 %
|
20 %
|
85 - 90 %
|
10 %
|
90 - 95 %
|
5 %
|
95 - 100 %
|
0 %
|
An important part of adding cardio to your muscle building routine is to make sure you aren’t overworking your body and burning muscle. In order to make sure you aren’t burning off your hard earned muscles, intensity and duration are important factors. Let’s start with intensity, bring it to the max! Remember how we talked about the body type of long distance runners? Now think about sprinters. Short and intense is the type of cardio you want to aim for. A good example would be sprinting 100 m, then resting for 4 min, and repeat 4 to 10 times. With this intensity, your duration is going to be fairly short, which is good. You want your cardio to be 20 minutes or less. As for the weekly basis, 2 or 3 times at most a week is all you need.
Doing 10 sets of 100 m sprints is a lot of energy and requires a good cardiovascular base. If you are just starting to add cardio into your weight workout start easier and longer. Go with a steady state HR you can maintain for 30 minutes and build yourself up. Once you can maintain a cardio session with an HR at 80% of your maximum HR, start doing your high intensity cardio.
An important thing to remember when adding cardio into your workout plan is the additional calories burned. Make sure you aren’t over training and burning up too many calories, this will negatively impact your muscle gains. It’s a good idea to review your workout and diet with a trainer and a nutritionist to make sure you are maximizing your results!
An important thing to remember when adding cardio into your workout plan is the additional calories burned. Make sure you aren’t over training and burning up too many calories, this will negatively impact your muscle gains. It’s a good idea to review your workout and diet with a trainer and a nutritionist to make sure you are maximizing your results!
References
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