Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - How Much and What Types of Cardio You Should Do

Episode Date: August 28, 2015

In this podcast I talk all about cardio: how much you should do when you're dieting to lose fat, how much for building muscle, how much is too much, what types are best, and more... ARTICLES RELATED TO THIS VIDEO: How Much Cardio You Should Do (and How Much Is Too Much): http://www.muscleforlife.com/how-much-cardio/ The Worst Way to Lose Weight: http://www.muscleforlife.com/the-quickest-way-to-lose-weight/ The Top 3 Reasons to Do High-Intensity Interval Training: https://legionathletics.com/high-intensity-interval-training/ How to Change Your Body Weight Set Point: http://www.muscleforlife.com/body-weight-set-point/ How Much Muscle Can You Build Naturally http://www.muscleforlife.com/how-much-muscle-can-you-build-naturally/ Want to get my best advice on how to gain muscle and strength and lose fat faster? Sign up for my free newsletter! Click here: https://www.muscleforlife.com/signup/

Hey, it's Mike, and I just want to say thanks for checking out my podcast. I hope you like what I have to say. And if you do like what I have to say in the podcast, then I guarantee you're going to like my books. Now, I have several books, but the place to start is Bigger Leaner Stronger If You're a Guy and Thinner Leaner Stronger If You're a Girl. I mean, these books, they're basically going to teach you everything you need to know about dieting, training, and supplementation to build muscle, lose fat, and look and feel great without having to give up all the foods you love or live

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to the show. Hello, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another episode of the Muscle for Life how much cardio should I be doing? What types of cardio should I be doing? You know, and based on different goals. So, you know, I have people that say if they want to build muscle, should I be doing cardio at all? How much is too much? And then on the flip side, people that want to lose fat usually are, they assume they have to do cardio. And then the questions are how much and, you know, what types are best. And so I thought I'd make for a good podcast episode. I've probably spoken about these things a little bit here and there, but, um, just want to go over the entire subject and lay it all out for, for just, it's a, this would be a good one to refer back to and, you know, forward around and whatever, because it's going to answer a lot of questions.

So let's first just talk about cardio in general, um, cardio versus weightlifting, right? Um, most people kind of associate exercise and health. They associate cardio with exercise and health, general health, uh, you know, heart health, um, and, and not being overweight and so forth. Whereas weightlifting is almost, um, I don't know, just some people I talk with, I guess it almost has a, it's like a stigma almost that it's more of a, more for, for vanity. It's's like a stigma almost that it's more of a, more for, for vanity. It's just for building big muscles and then looking, you know, looking cool or looking good. And, um, obviously, I mean, if you're listening to this, you probably know

that's not true. Uh, I mean, ironically, uh, research, uh, I'll link a study down below. You can link a couple of studies down below. You can see these things, but like research shows that, uh, endurance, endurance athletes, uh, run into more heart troubles, especially later in their lives, heart disease, heart dysfunction, then even the average sedentary, you know, non-exercising public. And these are people that really push their bodies hard in their endurance training and their cardio essentially for years and years and years. Um, you know, marathoners also, they, they accumulate more arterial plaque than, than just sedentary people.

And they run it, they have more heart complications later in their life. And, um, of course it doesn't mean like if you run marathons or if you do a lot of cardio, it doesn't mean you're going to have these problems. Remember whenever you're looking at research, especially observational epidemiological type of research, um, it just means that you're in that group that's at risk and depending on your body and depending on a lot of different factors that will determine if you actually have that problem. But, you know, you should know that, uh, if you're doing a lot of cardio, so you're doing

a lot of running, you run marathons a lot, you do that, uh, you are putting your, yourself at a higher risk of, uh, of, of heart disease and heart dysfunction. Um, and also cardio does put stress in the body. Of course, exercise, uh stress in the body of course exercise stresses the body that's one of the benefits is you have the acute stressor of exercise and then the body adapts to it in that adaptation that that that occurs after that response to exercise is where a lot of the health benefits are i don't know if you saw just recently it was like just a week ago a study came out that confirmed that the hormone irisin might actually be mispronouncing

it. IRISIN, IRISIN, I-R-I-S-I-N, I believe, which is a feel good hormone that's produced when you exercise that causes different positive changes in the body. So it's very, there's a very physiological, you know, basis for the health benefits exercise. But if you push it too far, then it kind of, it goes in the other direction. It's like the hormone, it's like the hormone cortisol, uh, an acute spike of cortisol, like what occurs when you exercise is good. It's, it's, uh, I mean, cortisol is a, is a catabolic hormone. So cortisol breaks down fat. Uh, it also breaks down muscle, but you know, it's a part of the fight or flight response of the body. Uh, so acute spikes of cortisol that then come back down. That's good. That's part of the stress response system of the

body. But if you have chronically elevated cortisol, then you're going to have health problems at some point. So, um, one of the, one of the ways that you can achieve that is by just exercising too much, doing too much cardio or too much weightlifting as well. And, you know, you can run into that, that issue. I find that just in my experience, working with people and talking with people that the, the chronic cortisol type of cases tend to be people that are doing a lot of cardio. Like it seems to be easier to get there doing a ton of cardio than with weightlifting, because just the sheer amount of time, like, you know, I'll speak with people that will do, you know, they'll be doing when they come to me and they're not feeling good in there, you know,

they've stopped losing weight and they, if it's a lot of times it's women, they've lost their periods and things are just not going well. They're doing anywhere from one to two hours of cardio per day, seven days per week, plus the weightlifting program. There might be another four to seven hours of exercise a week. Um, now with, with weightlifting though, it's, it's pretty hard to do two hours of weightlifting, uh, especially heavy weightlifting, which puts a lot of stress in the body. It can be done, but I just see that people tend to abuse cardio more than weightlifting because maybe because it's a, I wouldn't say it's in a way it's maybe easier to just go hop on a bike or hop on a treadmill or a stairmaster and just grind away for two hours every day while you watch your iPad or something like that.

Not that it's easy that that seems to me, uh, like a bit more, it's, it's going to be a bit less stressful than trying to do two hours straight of heavy compound weightlifting, for example. But anyways, so if you're doing too much exercise, one of the problems you're going to run into is your cortisol levels are just going to remain chronically elevated and that causes a lot of different health issues. So the bottom line with cardio is your goal, how much you should do is dictated by your goal. So my philosophy is there are definitely health benefits to cardio. There are a lot of health benefits to weightlifting as well. Going back to what I was talking about initially, it's not just for having big muscles that look good.

Having large amounts of lean mass is in itself very healthy. It's great for insulin sensitivity. It's great for your immune system. I mean, that's one of the things that, you know, that people don't know about just having muscle is that the total amount of lean mass that you have is associated, I mean, research is associated with just all cause mortality, meaning that the less muscle you have, especially as you get older, the more likely you are to die from a variety of different causes. Disease, falling down, breaking your hip. Basically, your quality of life is going to decline if you have, the less muscle you have as you get older.

And the more likely you are to die from anything. So, yes, there is a vanity point of it. Of course, you know, we're in the gym lifting weights because we want to look a certain way. And that's at least 50% of the reason why we're there. But it's also nice to know that there are a lot of different health benefits to it as well. And it's, it's very, very healthy for the body. And, uh, you know, in the, all those stuff that I've read in my experiences with my body and work with a lot of people, uh, I would say that there's probably, I would say weightlifting really has the edge actually in terms of, uh, overall health benefits, be cardiovascular benefits, because especially with heavy weightlifting, your heart gets going

if it's because especially with heavy weightlifting, your heart gets going, go do a bunch of heavy deadlifts and you're going to be, you know, struggling to breathe at the end of, uh, a few sets of that for sure. So you get cardiovascular benefits, you get, you know, insulin sensitivity benefits, cholesterol benefits. Weightlifting is great for burning energy and for staying lean. And it builds and preserves lean mass, which cardio does not. So cardio is, you know, it is, it is, it is obviously any exercise is healthy, but if you were to only pick one, I would actually say weightlift before doing cardio. And that kind of informs my general position on cardio, which is

you should do as much cardio as it takes to reach your goals and no more. And that's not as much as many people think. Uh, for instance, if I'm cutting, if I'm dieting to lose weight, I do no more than two hours of cardio a week, every seven days. And that's usually why I've worked up to that. I usually start actually around an hour a week. And then I'll, you know, as I just, if you're, if you're a, you know, seasoned muscle lifer and feller, then you know why it's just as, as the longer you're in a calorie deficit, the more your body kind of fights against it to reduce your, your calorie expenditure. And then upping your cardio is an easy way to just keep that,

keep that, uh, energy expenditure high. So you can continue losing fat, but I'm never doing an hour of cardio a day or two hours of cardio a day. And the people uniformly, the people that I hear from that are, are having the biggest problems with cardio are the people that are doing that. And a lot of these people are people that, um, are the reason why they're putting themselves through that is because they're, they compete. So the reason why I don't do a bunch of cardio, uh, for, for losing weight is one it's, it's unnecessary. Remember it's just, you're, you just need to create a calorie deficit and you can burn quite a bit of energy, especially with heavy compound weightlifting, which bill with, which burns a fair amount of energy

while you're doing it and burns a fair amount of energy afterward that quote unquote afterburn effect. Um, and, and also because cardio, it's not as effective as many people think you don't, a lot of people just how a lot of people underestimate the amount of calories that they eat. Like if they're not following a meal plan and they just kind of wing it and go, oh, I think I'm eating about 1800 calories. And then they go actually add it all up and they realize they're eating like 2500 calories a day. A lot of people tend to overestimate the amount of energy they burn when they do exercise. And both of those things have actually been verified in scientific studies. But I don't even need to – I already know that just dealing with people.

That's just the way it is. And the reality is that if you're doing – you have to work really hard to burn even just 500 calories. That's probably about an hour of steady state kind of cardio where you're working. It's not just an hour of walking. You're going to have to be really moving your body and what 500 calories. Yeah, I thought that's good. But if you don't really know what you're doing with your diet, you can easily eat back 500 calories. I mean a cookie could be 300 calories for instance. So it could be like a cookie and a piece of fruit. And there's that hour of grueling cardio that you just did and you just ate it all back. And this is

why, I mean, you've probably seen either you've seen the studies that are being referred to, or you've seen kind of news headlines that say that exercise doesn't work. Exercise is not, doesn't guarantee anything the way of weight loss and people that do exercise programs wind up fatter. And you know, a lot of those kinds of angles to just be controversial and say that, uh, move more, eat less doesn't work, right? Well, what they're not telling you is when you look at what's the substance of that research, it's these aren't people like you and me that know exactly what we're doing. We know how energy balance works. We know how macronutrients break down.

We know how to make meal plans. We know what we're doing. These are average people that, you know, they might just watch, see something on a TV show or read a simple little book that tells them, you know, to quote unquote eat clean and do exercise every day. And then either they don't lose weight or maybe they lose a little bit of weight in the beginning and then they get sick of the diet and they get lazy and then they gain all the weight back or more. then they gain all the weight back and, or more. And what, what is partially underlying that is of course, not understanding how food relates to weight gain and weight loss that that doesn't help. But also the fact that if you go do, you know, a lot of these, these, uh, kind of shallow type of Pinterest type of workout programs, the ultimate, this workout, the ultimate 10 minute, 15 minute, they're shorter, 15, 20 minutes and 15 to 20 minutes of high intensity

exercise, like interval training, where you're really pushing yourself. You know, I would say in 20 minutes you could maybe burn 200 calories, maybe. And that would, you have to work for that, that that wouldn't come easy. And again, 200 calories to someone that doesn't know what they're doing with their diet is nothing. I mean, 200 calories is like, that could be three extra bites at dinner, or that could be, you know, Oh, that little bit of extra dessert or whatever. So yes, it's true. If you don't, the prescription of just, Oh, just go do exercise. Um, if you, if that's all you told somebody that wanted to lose weight, they're probably not going to do well. They might initially lose some weight because they're not going to change their diet and they're going to burn a bit more energy and they're going

to see that for two or three weeks. But then, you know, they might, uh, because they're in a calorie deficit, they're not going to, they're not going to be used to that feeling. Most people are not, they're used to being pretty much full all of the time. So when they go into a calorie deficit and they start getting hungry and they go, Oh, I'm hungry. I need to eat food. They don't realize that hunger is, is not a signal to eat food. Like it is physically speaking, but it doesn't mean you have to go eat food. It's your body saying, uh, I don't want to be in a calorie deficit. Well, that's not true. It's hunger is not a feeling of being, but the hunger that you, that you feel every day when you're in a calorie deficit, um, there are hormonal changes and there

are things happening in the body where the body is generally saying, hey, I need more energy. I need more energy. You're not feeding me enough. And that doesn't mean you have to go do it though. You're doing that intentionally and you're saying, yeah, bitch, deal with it. Get leaner and then you'll get more food. And so obviously, the average dieter doesn't understand that. Another thing that is just good to know about cardio, cardio in particular, is that there's research that shows, I'll link, either link a study down below or I'll just link an article where I'll link all the studies. That's probably better. I'll just link the article so you can go check it all out. And where I'm talking about a lot of, I've written about a lot of these

things and you can go, you know, check out all the science behind it. But basically that your body is going to adapt to the exercise that you're doing. It's going to reduce its calorie expenditure over time. And this is just a simple matter of the body, uh, working to increase its efficiency. So when you're doing the same types of exercise, so let's say you do incline walking on the treadmill, you do it every day, you do 30 minutes. The amount of energy that you burn while you're doing that is going to go down over time. So what might have, you know, help you burn X number of calories on week one is now burning 20% less calories on week eight or week six or whatever. So that's something else you need to keep in mind. Another issue, which I mentioned earlier about doing a lot of cardio is it doesn't preserve lean mass and it can even accelerate the loss of lean mass, especially if you're in a

calorie deficit, too big of a calorie deficit, not enough protein. And that's really the worst way that you can go about dieting is to severely restrict your calories, eat very little protein and do a bunch of cardio. Like, yes, you're going to lose fat, but you're going to lose a lot of muscle, which kind of leads to that skinny fat type of physique where body fat percentage or, well, the percentage could be relatively high, but the absolute amount of body fat, like uh, or, or, well, the percentage could be relatively high, but the absolute amount of body fat, like X number of pounds of fat on the body isn't that high, but because there's very little muscle as well, the body, you just kind of look amorphous. It looks like you're fat, but if you were to take measurements, you're not like, you know, your,

uh, waist isn't that big, your arms or legs. And this is more girls run into this more than guys because girls get worse advice. And like a lot of guys are told to go lift weights, do resistance training. Whereas a lot of girls are told to do very little of that, maybe just some body weight stuff, but to focus more on cardio and basically starving themselves. Um, so, you know, their thighs, if they were to measure them are really not that big, but they don't have any shape. They just kind of look like, uh, sausages, you know, their thighs, if they were to measure them are really not that big, but they don't have any shape. They just kind of look like, uh, sausages, you know what I mean? So those are just some general things to keep in mind about cardio.

So now let's talk a little bit more about some practical, what, what do you do? So if you're losing weight, if you want to, if you're dieting to lose weight, uh, I highly recommend that, and you know that what I'm going to say here is that you do high intensity interval training. Um, there've been quite a few, I mean, there's just another study that came out. I saw it just a couple of weeks ago. Every few months, there's a new study that comes out or a new review or analysis of previous studies that just confirms that high intensity interval training is better for losing fat, period. It's also better, you lose fat faster doing it than lower intensity cardio.

And it's also better for preserving muscle, mainly because you don't have to do nearly as much. My, my hit cardio sessions are no more than 25 minutes, really no more than 30, usually 25 minutes though. That's it, 25 minutes. And you know, I enjoy my cardio. So right now I'm not cutting, I'm just kind of maintaining and I still do cardio three or four days a week because I actually find it, uh, relaxing because I can just sit there. Um, I'm watching now I'm watching, uh, if you've some, some documentaries, essentially it's either documentary or, but there's this company called the great courses, which I highly recommend. They kick ass. Uh, they, you can, you can, you can, they basically, they, they go to professors all over the country. And a lot of these professors have won awards and they're, you know, some of them are teaching

in very prestigious schools. And so they teach whatever subject and the great courses comes to them and basically works with them to create like a, you know, it could be anywhere from a 15 to a 40 hour course on whatever subject it is that they teach. Um, and it's awesome. And they have stuff on everything. Their marketing is incredible too. Uh, for, for what they're doing is, I mean, I, you know, I get just, I'm just impressed with their, with their whole system. I think they're like a billion dollar company, so it's not, uh, not surprising anyways. So it's just not, I just enjoy it. I can just go and I do my cardio and I,

no one is talking to me. Nobody, I don't, I don't need, you know what I mean? I can just sit there and it's almost like a relaxation for me, even though I'm, I'm, I'm working. I mean, again, it's, it's high intensity interval and I'm pushing myself. And that's the important thing on when you're doing your hit cardio is once you get going after your first few minutes, when you're in your high intensity, you know, those high intensity sprint periods, you should be at the point where you can't comfortably hold a conversation. You don't have to be like gasping for breath, but you shouldn't be able to just like calmly talk to the person next to you. You know, I do a, I do one minute long sprints followed by a minute and a half of, of low intensity rest. So after about 30 seconds

into that sprint, um, I'm at that point where I could talk, but it's going to be labored. And that that's, you want to make sure that you're pushing yourself to that point. Cause that's related to your, to, um, your, your VO two, it's called your VO two max, which is related to the maximum amount of oxygen consumption that can occur or that your body can, can, uh, like there's a limit to how much oxygen it can absorb. So you want to be hitting anywhere from 80 to a hundred percent of your VO two max, but the only way to really, really know that would be like hooked up to a metabolic cart. And that's obviously not practical, but a, an easy kind of heuristic way to, to know if that's happening is if you're at that point where you are, your, your breathing

is labored and you cannot easily carry on a conversation, you're in the right range. So anyways, back to more back to the point is I'm doing, I'm doing three to four, 25 minute sessions of cardio week right now because I enjoy it. And because it actually makes me feel good. It gives me energy. I feel energized after, and I energized after and I do it before dinner and then I work at night. So it's a nice, you know,

I lift weights first thing in the morning and that is a great way to start the day. It keeps me energized. I do all my stuff all day and then go home, do my cardio, which then just kind of, I feel like it almost revives me a little bit, eat food and then get back to work. So I like it. But when I'm cutting, I'm doing about the same. Actually, I don't ever do more

than five, 25 minute sessions a week, but it's usually three to four sessions a week. And if I were, if I were bulking, um, which I just don't really have a reason to do these days because I'm not trying to just get bigger. Um, and I don't like getting fatter at this point. I'd rather just stay lean because I have more or less the amount of size that I want. Uh, then I would cut that back probably to one or two sessions a week. And I'll talk about why in a minute, but we'll just, we'll just focus on fat loss for now. So that's that, that, that one to two hours a week of high intensity interval cardio, that's all you need. I mean, I don't really see a reason to do anything else. Um, now of course there's some incidental quote unquote cardio. I take my dogs for a walk every day and that takes 15 minutes of walking. Okay. I don't even really count that. I mean, in terms of energy expenditure, it's very low and you know, okay,

what does that really get me? It gets me a, my half, half of my little chocolate snack that I have every day. Fine. Um, so when I'm talking cardio, I mean more exertion type of stuff. Uh, now that's, that's my general standard recommendation. Um, three to five, 20 to 25, maybe 30 minute sessions of high intensity interval cardio per week. I like to stick to, uh, recumbent biking or upright biking because it mimics the, the really mimics kind of the squat motion. Um, and there's some research that shows that, that, that the type of cardio that you do can actually have a bit of an effect on, on your strength. So if you do a type of cardio like biking that mimics a weightlifting movement, you're going to see better strength retention than if you did something that didn't like running, for instance.

But again, this is kind of nitpicking. It doesn't, if you enjoy running, if you enjoy doing sprints, like actual go and running sprints, which I actually do enjoy, I used to do them, but it would just, it would fuck up my legs so much that it would mess with my lifting. Like, you know, I was trying to, if I was I was doing three sprints a week, I would do it on like, let's say Sunday. Monday, my legs would be sore. Tuesday, I'm still a little bit sore, feel it a little bit and I'm dead lifting.

Then, okay, that makes them sore. And then Wednesday, I'm trying to run again with sore legs and then it just hurts. Thursday, they're still kind of fucked up. Friday, I'm trying to squat. It just didn't work. But I know some people that they don't have that problem. They can sprint every single day and they'd never get leg soreness. And that's great.

Um, and I, and I tried it for like at least a month too. It was like, I think six weeks of it and I still was getting too sore. So dropped it. But the type of cardio that you're doing, obviously like certain types of cardio are going to be more just, they're just going to fit for high intensity type of, uh, training better. Um, but the, the, the most popular kind of most common methods are biking, running, swimming is great. Uh, people that are good at jump roping, if you have enough technical skill with it and you can go really fast, you do that. Um, rowing is great. Rowing is another actually great option because you have that pulling,

so that's mimicking a weightlifting movement. I mean, boxing is actually great. Boxing is really, really tiring. So you can get creative. The point is that, and I'll link an article down below, and for those that are listening, you can find it on Legion, the blog I run at Legion Athletics on high intensity. If you just Google Legion Athletics HIIT, H-I-I-T, three words, you'll see it.

It'll come up on Google. And I dive into a bit more of the details of how the intricacies of how do you get the most out of your HIIT cardio. But those are the basic concepts. You're going to have to push yourself hard for anywhere from 30 to 30 seconds to two minutes. And then you're going to have to do a low intensity, which is usually matched. Um, I'm now doing a minute like, well, sorry, not match. It's usually twice as long. So whatever your, whatever your high intensity interval is, you're taking twice as long of a rest period. And then as once that gets easier and you'll know that

by again, how labored is your breathing? How come, how comfortable are you? Um, I got to a point where doing a minute, uh, on, on the recumbent bike, which also is just worth noting that I don't go really high on the resistance because the point of high of hit cardio is to go really fast, not, not really hard, not grind against resistance, but you want to be going fast. You want to really get your heart rate going. It also, I find it better. It doesn't fry your legs, which again matters. If you're lifting weights, if you're doing heavy deadlifts, heavy squats, you don't want to be frying your legs out on your cardio sessions. So I'm doing, I'm doing like a moderate amount of resistance, something to give me something to pedal against so I can go really fast. But one minute of, and two minutes of rest,

it just got to a point where it was, it got to a point where it was too easy. My heart rate wasn't, uh, it was coming down. Like it wouldn't, you know, in the beginning it was reaching, uh, probably about by the end of the workout, probably about one 70, one 80 on my high intensity intervals. And my, uh, you know, my, I couldn't come to the whole conversation. And then after several months, it was coming down to the one forties, maybe one 50. And I could, I could talk, you know, I was a breathing a little bit, but I could still have a conversation. So, um, instead of making my intervals longer, which eventually the legs are really what

become the issue for me, at least it's not my cardio so much as my legs get fried. Um, so instead of making the intervals longer, which I I'm going to have to do eventually, but right now I'm just bringing my rest down. So I'm going to, I'm going to bring it down to a minute of high intensity and a minute of low intensity and see if that now, you know, brings me back to that 170, 180, um, beats per minute and, and labor breathing and whatever. So that's, that's really what you want to be doing. And, you know, rinse and repeat. I do, I do like a one minute warmup and I just get right into it, rinse and repeat for, you know, 20 to 30 minutes and you're done. And the bottom

line is if your goal is just to lose weight and I mean, yeah, of course there's health benefits doing cardio. We already talked about that, but if the reason why you're doing it is to lose fat faster, then you don't need to be doing more than that. You just don't that plus. So you have that hour to two hours of hit cardio per week plus anywhere from, let's say three to six hours of weightlifting per week is plenty. You just do not need to more be doing more exercise than that. And even that is like, you're not going to, you're not, you're probably not going to run into any overtraining type of issues with that, but that's really pushing it. That's, I wouldn't even recommend doing more than that, than that. And the six hours of weightlifting, because that's actually quite high. And, and the couple hours of HIIT cardio per week,

that's everything. You can't move more than that basically in terms of exercise. Yeah. Walking around and stuff, very, very, you, very low intensity type of physical activity is not going to be a problem. But if you're doing all that plus let's say you're in school and you're playing a sport, that would be too much. You're going to run into overtraining issues eventually. You're not going to feel good. So when you have all that exercise in place, then it comes down to your diet and just knowing what you're doing with your diet and sticking to it and not, you know, overeating and not making any of the simple mistakes that people make. And you can get as lean as you want to get. I mean, really, I've done just that and with a couple supplements like caffeine and green tea extract and yohimbine and the stuff

that you'll find in my own supplements that, again, you probably know that story. I just make, with Legion, I just make the stuff that I've always wanted where I had to buy six different bottles and now I can just make my own and how I can make Phoenix and just put it all in that. And then I can make forge and put the rest of it in that. And now I only have to take, now I only need two bottles. Um, so, so just with doing that, that plus the supplementation plus proper diet, I've been able to get down to 6% body fat, give or take. It's hard to know exactly. But to the point where I don't need – I can't – there's no fat really left to lose. I mean it's going to – it will just start to look ridiculous.

So you don't need anything else other than, than really what I just laid out for, for fat loss. And especially with cardio, you do not need to be doing hours and hours of cardio per week. Um, and a couple, I guess, little, uh, I wouldn't say caveats, but just, uh, questions that you might have because you see this stuff out there is, uh, one, what if you like, what if your cardio is like sports, let's say, so you're going to be playing hours of sports every week and you don't want to cut that back. Okay. That's fine. You just have to keep in mind though, that the more cardio that you're doing, the more energy you're burning, the more likely you are to lose muscle and the

more likely you are to lose strength in your strength in your weightlifting, but you can work around it. A couple simple things is to have some protein before you, if you're going to go out and play, you know, let's say you play soccer and it's gonna be a two hour game, have a good, you know, 30, 40 grams of protein before and after that can help make sure that you're not in too large of a calorie deficit. And that's going to, you know, require, it can be hard to quantify how much energy you're really burning when you're doing something like, you know, playing soccer, because a lot of sprinting, like, how do you really know? And personally, what I would do is I would, I mean, it's kind of a bit of an experiment, you're gonna have to kind of learn

your body. And you're gonna have to, I would go with, um, like a catch McArdle type of approach, although the modifiers are a bit high, go a little bit lower modifiers. And I would just go, okay, my weightlifting plus my, my, my, my sports equals, um, let's say it's 15 hours of exercise a week. So if it were 15 hours, actually a week, I'd probably try BMR times 1.6 or 1.7. And, uh, for my TDE for my total daily energy expenditure, and then cut it, you know, eat maybe 80% or 75% of that and, um, see how my body responds basically. And am I losing weight too quickly? Like, you know, initially you're going to lose a couple of pounds a week just cause water and glycogen. But if you're, if you're relatively lean,

like if you're a guy under 20% body fat or a girl under 30% body fat, uh, after a few weeks, you really should start seeing that fat loss or that weight loss to slow down to about a pound or a pound and a half a week. Um, and if you're still losing two or three pounds a week after being, you know know in a deficit for for let's say four weeks and you didn't start out very overweight you're probably eating too little or moving too much and you're losing muscle essentially so and you'll also know in the gym one thing that you can know is if you're not losing strength in the gym you are not losing muscle period you that that's just not how it works if you are losing strength in the gym, like if you're losing

quite a bit of strength, plus you're losing a lot of weight, you're probably losing muscle. So you can kind of, you know, just jockey those two factors. What's your weight doing and what are your lifts looking like in the gym? And adjust things accordingly. So that's one thing is like, if you're going to be doing a bunch of low intensity cardio, don't add high intensity on top of that. If you're, if you're playing 10 hours of soccer a week, there's just no need to do anything more. Remember the primary purpose of cardio is to just burn energy. That is in terms of fat loss, that is its primary purpose. So you're doing a lot. You don't need to be doing more. Um, and you may even need to be dialing your weight, weight lifting back a little bit. Like I've worked with quite a few people that run marathons and they want to know, they want to know like, how do they,

how do they work their weightlifting as they have to taper, you know, as they're, as they're running as they have to run more and more coming up to this marathon for their training, what do they do with the weightlifting and basically have to taper it back. So in some cases, um, people will, will taper them down to like even two, just an upper body, lower body workout. Once one upper body, one lower body per week because they're running so much and we just don't want to overload the body. Some people are able to do a three day like a push pull legs. And occasionally some some people can get away with a four day, but that's rare. Usually it comes down to a two or three day.

So you might have to do the same thing. If you're playing a lot of sports, you might find that five days of lifting plus all the sports, you just don't, your energy levels are low. You're hungry all the time. You're irritable. You're moody. You're not sleeping well. Okay. Well then something has to, something has to go. And if the sports can't go, then the weightlifting has to go. You have to bring it down to three days a week or even two days a week, make sure you're eating enough food. So that's, that's one thing. And another thing is that you've probably known people or have seen people that talk about they are super lean or have gotten super lean and said, Oh, no cardio. You don't have to do any cardio. It's all diet.

It's all diet. Yeah. For some people. And I, you know, I, I don't have, I'm somewhere ecto meso type of morph type of body. I'm not super ecto. I've never, I like growing up, I was not super lean. I wasn't a super lean, muscular, naturally type of person. I was like relatively lean, just kind of, you know, tall, not, not super skinny, but skinny ish. And I, you know, I was more of a, I was good at, uh, it was more actually endurance. I mean, know, I was more of a, I was good at, uh, it was more actually endurance. I mean, just, I played a lot of ice hockey and roller hockey growing up. And that was one of my strengths is I just, I could, I could do a lot of sprints, like in terms of skating, I was a good skater and I was just fast and I didn't tire easily. So that was actually more my,

my genetic strength, I guess you could say. Um, and with that, I mean, I find that the problem with no cardio is I just, I get stuck around nine or 10% body fat if I don't do cardio simply because I'm not able to burn enough energy with my weightlifting and I have to reduce my calories over time because that's just how it is. And, you've, I've tried it several times. I have not been able to get down to the seven, 8% body fat range without at least doing that three or four cardio sessions per week. And those really has made a difference. Like I've got, I've just, I've tried it just lifting and diet and I'll get to a point where I'm just stuck and I don't want to keep on dropping my calories because the point where that also becomes counterproductive.

And then I add my cardio back in and just like that, I'm losing my half a pound of fat a week again, and I can roll right into, you know, right through the cut and be done. So just know that that's probably how your experience is going to be. If you, if you just want to get lean, sure. You don't have to do cardio. Like if you want to, as a guy, you're 18% body fat. Let's say you just want to get down to the 12, 13% range where you have some abs and you look good. You don't have to do cardio to do that.

You can just weight lift and you can use your diet to get you there. But as a girl, I would say if you want to get down to the 20% range, give or take, then you probably don't have to do any cardio. Again, if you do do cardio, you'll get there faster, but you don't have to do it. If you really don't want to, probably don't have to do any cardio. Um, again, if you do do cardio, you'll get there faster, but you don't have to do it. If you really don't want to, I don't have the time or whatever. Um, but if you want to get very lean, you're going to have to do cardio. You just will. Uh, again, the only people I've known that didn't have to were just naturally, they, I, their entire life, they were 7% body fat. So who cares? It doesn't count. And then like, yeah, over a period they bulked and ate a bunch of food and it took a, you know, a shit ton of food for

them to even get up to, let's say 10 or 11%. And then for them to get back to 7% is just to stop eating a shitload of food and their body just, you know, it's, I've written about what's called a body weight set point. And some people's set points are just low and I'll link an article down below. Or if you're listening, you can go to just search for a muscle for life set point in Google and you'll find it. And some people, you know, it's just a genetic gift, I guess you could say. Now, before I wrap up here, let's just quickly talk about cardio and building muscle. A lot of people think that cardio and building, doing cardio or improving cardiovascular endurance and building muscle are mutually exclusive.

You can't do both, and you shouldn't be doing cardio if you want to build muscle, and I disagree. Yes, there's a point where it becomes counterproductive because there's quite a bit of research that shows that concurrent type of training programs where you're doing a bunch of cardio and a bunch of weightlifting are just not as good for building strength as pure strength programs where you're not doing any cardio. So there's really no refuting that, and I've experienced that with my body. I've worked a lot of people that experienced it. I think that's pretty just cut and dry, but if you're doing a small amount of cardio, um, you know, it can help one, it can help with recovery. Like if you're doing a, I mean, I noticed when I started putting that, the biking in that my legs recovered faster from my deadlifting and squatting and the faster you recover, um, the more, I mean, the, I mean, it's nice just because it's, it's nice to not be blasted sore for, for as long, but also, um, it can help you in that,

like, let's say you're doing your, some heavy pulling on a Tuesday and then you're squatting on a Thursday or Friday. And if your legs are still a little bit sore from the Tuesday, there's a good chance that it's going to affect your squats. Not that you shouldn't be squatting, but if your legs are still a bit tight, it can impair performance a little bit. And also regarding frequency. So if you're trying to squat twice a week or pull twice a week, that, that speed of recovery can really help. Um, I also have found that, uh, and this is kind of anecdotal. Um, I think even Lyle McDonald has spoken about it as well. And I've kind of seen it that if you keep

your cardio in, uh, when you are bulking that when you flip to a cut, it just, the transition just seems to be smoother and the fat loss, it just, your body, there isn't a lag from that in the beginning and you don't have to fight for every, to get the, start getting this fat loss going. I found that to be true. And insulin sensitivity is another good reason to do some cardio because it improves insulin sensitivity, which of course applies to your muscle tissue. And insulin sensitivity is one of the important, uh, it, it affects muscle growth and it affects how, uh, fat storage as well. So the more insulin resistant you are, the less muscle you're going to grow because insulin drives nutrients into cells. That's what it does. So if you're, if your muscle tissue is, uh, very sensitive to insulin, that's great because that

means it's gonna be very receptive to the nutrients that you great because that means it's going to be very receptive to the nutrients that you eat. And it also means that your body is going to be able to shuttle those nutrients into muscles as opposed to having to convert them into fat. And that's one of the reasons why high levels of insulin resistance, why carbohydrates, eating high carbs in those situations is one of the reasons why it's bad is that if your, if your muscles aren't able to absorb carbs, eventually your body has to do something with them. And one of the things that will do with them is the liver will convert it into fat through a process called de novo lipogenesis, which I actually spoke about in the last podcast and that DNL does not happen in under normal circumstances, but to any degree, you'd have to

really, really go hard on carbs. But this is this is an abnormal circumstance where DNL can occur at a higher than normal rate, which is where there's a lot of insulin resistance. And so that's one of the things your body will do with the excess glucose in the blood is trying to get it out. So one of the things it'll do is just start converting it into fat. So what you'll find is one of the, this is also one of the reasons why you want to stay relatively lean when you're bulking and you don't want to just go crazy batshit, you know, ham on food is the fatter you are, the more insulin resistant you're going to become.

And the more insulin resistant you become, the more easy it is to gain fat even faster and the less muscle you're going to build. So it becomes a very counterproductive basically to gain a lot of fat when you're bulking or to bulk when you already are fat. And that's why I generally recommend that if you really want to look at this in the bigger picture and you want to go from being fat to having a great physique, the first thing you need to do is you need to get lean. As a guy, you need to get down to the 10% body fat range. As a girl, you need to get down to the 20% body fat range. One of the,

and one of the big reasons for this is because at that point, you're going to have good insulin sensitivity. Um, and there's really no way to, to, if you're overweight, there's not, there are no supplements you can take. There's really not much you can do to counteract the negative effects on insulin sensitivity other than just losing the weight. Um, so when you're, when cardio coming back to cardio, it improves insulin sensitivity and everything you can do when you're bulking to keep that insulin sensitivity high is going to help you. So of course there are supplements out there that can help like berberine. I've been trying to work berberine into one of my supplements, but it tastes so fucking bad that it can't be in

a powder. Like I wanted berberine in recharge, my post-workout. Perfect. That's a, it'd just be a perfect thing to put in there. Um, because, uh, when your, your insulin sensitivity is already high when you're right after you train, uh, and then, you know, adding berberine, which, uh, there's even, I mean, they'll use berberine with, with people with diabetes and it'll work just as well as metformin. I mean, it's a, it works. There's no question, but it tastes so bad that we can't use it. So, um, you know, I was even thinking maybe I'll just throw it in a pill and, and have it like as an add on to recharge and that that's optional and it can explain why, like, here's something I wanted to put in a recharge, but can't. So if you have,

if you don't mind spending the money, uh, here, get this and take this pill too. Anyways, the, but supplements only going to do so much. Like you have to, spending the money, uh, here, get this and take this pill too. Anyways, the, but supplements only going to do so much. Like you have to, you have to work for just like with building muscle and losing fat, you have to work for it. And if you're working for it, supplements can help. So same thing with this instance, sensitivity point, you can't just be overweight and lazy and pop some pills and have great insulin sensitivity. Um, so that's another reason why I actually like doing cardio when I'm, when I'm bulking is to help maintain insulin sensitivity. Now, in terms of how much again, um, you know, I, I, I try to keep it to maybe two sessions a week, no more than three.

I stick to high intensity because I'm going to get really just the most bang for my buck, uh, and not have to spend a bunch of time doing it. And again, the amount of time that you're going to be spending doing cardio matters when you're especially, I mean, it matters when you're cutting and it also matters when you're bulking. You really want to be doing as little cardio as you can while still gaining, getting the benefits that you're looking for. So I found in bulking that is maybe an hour, hour and a half max, but usually about an hour a week of high intensity cardio. And then again, I'm walking my dogs every day and stuff, but that's just walking around. I almost don't even count that. So I would say that you don't have to do cardio

when you're bulking. If you stick to your calories, maintain a slight, you know, surplus five, 10%, don't go crazy on your cheat meals. Be smart about that. Uh, save your calories for those meals. Don't go, you know, in 3000 calories surpluses twice a week with a bunch of dietary fat and all the things that, you know, people, especially when they come out of a diet. So they've been cutting and now they just go right into a bulk and they're like, Ooh, now I get to eat anything. And it's just, it's a disaster because at the end of a cut, like at the end of that calorie, that, that period where you're, you're, you're in a sustained calorie deficit, your body is primed to gain fat very quickly. And so if you, uh, if you indulge it and you just go,

you know, pound five guys, hamburgers every day, you are going to gain fat very quickly and throw away everything that you kind of worked for. And then the insulin sensitivity problems will resistance problems will come into play. And then you're going to start gaining fat faster. You're not going to build as much muscle. It just becomes like a vicious kind of, uh, downward type of spiral. So, um, you can prevent that by doing a proper reverse diet after you're done cutting and then go into a slight surplus and maintain that. Don't go crazy on your cheat meals. Do some cardio, which, you know, you just factor in with

your calories to make sure you're in a surplus. So you're gonna have to eat a bit more, which is nice as well. And then maintain an insulin sensitivity. When I'm bulking, I like to go for, I mean, I would say three months, at least you want to go three months. But personally, I used to go as I try to stretch it out to even, even six months where I would go from like eight or 9% body fat to like maybe 15 or 14, um, over the course of six months. But that, that's great. I mean, that was six months of like really making a lot of progress in the gym, going up quite a few, you know, quite a bit in my weights and strength, and then, you know, get rid of the fat again and then compare and see, wow, you know, that that of the fat again and then compare and see, wow,

you know, that that's a, that's a seven pound. That's a, well, it wouldn't be that much. But, um, in, in my case, when I was bulking years ago, I could, I think I gained my first, like when I really started learning what I was doing, um, my first bulk and then cut, I gained probably about seven pounds of muscle in the first year of that, which was pretty impressive considering how long that I had been lifting at that point, although I didn't know what I was doing. So, you know, I had a little bit of almost like advanced newbie gains in a sense. But anyways, you get the point that you can go six months, gain a few pounds of muscle, keep it all when you lose the fat, rinse and repeat. And then

eventually you get there. And if you repeat. And then eventually, uh, you get there. And if you're new to weightlifting, uh, you can gain quite a bit more. You can gain, if you were, if you were like, I've seen guys that started lean and just don't put on fat easily bulk essentially for an entire year and gain 20 pounds of muscle, legitimately 20 pounds of muscle. Um, and you know, but if you have to, if you have to, let's say you bulk for six to eight months of that, and then you spend the end, the last, let's say it's eight months of bulking and four months of cutting. If you can gain 15 pounds of muscle in that time, if you're new to weightlifting, that's great. And then in the second year, you kind of cut those numbers in half.

And anyways, I'll link an article down below. And if you're listening, if you want to learn more about how much muscle you can build naturally, and if you're listening, you can just Google muscle for life, uh, build muscle naturally, and it'll come up. So I think that's everything. I hope this answered, uh, those are all the, those are actually covers all the, all the questions I hear most. Um, Oh, one last thing is if you're going to do, do your weightlifting first, if you're gonna do cardio after your weightlifting, which I recommend that you split those workouts up if you can. Um, but if you can't do the cardio after the weightlifting and, uh, if you're, if you're training fasted, that's fine. Um, if you're not, then, you know, you can have your, your, some guys, some people they'll, they'll, they'll do their pre-workout meal.

They'll lift, have like a scoop of way and then do their cardio. Um, I don't know if that really matters. Uh, sometimes I'll tell people if you want to be, if they're like really scared of losing muscle, uh, I don't think it's really necessary. You probably just have your, have your pre-workout meal, lift cardio, go have your post-workout meal and you're good to go. But if you do your cardio first, it's going to suck energy that you're going to, you would have better spent on, on your, on your weightlifting and pushing heavy weights. And then if that means that your cardio session, you're not going to, you know, push, you're not gonna be able to go, I'd say as fast on your high intensity intervals as you would have been able to, if you did it first, who cares? That's not the point. The point is that you're getting your heart rate up. You're getting, you're reaching

that high VO two max labor breathing, you know, can't hold a conversation easy. That's what, that's what you're going for. So, you know, yes, if you were like on a time trial and you're really trying to, uh, if you're, if you're, if you're doing your cardio for performance reasons, then they would be different, but you're not, you're weightlifting for more for performance reasons. And the cardio is kind of supplementary. So, uh, I hope that helps you. Um, you know, if you, if you have any cardio, any other cardio related questions, of course you can comment down below. If you're watching this in the blog post, or you can email me or go, go on muscle for life and comment on, on the podcast. You know, you know how to reach me on social media, blah, blah, blah.

And, uh, Oh, I don't really, sometimes I think like I should probably promote, talk about some of the things that I have, uh, cause I come out with new things that aren't, you know, we email about and stuff. I just never really promote shit on the podcast, which isn't necessarily bad. I just don't really even think of it, but I just want to say that, uh, over at legionathletics.com, we came out with, uh, a new product called fortify, which is a joint support supplement. And, um, it's one of the things that I really like about it is it's not a glucosamine supplement. It's not an MSM or chondroitin supplement, which those molecules are underwhelming, period, and more for people that have arthritis or arthritic symptoms. There's no research that shows that they're going to do anything for people with healthy joints.

It's kind of an unknown thing. But if we know that it isn't even that great for people with arthritis, it's probably not, even if it does do something for people with healthy joints, it's probably just not going to be much of anything. Um, so this supplement fortify is, is, is, is very different and contains a few ingredients that if you were to buy them separately, they're just expensive. Like for instance, curcumin, curcumin and piperine. Um, if you go look at, you know, you, I was, I take curcumin every day and I was buying it from some company Viva labs or something like that. And I think I was paying like 20 to $25 a bottle. Um, and just for that alone. And so, and I'm getting the same dosage, which is 500 milligrams. That's the clinically effective dosage. And I believe like 25 milligrams of piperine. Is that what it is? I don't remember off the top of my head. Piperine is just to increase the absorption. Really, the curcumin is what gives you the benefits.

Great anti-inflammatory agent. Helps lower inflammation in the joints. Also, a type of collagen called undenatured type 2 collagen, which also this is a very cool molecule that kind of modulates the body's immune response. So what can happen is the collagen can attack, your body's immune system can attack the collagen in your joints, and that degrades it over time. So by supplementing with this particular type of collagen,

it basically teaches your immune system that it's not harmful, actually. So then the immune system stops attacking the collagen in your joints. A very simple mechanism, but very cool. And there's research showing that in people with healthy joints that it benefits and it prevents that degenerative process that eventually leads to arthritis. So yeah, so there's a clinically effective dosage of the collagen. There's also a clinically effective dosage of, it's an acid, it's a long word. The acronym is AKBA and it comes from a plant called the Boswellia serrata plant. And this is the plant where the frankincense comes from. And like curcumin, it's a great anti-inflammatory agent because obviously,

if you're lifting weights regularly and if you're just physically active, if you're playing sports or whatever, you know that joint inflammation is just one of the problems you can run into. Joint swelling, joint inflammation, it causes pain. And then also it triggers that immune response, which causes joint degeneration over time. And so Boswellia serrata, like curcumin, similar in their effects of reducing inflammation, which also of course has other benefits in the body because inflammation is an important, um, it's kind of like going back to the, what I was talking about cortisol where, you know, acute bouts of spikes of cortisol, uh, in the right situations is good. That's what you want. And acute inflammation is good. If it's like,

for instance, in response to exercise, that's good in the muscles. Uh, you want that And acute inflammation is good if it's like, for instance, in response to exercise, that's good. In the muscles, you want that. That inflammatory response is part of the entire adaption process, which is why you've probably heard or maybe even seen the research showing that taking antioxidant type of things like vitamin C, for instance, taking a gram of vitamin C after weightlifting is a bad idea because it modulates that, uh, that inflammatory response. Um, and that, that, that's why that is because you, you want that inflammation to occur and then your body has ways to deal with it. And so you don't want to go in there and reduce that. Um, but if you have a chronically elevated levels of inflammation throughout the body, that's very bad. And that

can lead to different types of disease states and give you all kinds of problems. So there's some side benefits to stuff like curcumin and AKBA as well, because it does just reduce systemic inflammation. There's also a clinically effective dosage of grapeseed extract in Fortify, which is also in triumph because there are quite a few health benefits, improves eye health, reduces the risk of heart disease and other things. But related to joints specifically, the grapeseed extract, the mechanism is similar to the collagens in that it reduces that pro-inflammatory response from the immune system in terms of attacking the collagen. So anyways, that's the product. It's called Fortify. You can find it on Amazon. You can find it at legionathletics.com. I'm excited about it

because again, it's just less bottles that I, and it's, you know, it's not only, of course, it's a cheaper for me, but it's quite a bit cheaper for you. If you go and see, like, you know, I know Life Extension, they sell the collagen alone. I think it's like $30 a bottle or $25 a bottle. And so, again, if you look at how much would it cost to go buy all these ingredients separately, because you will not find another joint supplement that has all these ingredients together. The vast majority of joint supplements are just glucosamine supplements or conjoined MSM-type supplements and just overhyped and just bullshit. So, you know, it would be quite a bit more to build this supplement to kind of hobble it together

by buying all the ingredients separately. Anyways, that's it for this week and I will see you next week.