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I've read before that if you are trying to burn more fat and build a more muscular physique then it's wise not to overdo it on your cardio sessions. I enjoy cardio workouts very much but at the same time, I still want to keep and build the muscle that I do have. When I belonged to the gym, I would run on the treadmill and then sometimes lift weights right after. I've read that this isn't a good idea. It's more effective to separate your workouts so that you do cardio one day and weight training another.
Better Cardio for Less Muscle Wasting
When you spend long sessions doing a cardio workout, you do burn a lot of calories. However, you are also probably burning through muscle. The thing with long cardio routines is that you can burn a lot of calories during that session but when you lift weights, you will burn more calories during rest. More muscle means a faster metabolism which burns more bodyfat.
Having a Good Balance
In order to have a good balance of cardio and weights, it's probably better to skip the long cardio sessions and replace them with interval training. I used to do that a lot on the treadmill by warming up with a light jog for 5 minutes then running as fast as I could for about 1 minute. I'd repeat that about five times. It made the time on the treadmill a lot less boring. If I got bored with the treadmill, I would do the same on an elliptical machine.
I would then do some weight lifting on the next day and alternate days between cardio and weights. This is probably a better balance if you are trying to maintain muscle and burn more fat.
What is your routine like? Are you doing too much cardio or not enough?
Yours in Health,
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{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Great tip! I’m of a slim build by nature so what I like to do is hop on the elyptical machine at level 10 for about 5 minutes, jumprope for another 10 and that’s it.
Everything else is calistenics.
Yeah- I hear that advice and don’t follow it. I do a combo of cardio and resistance training 5-6 days a week. I often warm up on the elliptical or treadmill for 10-20 minutes, then do a metabolic lifting session with short rest periods. My heart rate is elevated the entire time. No chance of muscle wasting and I don’t have to spend endless time on a cardio machine bored outta my mind.
I do watch the time and make sure my total workout time averages 60 minutes and never exceeds 75.
While it is true that having more muscle and being a leaner person increases your metabolism, the increase is so minimal that it doesn’t make much difference. There are so many other reasons to do both aerobic and anaerobic exercise and they do both complement each other. A good personal trainer can design a program that is the appropriate level of each while staying specific to your goal.
The toughest thing for me is getting enough time to do the weight lifting — I get my aerobic via basketball, and if you don’t show up at the right time, you don’t get to play. So it’s easy to carve out that time. The weights . . . much easier to keep putting it off. I believe I burn too many calories playing ball, which makes it hard to keep the muscle on. Tough balance, definitely.
I usually warm up on the treadmill or elliptical for 10-15 min before weight lifting. I never realized cardio could burn muscles. I would think I am fine only doing that short amount of time though.
Replacing some of my cardio workouts with HIIT workouts on the bike helped me to add/preserve muscle while dieting.
But, I still do cardio to keep the heart healthy