Cardio and Your Gains

“Cardio ruins your gains”

The age old expression you’ve no doubt heard countless times.

Let’s call it what it is. It’s an excuse to not do cardio. It has no backing.

Obviously this newsletter is muscle growth focused…

I want to remind you about the non muscle benefits of cardio first though.

Heart, lungs, blood, are all instantly improved.

Don’t underestimate how important that is.

• Less stress

• Better mental health

• Better sleep

It goes on and on and on.

No doubt if you thought of a random good thing in life, better cardio would be causing it.

Let’s talk about something more important here though.

It’s relationship with muscle

How does it effect gains? Does it help? Can it hurt?

Ultimately, “how do I do cardio in a way that adds”.

The biggest way good cardio adds to your sessions is by improving your ability to recover.

Better cardio = reduced fatigue from your workouts.

This is both great for the time between sessions, and between sets.

Having great cardio will also eliminate one possibility.

You will not end a set prematurely because your cardio gave out.

You know how important that is when it comes to getting a good stimulus in.

However, cardio can take away from gains.

It’s not the thing most people think about.

Cardio hurting gains has nothing to do with burning calories or anything like that.

It’s about muscle damage. Cardio can be overly fatiguing. It can hurt more than it helps.

If you’ve ever done a HIIT class you’ll know how much intense cardio can hit you like a truck.

There’s a few things that cause cardio to be overly fatiguing.

1. Intensity will hurt more than it helps when you start to get into higher heart rate zones for long durations. A way around this is doing most of your cardio in the Zone 2 (60-70% of max heartrate) zone.

2. The nature of cardio refers to the type of cardio it is. If you’re doing something like running, downhill movement, jumping, etc. there’s a portion of the movement where you’re performing a controlled eccentric, these are highly fatiguing. Opting for concentric cardios (swimming, elliptical, stationary bike) can remove this fatigue.

3. The duration of cardio scales the fatigue that already exists. An hour of low intensity cardio that’s on a bike will be completely different than an hour of high intensity completely downhill.

These are things to consider when you pick your cardio method.

You want something that challenges your heart and lungs, but doesn’t put you in a state of fatigue.

Personally I like hitting 45 minutes of Zone 2 cardio on a seated bike every rest day, that’s probably the most effective use of my time.

With cardio you’re not trying to chase the best cardio ability possible, you’re just guaranteeing you have a great baseline and are helping your actual exercises.

That is if you’re trying to grow… 🙄 

Enjoy the extra calories this will enable you to eat as well, I know I do…

Your Hypertrophy Hero,
Fletcher