Cardio and Body Building

[Andrew87]

Alright so here i go again with another i heard thing lol. Anyways my friend si telling me i shouldnt do 45min cardio work outs for like say 3 or 4 times a week because i will degrade my muscle mass? Also i am a fat ass at the moment so i think it would be a good way to burn alot of that. Anyways what do you guys think about cardio?

[hrdgain81]

hahha gym rats are notorious for passing along "I heard" info. In this case your friend is correct. prolonged bouts of cardio can be catabolic to muscles.

High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) has been shown to be much more effective at burning fat, then prolonged cardio. In addition to that, it is much easier to fit into your schedual. Do a search for HIIT and you will find all the info you need.

[_Wolf_]

^^^^ what he said

Anuj

[Andrew87]

Alright ill check it out thanks. So is it bad to do cardio at all or should i do some and if so how much

[Andrew87]

Alright so this is the article i read

http://www.musclemedia.com/training/hiit.asp

Anyways im going to give that a shot all though ill prolly be crappy with it because im so out of shape.

Anyways what happens when you make it to the end of the 8weeks?

Also once i burn most the body fat do i keep doing this to keep my stamina or do i stop so i dont rape my muscle?

Oh and last question this is i should only do it 3 times a week?

[hrdgain81]

When you first start out, you may only be able to go to your maximal exertion for 15 to 20 sec if your really out of shape. Thats fine, do that then take a 30 to 40 sec rest, and go again. As you progress your exertion times will go up, maxing out at around 30 sec. From there you should improve by upping intesity for those 30 seconds.

after 8 weeks of this, switch up and do some medium intensity cardio for 20 to 25 min, 3 or 4 times a week. I would go 3 to 4 weeks with that, then back to hiit for 3 or 4 weeks. This will keep the body guessing until you reach your goal. then you will want to switch up so that you can stay at that new body fat level. when you reach that point we can discuss that aspect.

[Andrew87]

ahh ok i get it. I think i followed this chrt slghtly wrong forgot about the cool down thing. So say it starts with a 4min cycle how would that be broken down into jog sprint and rest?

[hrdgain81]

Here is what I would do. start with a brisk 2 min jog as a warm up, then you will perform a sprint for as long as you can at maximal effort. If that is 15sec thats fine, if its 30 thats fine. take the rest of that minute and pace back down to your warm up pace. then repeat this up to 15 times max. I would suggest not going past 8 times before upping your sprint. meaning

5 thirty second intervals will be more effective then 10 fifteen sec intervals. Does that make sense? I want to make sure i'm clear.

once you've reach the point where you cant do another sprint, pace down to your warm up speed, and stay for 2min as a cool down.

[Andrew87]

still trying to understand. So if i had a 4min thing i would do a 2 min warm up then start the 4min cycle which would be sprint as long as i can follwoed by a rest of how long? then jog for 30seconds? Lol im stupid if u havent noticed.

[hrdgain81]

naw dude your not stupid, I'm just not explaining it correctly. think of it like this each minute as a block ... so 15 sec sprint, then 45 sec jog,thats one block, or 20 sec sprint, 40 sec jog that would be another block look at it like this

2min jog warm up
(1) 20 sec sprint, 40 sec pace down
(2) 20 sec sprint, 40 sec pace down
(3) 20 sec sprint, 40 sec pace down
(4) 15 sec sprint, 40 sec pace down
2min jog cool down.

now that would be a starting point, you want to try to increase both your sprint times (so you reach 30 sec sprint, 30 sec pace down), and how many blocks you can perform (up to 15).

Is that more clear now?