Tag: Cardio

Cardio for Weightlifters – Fat Loss without Strength Interference

theguy 0 Comments 04/04/2019 Cardio Get fit

We’re going to talk about cardio for fat loss yes it’s a rather long and technical video but as always I promise it’s worth your time first of all we’ll discuss if it’s actually necessary to do cardio to get shredded next we’ll see the pros and cons of each type of cardio and finally I’ll help you decide if you need to do cardio and what form you should choose oh and something important before we get started please note that these recommendations are for people that are physique oriented meaning they train only to look good if you’re interested also in a conditioning or sport performance then probably you need to do cardio and this video doesn’t apply to you cool all right let me start it so first of all let’s ask the question is god young necessary for you to get shredded from my experience working with clients and with friends and with myself 90% of people do not need Carter to get shredded they can get to 6 7 percent body fat through dieting alone now here’s the thing even if you don’t need cardio you could probably benefit from it it could help I’ll talk about the benefits of calculator in this video but for now let’s stick to the if cardio is necessary but my opinion is that over the years cardio became synonymous with fat loss because people thought that sweat was an indicator of fat loss dunno those means floating around online sweat is fat crying oh my god that’s so wrong but I’ll give marketers that it’s very easy to convince someone that the losing fat when the lot of bread and drenched in sweat that’s how I think intense cardio workouts became fat burning workouts but you you are an well-educated person you know that cardio in a No itself doesn’t burn fat fat loss review all comes down to being in a calorie deficit so yes if you can create a calorie deficit to cardio sure it leads to fat loss but if you eat enough calories to compensate what you burn to exercise then you won’t be losing fat in fact if you ate more calories than you burn so you are in a surplus you could actually be gaining fat doing all those extreme cardio workouts that is the truth of energy balance I’m sure you’ll notice this yourself you know all those fat people at the gym that are on the treadmill for years basically and they’re losing fat well there you go they probably eat too much so for now we concluded that cardio leads to fat loss through the energy deficit it creates if it creates one so it is not necessary for you to get shredded you can create all the deficit you need to your diet now with that said I think most people would benefit from combining calorie restriction meaning dieting with a bit of cardio there are some benefits there let me share what OSA the way I see it cardio for us has two benefits number one it burn some calories so it allows us to eat more food and number two it can help with stubborn body fat mobilization now I know there are a lot of other benefits to cardio and they may be useful but for our purposes meaning getting a whole new type is it a modern type physique I believe that these two are the only ones we should really care about so let’s talk about them in more detail so benefit number one card you’re burning some calories and it allows you to eat more food all right as I said in the beginning I assume that conditioning is not very important for you you are probably just training to look good to get the six-pack and have well-developed muscles and look awesome well in that case cardio for you is really just a tool for you to burn more calories it doesn’t directly help you to get that type of physique cardio of course is most beneficial when you’re cutting because let’s say that you need a seven hundred calorie deficit for you to lose fat well you could be reducing your calorie intake only by five hundred calories and burn the rest of 200 to exercise I personally used to neglect this fat loss advantage in the past and I remember that on my last cut which was right before Christmas I didn’t do any cardio nothing I just ate very little and that was that did I get lean sure I did of course but I had to eat very little I remember that my daily intake was around 7 17 1800 calories so not that much and my diet was okay because I was still doing intermittent fasting I was making the right food choices but I wouldn’t have called it enjoyable now on this last cut the diamond right now well things have been different I did reduce my calorie intake under 2,000 because I was doing some sort of walking or activity every day to burn some energy and I estimate I burn maybe 200 calories more than I usually did with my normal activity level and those 200 calories made a massive difference because I could eat 200 grams of potatoes extra every day or maybe an extra ice cream and it sounds very very little but those little bits of food make a massive difference when you’re on a calorie restricted diet and that’s something I learned to respect so the main advantage of doing cardio if you’re a physique oriented trainee is that you get to eat more food regardless if you’re cutting maintaining or bulking that’s the main advantage now let’s move on and talk about the other benefit of doing cardio which is stubborn body fat mobilization when a person which is a very low body fat maybe under 10% nine percent maybe even eight percent the body has only stubborn body fat stores left for men stubborn body fat is usually located around the midsection in your lower abs your lower back goods and of course it also depends on your genetics now what do I mean by stubborn body fat how is it different well this type of fat is slightly different because it is less sensitive to the chemicals such as adrenaline or growth hormone that signal the need to release fatty acids from the fat cells fat loss has two steps first of all the fatty acids must be released from the fat cells then they need to get into the bloodstream circulate through the body and get burned well there is a consumer well the muscle or an organ needs it so it so that fatty acid is actually burned locally well those stubborn body fat stores don’t want to release those fatty acids and when that happens the risk of muscle loss during a cut is increased because if there are no fatty acids in the bloodstream the body we’ll have to burn something else and that can also be muscle tissue now before you freak out about this let me say a few more things for most people getting free fatty acids into the bloodstream is not a problem at all not a problem at all probably you are at a high enough body fat percentage to have plenty of free fatty acids in your bloodstream at any time I talked about this in other videos and I’m going to say to get here people very often underestimate how much body fat they have I often get emails from guys looking like this that tell me oh man I really hate this this last bit of fat on my lower abs oh man I hate stubborn body fat yeah you’d probably around 15 percent body fat actually and no that’s not stubborn body fat so before you even think about stubborn body fat make sure that you are actually very lean now how does card your help with stubborn body fat mobilization well it improves blood circulation to those areas and it helps transport to the fatty acids to the bloodstream to a place where they will be burned that’s why when you are very very lean doing some cardio is probably a good idea now please note that I said it’s probably a good idea I didn’t say that it’s necessary the truth is if you maintain a calorie deficit long enough you will eventually burn all body fat everything including stubborn body fat but the main point to remember is that cardio can be a valid tool for fat loss in certain situations so you probably should do some now the question is how much should you do some people say well if some cardio is good then doing a lot of cardio must be amazing as always too much of a good thing is actually bad so let’s next talk about how much cardio should you do and why too much is bad here’s my best recommendation for cardio when you create a calorie deficit create 80% of it to your diet and only 20% through exercise to cardio for example if your calorie deficit needs to be 700 calories then eat 500 calorie less and you could do maybe researchers three sessions three sessions of cardio a week that burn about 400 calories and if you do the weekly average you will see that the daily deficit comes out to about 700 calories now some of you might be asking why why shouldn’t I do 50% of my deficit to guard you why shouldn’t I lose fat only through cardio well if you are overweight and you only want to lose some weight then sure do all the cardio you want but you you want the model type physique that means you are also interested in muscle mass and in getting stronger at the gym and here’s the thing cardio has any type of exercise causes muscle damage which needs recovery and remember if you’re in a calorie deficit your recovery capacity is also reduced a calorie deficit is also a recovery deficit so it makes sense to save most of your recovery capacity for lifting not for cardio I really like how very cams puts it remember that you are a weight lifter first muscle and strength take priority secondly large amounts of cardio can interfere with your weight lifting progress if you try to progressively overload both cardio and strength-training it’s very hard to make progress in either one because your body is is getting mixed stimuli your ass can get go down to both endurance and strength explosiveness and this is something it cannot do optimally the number of studies have shown that a lot of cardio aerobic exercise can interfere with muscle and strength gains in athletes who are weight training they found that the more cardio you do and the more intensities the more it can interfere with muscle and strength researchers call this the interference effect now again before you freak out about this interference effect don’t worry it’s not like you’re going to lose your gains if you go for a run we’ll talk more about this later in the video what you need to remember for now is that if your goal is to get muscular and strong then a lot of cardio doesn’t help it may actually make things harder now before we move on to talk about what types of cardio you should do remember the rule of thumb create 80% of your deficit through dieting and only 20% to cardio this video is really getting long so let’s do a quick recap in the first part of this video we concluded that physique oriented trainees should do cardio for two reasons number one to burn some calories so they could eat more food and number two to mobilize fatty acids that means cardio is really not a priority and you should do a form of cardio that doesn’t interfere with your lifting in any way which is the priority and those types of cardio and steady-state low intensity and high intensity interval training I’ll explain why in a minute the form of cardio that you should do only sparingly is moderate intensity steady-state cardio such as running long distances cycling on a moderate intensity for a long time rowing for a long time so any type of activity that has your heart rate elevated to a moderate level for a long period of time the reason this type of cardio shouldn’t be done frequently is because it can interfere with your strength training program we talked about the interference effect earlier in this video what you need to remember is that high level aerobic fitness and elite strength and power are opposite updations if you try to collectively overload both you try to become better at both at the same time you will probably only become mediocre in both of them it’s funny because when I first shared this information with my opinion audience a lot of them freaked out oh my god I will never go for a run in my life again whoa no no I’m sorry if I made you believe that it’s not that drastic it’s it’s a matter of context this interference effect only the beasts if you try to professionally overload both cardio and strength-training at the same time for example if everyday you are trying to run faster run longer because last time so you’re trying to progressively overload your running and you also want to get stronger at the gym well in that case yes the interference effect will appear but two hours of jogging every week in the park that will have no effect on your strength performance so you can certainly do miss moderate intensity steady-state cardio but the key is not to do it very frequently not to do it every day and not to overload it not to try to get better at it that way you will not be signaling that the improvements in endurance are demanded and he will just maintain your cardiovascular fitness and that will have no effect on your strength training program you will just be burning some calories now let’s talk about high-intensity interval training this is the type of cardio that is actually very similar to weightlifting and actually know how it is you do short bursts of high effort followed by a longer period of time where you rest or you do some kind of light activity intervals have become very popular lately because some people say that they burn more fat than other types of cardio which i think is not true yes some studies show that during exercise they may be burning more fat than maybe steady-state cardio but the mean it leads to more fat loss over time you see if you burn more fat during exercise you will just burn more carbohydrate for the rest for the rest of the day the body is actually very good at preserving fuel and fat loss usually only comes down to the calorie deficit it doesn’t matter what kind of fuel you burn during each period of the day with that said I do believe that high-intensity interval training is very good for conditioning and it is also very time efficient it burns a lot of calories per minute in a short period of time here is how we could perform high des interval training at the gym on the recumbent bike now of course you could use any type of cardio machine a treadmill a bike and elliptical rowing machine etc etc basically all all kinds of intervals are good you could do this routine two or three times a week but don’t try to do more than that don’t try to do intervals every day even high-level athletes such as elite cyclists only do intervals two or three times a week you are not at the level you do not need to do more than them besides intervals are hard and if you train legs at the gym too well if you do one or two leg workouts per week and you do three or four high paced interval training sessions then your legs are getting hit hard almost every day so you don’t want that alternatively you could play sports two or three times a week because almost all sports are a form of high intensity interval training if you think about soccer for instance there are short sprints when you chase the ball and longer periods when you just walk and you know you catch your breath the same goes for basketball the same goes for volley so pretty much all sports you can do that instead of going to the gym but again it’s important not to overdo it don’t do more than one or two hours of high test interval per week now let’s talk about low intensities that is state cardio this list could be anything anything from walking to cycling to rowing to lifting light weights any type of activity that is very easy to do and you can do it for a long period of time without getting tired while is isn’t that great for conditioning it has its virtues it doesn’t effect recovery in any way which means you can do it every day and it also burns a significant amount of calories for example you can walk every day for one hour and it will not affect your strength training program in any way and that’s why is my favorite form of cardio and in fact I don’t even call it cardio I just call it burning calories another thing I like about this is that you can perform it anywhere you don’t need to go to the gym you don’t need special equipment you don’t need to change you can just walk and burn some calories and that’s why it is my favorite type and that’s why it’s the one I recommend most but now let me show you how you could structure a cardio routine and because I want to make things more clear so let’s do that now okay I know this video is getting ridiculously long but stay with me so yeah in my opinion I think the best way to do cardio is to combine both high-intensity interval training and low intensity steady-state cardio I think this is the best way to do it also I know that most of you are lifestyle oriented you don’t want to go to the gym everyday you want you have your own schedule and you want to have as much free time as possible while having an awesome physique well if that’s the case here’s what you could do during the warm months of the year you could be doing what is called informal cardio meaning any type of activity that burns calories but doesn’t require doesn’t require special equipment you don’t need to go to the gym you don’t need to change in special clothes you just do something that burns calories and that can be considered cardio this could be anything from walking hiking going to the pool playing volley on the beach walking your dog any type of activity that habit has you moving your body and is burning calories and I’ll be honest I don’t do any formal cardio I just walk and I just do all the types of activities that burn calories that’s it so do these two during the summer months during the spring months during the autumn months just walk more walk more and you will burn some calories now during wintertime walking is not that enjoyable in that case you can just go to the gym and do some high-intensity interval training sessions maybe two or three times a week or you could do high-intensity interval training two times a week after and workout so you don’t have to go to the gym on a rest day any machine at the gym works remember that you just have to push yourself on those intervals that’s the only way we’re going to make them effective so that’s it guys.

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