Friday, August 17, 2012

Can you still gain muscle and strength while doing cardio?

So I read something posted by Tom Venuto, a very respectable fitness guru I follow. It was a topic that immediately sparked my interest: Can you still gain muscle and strength while doing cardio?

I think you know where I'm going with this...

In case you want to just read it for yourself, go here:
http://www.holygrailbodytransformation.com/cardio_and_muscle_gain_interference.shtml

But if you want the abbreviated version, read on.

Basically everyone argues whether or not cardio causes muscle loss. I think it's fairly obvious, judging by the differences in body compositions of people who run a lot vs. people who train with weights. But still, this has been the controversy for years.

There are MANY factors that go into play, but the key points I took away from the newest meta-analysis just published this month in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research are as follows:

When fat loss is the primary goal, cardio should be done along with resistance training. Mainly higher intensity cardio.

Not everyone experiences detrimental effects of concurrent cardio sessions in addition to resistance training. Power athletes need to be more conservative with cardio.

Interference effects are body part specific, primarily the decrement in hypertrophy and strength in the lower body (from running concurrently with resistance training).

The more endurance training you do, the more you are susceptible to overreaching and under recovery, leading to interference effects.
The duration of endurance training, when done with strength training, is a major factor of the degree of interference. Strength athletes should avoid long duration endurance exercise (more than 20-30 minutes) that is performed at a high frequency (more than 3 days per week), to minimize any interference.

Excessive running can decrease the size and strength of your legs.

Also, endurance athletes should not fear adding strength training to their training because it does NOT interfere with aerobic capacity. As if anyone thought it did.

So basically, I just got a permission slip to avoid running more than an hour and a half a week. No problem there.

My goal is to stay on track with my current fitness plan: cardio at a minimum to keep sexy muscle.

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