Someone tell the truth
- Thread starter Zest
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Light cardio for less than 20 minutes (after weight workout): ok (not required, but ok)
Light (or heavy) cardio for more than 20 minutes (after weight workout): BAD. Muscle loss. No profit no loss situation.
Best: Don't do cardio on weight training days. On non-weight training days, go for HIIT (High intensity interval training). This will cut the flab without sacrificing muscle (assuming thats your goal).
And of course, eat well.
Light (or heavy) cardio for more than 20 minutes (after weight workout): BAD. Muscle loss. No profit no loss situation.
Best: Don't do cardio on weight training days. On non-weight training days, go for HIIT (High intensity interval training). This will cut the flab without sacrificing muscle (assuming thats your goal).
And of course, eat well.
pretty much. until you become a well-trained athlete, your body has a small window for exercise, before it can become counter-productive.
plus you don't really burn off excess fat through excessive exercise like that. the body can only react by burning fat for so long...you'll just as readily burn muscle, and you'll REALLY stress the body and central nervous system.
plus you don't really burn off excess fat through excessive exercise like that. the body can only react by burning fat for so long...you'll just as readily burn muscle, and you'll REALLY stress the body and central nervous system.
First of all, what is your purpose for doing cardio in the first place ? And, what type of cardio do you do ?
Generally speaking ( for the average gym rat ) , if your diet is in good shape - i.e you you take in an adequate amount of protein and you keep your carb based energy stores up, you pre-fuel properly and eat properly throughout the day - you can do cardio after weight training without too much worry IMO. Doing 20-30 minutes of High Intensity Interval Training or 30 minutes of moderate intensity steady state cardio after weight should be fine.
The concern about doing cardio after weight training is the assumption that your weight training is going to fully deplete your glycogen stores ( which is the primary fuel during weight training ) leaving you without enough energy to fuel your cardio ( which, depending on the cardio, uses glycogen and or fat for energy ) , causing your body to turn to protein / breakdown of muscle tissue for energy. First of all, for most gym rats, it is very unlikely that their weight workout will significantly deplete glycogen stores, so there should be more than enough fat / glycogen energy available to fuel most cardio. And, even if you were concerned that post weight training cardio might source more protein than you'd like ( if at all ) - then you simply have to take some quick absorbing nutrition right before ( or during if it is steady state cardio ) you start your cardio once your weight training is done.
Of course, if you do cardio right after weight training, it simply means that post weight workout nutrition might be delayed 20 - 30 minutes, but again, that is nothing much to worry about IMO.
Keep in mind , that there are other non-nutritionally reasons you may want to do cardio and weights on separate days. Weight training may adversely impact on the performance of your cardio for one.. For example, if you do a hare-core leg workout that blasts your legs so you can barely walk afterwards, counting on your legs to pull off a quality cardio session may be a bit too much to ask for - or you can simply do an upper body workout and do cardio afterwards. Also, time. Some people train in the morning before work and / or during lunch hours and may only have an hour to train, so doing cardio on another day makes sense when there is more time. And convenience. It also makes senses if gym rats who are doing FBW on nonconsecutive days 3X a week - so, on the days between FBW days, they simply plug in cardio workouts.
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Thank goodness for that. the stress on my brain is overwhelming and I could really use a nervous system right about now. hahahahahahahaaaa
I'm in total burn it all up mode.
Cardio after weights work outs: good, bad, no difference? - Depends really. I can't see how any form of cardio can be bad. This is of course unless it's extremely intense on an unfit person or person with heart disease/history.
Stopping the effects of lifting? Absolutely not. You find you won't be able to keep up the pace and intensity for as long though because of the resistance workout. But try avoiding this by say avoiding the bike on a legs day.
Depends on the amount of time? - As long as you're not continually doing cardio for hours on end, no.
Just separate them on different days? - Personally, i prefer this, but if you can't go to the gym that many times a week than just do it while you're there.
Exactly. You'll find that there is no deffiative answer on this, just like many other training questions and theories. Personal training and questions regarding training can can be opinionated based on the knowledge the person has. If that makes sense
So that's why you're not getting a straight answer from anyone. In fact i havn't even read the previous responses to your question and i just know already that people have posted up different answers.
I'd agree.
Look at ' duration ' of cardio for example.
If you look at that study Tremblay did in 2005, he took a look at how much SS low intensity cardio ( he looked at 55% VO2(max) which is approximately 70% MHR I think ) it takes to have your cortisol levels bump up. He looked at SS low intensity cardio sessions of 40 minutes, 80 minutes, and 2 hours and found that cortisol didn't increase significantly till you hit the 2 hour session. And, he found that you'd have to go almost 80 minutes before all your hormones get into a net ' catabolic ' status.
So, I'd think so long as you did a 30 - 45 minute SS low intensity cardio session ( i.e around 70% MHR + ) after weights, then cortisol is pretty much a non-issue.
That said, given cortisol is the ' stress ' hormone, I'd be interesting to see what the ' stress ' / cortisol reaction of 30 minutes of HIIT is vs 30 - 45 minutes of SS low to moderate intensity cardio.
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