Cardio Print E-mail



Okay, we'll admit it; we're a couple of muscle heads. We much prefer the feeling of nailing a new personal best, or getting an incredible pump to the one we get from running a 5-K or doing half an hour on the elliptical machine. Call us crazy, but we never cared much for the whole runner's high, preferring instead to create our endorphin release as the result of moving heavy objects repeatedly. After all, what good is it to have all those purty muscles if you need to stop for oxygen just running down the block?

When you're an ectomorph, it's important to find a balance between relaxing, saving up your energy for your weight-training workouts, and working the old ticker. To hear some experts tell it, guys who have a tough time building muscle have no business doing cardiovascular exercise. Citing the fact that cardiovascular/aerobic work expends too much energy, they argue that doing cardio will have a negative impact on one's ability to build muscle. And to a certain extent, they're right.

Too much cardio will, without question, hamper your ability to add muscle. Resistance training and traditional cardiovascular (a.k.a. aerobic) exercise are at opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of the adaptations they bring about. Therefore, doing a high volume of both will only keep you from accomplishing your goals.

But we're just not comfortable avoiding cardiovascular exercise entirely in the name of bigger biceps. Of course, certain types of resistance training do offer a decent cardiovascular stimulus. But for the most part, the type of training you'll be doing does not. This heavy-load, low-rep training with relatively long rest intervals doesn't provide the same cardiovascular benefit as more continuous forms of exercise.

Don't get us wrong; your heart's still working. It's just that any elevations in heart rate are the function of constricted blood vessels in the muscles, creating an increased peripheral resistance and a bigger "roadblock" for the heart to pump against.

So in our view, it's not so much an issue of whether or not you should do cardio, but rather how much and what type best suits your needs. Remember, unlike the majority of folks you see draped all over the stairclimber at the local sweat palace, burning fat is the least of your problems. Your main interest in doing cardio should be for the health-related benefits. As such, your cardio workouts need to be far more intense and shorter in duration than that of the average gym rat, just like your weight training workouts. Forget the obligatory 30 to 45 minutes in the "fat-burning zone." Your workouts must be short and sweet. Why? Because anything more than that would likely sabotage your progress.


 
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