Cardio doubt

[Robcardu]

How many times a week should i do cardio? ive got a fast metabolism, not as fast as rocky's, but sexy fast , i gain muscle pretty easy but now im the fatest ive ever been, and i wanna low it, how should i start?

thanks and im expecting a fast reply or ill ban y'all...i still got my kudos


PS. ive been training for 9 years and my cardio experience is almost cero..

 

[tim290280]

Well since you have zero cardio experience then you would probably kill yourself by doing anything too drastic too quickly.

So simple answer is start adding in light stuff on days off from lifting. Taking the dog for a walk, the stairs, all of that crap they advertise on the health campaigns are good starting points. As long as you don't feel like this is exercise then you are probably fine to do some real cardio to build fitness. Then start building a base to get going. 1-2 times a week and you should adapt pretty quickly. Try for some steady state to begin for 30mins and try to improve the time/distance progressively like any other exercise.

Once you get a base you are happy with then ask yourself whether you need to do more cardio. Has this shown body comp improvements? Has this helped with your fitness and ability to lift weights? Can you have more sex in a day? If you need to do more then HIIT would be the best time investment. IS is sure to post on this one.

I personally wouldn't be doing more a couple of sessions a week of cardio unless you were trying to lean down for a comp. Generally lifting is the priority and cardio is the spare days. So 4 days a week lifting 3 sessions max of cardio. But if you are pushed those sessions can be post lifting sessions. Preferrably not leg sessions.

 

[The Creator]

^^ Well said Tim. As far as cardiovascular benefits go, weight training will have little positive impact once your are out of the de-trained stage. The general guideline is to start with 2 days a week and gradually work your way up. If you go by heart rate, start with cardio that averages 55% of your max. You can do it papi

 

[Robcardu]

Thanks guys, but all that crap like walk the dog (i dont have any) stairs ( lol ) im not doing it, i wanna do it in the gym, i said i had almost cero experience bc i never really needed it, i did it once a week, 20 mins.. i was pretty lean, but now i want to low my bodyfat and doctor told me i need to improve my health, so all in all, twice a week is my way to go.

this is my split

monday: train
Tuesday:train
wednesday:rest
Thursday:train
friday:train
saturday:rest
sunday:rest

so youre saying i should do cardio wednesday and saturday, 30 mins each session??

 

[tim290280]

I'm all for doing it on Wed and Sat, but it depends on your schedule. If it fits easier after weights then that is when it happens. I prefer the idea of it after the lighter sessions (chest, arms, upper body) as you're relatively fresh. On the non-training days it keeps your metabolism fired up essentially all week.

This last point is also why morning cardio can be very beneficial. I'm not sold on fasted cardio in the morning, but I am sold on the benefits of cardio in the morning. You are essentially kick starting your day by getting the body active.

As for my ideas about easy entry points to cardio, they were only meant to be examples of stuff you could begin with. You can choose any cardio you like, from swimming to sprints. I classify cardio into two types; load bearing and non-load bearing. Within each of these are the good and the bad.

Load bearing is were you move your body weight. Running, stair climbing, treadmill, etc.

Non-load bearing is were you are supported in some way. Swimming, cycling, rowing, etc.

Good and bad are how good any of the machines or methods are for your body in the long term. Jogging, especially on a hard surface, is just a whole heap of bad. Some eliptical machines are also terrible. Wereas sprinting, walking and swimming are terrific.

Load bearing in your training should be considered. It takes less effort to sit down to do cardio and this isn't necessarily a good thing, especially if you spend all day sitting down. Think about what you do in a day and what sort of training you do. Then pick a couple of cardio types that are a better fit.

 

[Robcardu]

....and 30 mins is a good number to start?

Thank you very much timmeh!!

 

[tim290280]

^^ Anything less than about 20mins is just too little. Anything over a moderate intensity needs 30-45mins. At moderate intensity needs more like an hour.

The study that proposed all the healthy workout levels proposed these:

Moderate activity = 5km/hr walking pace, or raising resting heart rate enough to break a sweat but still carry out a conversation.

Moderate should be done for 30 minutes a day, five days a week. In reality the original work cited this should be every day to meet bare minimum levels of health. To actually control weight and make an impact it had to be 60-90mins.

When combined with weight training then the moderate activity drops back to 2-3 times per week with a mimimum of 20mins.

But moderate won't get you fit and to start having affects on bodyweight control you have to spend a lot of time at it. Plus who wants to be moderate?

The real deal is to get into low intensity to intense exercise which has all sorts of health benefits. This is training either HIIT or for long periods above 60-70% of max heart rate. This will actually improve fitness, help with leanness and drop mortality risks dramatically.

A side note thought: ignore a lot of the heart rate calcs and the like. They are generally crap. Nothing like simplifying a model of a model that was only 3/4 accurate to begin with to get something truely useless. The way I go on heart rate is perceived exertion levels (which there is currently a fair bit of work on). You want to be training at a level that feels like work, you feel the blood pumping but not so hard that you are gasping for breathe (only if you are really pushing yourself, which isn't really what you are after).

A journal article on the disease avoidance benefits of training:
http://ajl.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/3/1_suppl/44S

 

[Robcardu]

Thanks a bunch Timmeh, i appreciate your help!

 

[Ironslave]

Can you have more sex in a day?

Impossible for Papi.


overall, it would be very helpful if your training split was up there. For example, while there is little doubt that moderate activity exercise is excellent for the general population, Papi isn't a middle aged soccer mom, and thus, stepping it up is the way to go.

It's obvious that you're not a cardio fiend, which is actually a, maybe the major problem in getting the population to do cardio, in that it's typically long and boring.

From a cellular standpoint, high intensity exercise is key to activate pathways involved in longevity and health. One recent study found that 4 sets of 30 seconds of all out sprints was enough to activate these pathways. Furthermore, instead of doing something like one long, 40 minute session, two 20 minute sessions has been shown to be better for health,, and also, training twice every second day better than daily.


Losing weight is mostly dependent on a proper diet, obviously, but I'd suggest that for fat loss, interval training, followed by slow steady cardio would be key. The ways to do this are endless, but I prefer very high intensity intervals at first, rather that a high pace. (ie, sprint at level 9 for 1 minute, walk at level 4 for 1 minute, repeat 5 times, vs. jogging at level 6.5 for 10 mins straight).

To start, I would advise exercising 2x a week as mentioned, 30 minutes a day, and have it around 70% of your max HR.

After those 2 weeks, time to start adding some intensity cardio. I'd still keep the total 30 minute duration, but start the week by doing 5 minutes of high intensity cardio (ie, sprint 30 seconds, walk slowly for 30 seconds, repeat 5 times) and THEN do 25 minutes of steady pace cardio at like 65% maxHR. Each week, add 2 more sprints (7 minutes high intensity intervals, 23 mins slow steady....) and keep building it up.

I'm not sure if 30 mins of cardio, or any cardio for that matter would be sufficient to elevate metabolic rate on "off days." However, if elevated metabolic rate is the goal, here is a guideline with different intensities/durations.

 

[tim290280]

^^ I was hoping you'd post this IS.

I agree that once you get past that "I don't do cardio" to doing cardio that HIIT or similar more intense sessions are just flat-out superior. Just don't like the idea of jumping in the deep end first off.

As to the 30mins raising metabolism, I'll see if I can dig it up, it was part of that entire fasted cardio debate (might have even been the roundtables that NSCA publish). It doesn't raise the metabolism for long but it did tend to encourage a more active approach/lifestyle. Sort of that get people up and active in the morning rather than the crawl out of bed approach.

 

[Ironslave]

^^ I was hoping you'd post this IS.

I agree that once you get past that "I don't do cardio" to doing cardio that HIIT or similar more intense sessions are just flat-out superior. Just don't like the idea of jumping in the deep end first off.

agreed.

As to the 30mins raising metabolism, I'll see if I can dig it up, it was part of that entire fasted cardio debate (might have even been the roundtables that NSCA publish). It doesn't raise the metabolism for long but it did tend to encourage a more active approach/lifestyle. Sort of that get people up and active in the morning rather than the crawl out of bed approach.

Very interesting and plausible point...

 

[Robcardu]

Wow thank you very much guys.