Cardio and Gains
So this post is really a question. I guess I could take this to the forum, but I’ll try this medium first. I am in a gaining program intended to help me gain strength and size, and I am having an inner struggle. This being my first time at attempting this feat, I just wonder how much cardio do I really need to do. When a person goes into a cutting phase its easy to say, "fasted cardio" or advise them to do cardio after they lift to maximize the amount of fat burned, but for a gainer? I wake up thinking I should go do cardio before work and put myself back to sleep thinking, "gains, gains, gains." Doesn’t feel right. I try to get some done before or after my workout, but again, I don’t want to over or underdo it and end up slowing down progress. I know we all hate cardio, but let’s be honest, we gotta do it. So any advice would be fantastic.
On that note, what’s up with MF Hers? Why do you show women on the cover that have all the right muscles and look amazing, but your covers are strictly on fat loss? Meanwhile the men’s MF is all about gains. I would love to see a gains program intended for females, because the idea of eating 4000 calories doesn’t sit pretty.
February 27, 2008 at 6:10 am
I like to do "enough" cardio to stay in decent shape, but I’m not doing the HIIT cardio or spin classes or anything like that. When I’m in a bulking phase, I like to do more steady-state cardio, like running or walking at a consistent pace for 30 minutes, or going on a nice leisurely bike ride. I don’t want to get winded walking up a flight of stairs, you know? Back when I made all my mass gains several years ago, I found that it didn’t really matter when I did my cardio. Sometimes I did cardio in the morning, then went to classes, and sometimes I did the opposite. I never did one marathon session with both weight training and cardio immediately before or after. Heck, I never even did them both on the same day. That just took too many calories from my daily intake. I think it’s probably a trial-and-error thing that you just need to figure out based on your schedule, when you can get to the gym, etc. Remember, it doesn’t matter in which order you do them or when if you’re not taking in more calories than you’re burning.
What’s your workout split right now? If you’re on a 3-day or 4-day plan, why not just lift weights on weight days, and do cardio on days you don’t lift?
Would you like for me to send you the program I used to jump-start my gains? I realize men and women are different, but if nothing else, it might give you some ideas. I got it from MF.
February 27, 2008 at 6:50 am
I will actually have to disagree with the above post. Doing steady state cardio, according to the research put into HIIT, makes you burn more calories, but less fat. That means that you are killing muscle, which is what you don’t ever want to do. I started doing 20 min HIIT sessions on the elliptical a little over a month ago. I am trying to keep fat gains minimal while adding mass for next year. I do all my cardio post workout for convienence purposes. I have noticed that my waist has went down a couple of inches since I started, but I have pretty much kept my size everywhere else, so I like doing the 3 20 min sessions a week.
Hopefully that helped.
February 27, 2008 at 7:28 am
Ok I’ve played around with this and had a lot of mental struggles as well. I’ve always been addicted to running, I just love it for what it is. I don’t like HIIT because that’s not even fun, I prefer to run a 7-10 minute warmup, then 3 miles as fast as I can. I really push myself to do every mile faster than the previous, I try to get my heart rate up as high as I can for three miles. Then I cool down. This has always burnt a lot of fat for me.
During previous bulk sessions I’ve tried fitting in 2 or 3 of these a week, sometimes I would go out immediately after my lifting sessions, figuring I’d be ok as long as I ate right after the run. I was wrong, this seriously hampered my gains after keeping it up for more than a couple weeks. Then I tried just fitting in the same amount but between lifting days, on my off days. Again I noticed I had a huge deficit in my energy reserves and growth was hampered, no matter how much food I ate.
So now by process of elimination I’m at one day a week, on the first out of two rest days between my microcycles. That way I even have one day of no activity to eat a lot and get ready for the next weight lifting week.
I have been noticing my waist line getting a little bigger so I think I’ll take an aspect of the above post and throw in one HIIT session on one of the rest days between lifting days. I’ll see how that goes, one steady state run and one HIIT. But for the most part even with just a little fat gain I have been gaining weight and I know at least half of it is muscle because all of my lifts are improving and my shirts are getting smaller around my shoulders, lats, chest, arms. I actually ripped one of my shirts on accident, lol!
So it just depends on your preference, remember that burning fat is a lot easier and quicker than gaining muscle, so personally I doing the one step back, two steps forward approach, what’s ten lbs of fat if I gain ten lbs of muscle as well? BF% probably hasn’t gone up that much, and that ten lbs of fat will be a lot easier to burn off with the extra muscle gained.
Oh and by the way! I am not a hard gainer by any measure, I used to be a fat boy. My picture in my progress pic was taken after I was running and walking a lot and actually lost some weight, and I still look rediculous.