Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Research Review: Dr. Eric Helms on Combining Cardio & Weightlifting

Episode Date: December 27, 2017

As you probably know, I work hard to understand and promote high-quality diet, nutrition, and exercise science. That’s why I’ve spent and continue to spend a lot of time researching and writing, and why I reference quite a bit of scientific literature in my work. What I don’t do, though, is produce a research review where individual studies are broken down and analyzed because my plate is already overflowing with work as it is, and honestly, I don’t think I could do it better than the researchers whose work and research reviews I myself read regularly, like James Krieger, Eric Helms, Greg Nuckols, Mike Zourdos, Alan Aragon, and Bret Contreras. And so I had an idea: why not get those guys to come on my podcast to discuss studies they’ve analyzed in their reviews and share with us what they’ve learned, and how we can use that information to optimize our diets, exercise routines, supplement regimens, and overall lifestyle. In this episode, I have the one and only Dr. Eric Helms back on to discuss a study published in 2016 titled “Endurance Training Intensity Does Not Mediate Inference to Maximal Lower-Body Strength Gain during Short-Term Concurrent Training.” This study looked at “concurrent training,” which is the inclusion of both cardiovascular and resistance training in the same program, and specifically at how it impacts strength and muscle gain. You’ve probably heard that cardio in any amount or intensity might interfere with strength and muscle gain, but is it really that straightforward? This study and Eric’s interpretation and explanation is is going to help shed more light on the matter... 0:17 - What are the results of combining cardio and weightlifting? 3:28 - Is it better to do cardio before or after lifting? 4:51 - What do you recommend for people who want quick results? 7:57 - Which type of cardio workouts minimize the interference effect?  18:30 - What’s the next step in researching cardio and weightlifting? 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/ Reference https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5093324/ 

they compared modern intensity steady state cycling to hit sprints on a bike and they found that the sprinting actually decreased hypertrophy and strength more or had a larger interference effect compared to modern intensity in this episode i have the one and only Dr. Eric Helms back on to discuss a study published in 2016 titled Endurance Training Intensity Does Not Mediate Interference to Maximal Lower Body Strength Gain During Short-Term Concurrent Training. And what this study looked at is of course concurrent training, which is the inclusion of both cardiovascular and resistance training in the same program. And specifically what the researchers wanted to look at is how including cardio in a weightlifting program impacts strength and muscle gain. Now you've probably heard that doing any amount of

cardio at any intensity is probably going to, or maybe even definitely going to interfere with your strength and muscle gain, but is it really that straightforward? And this study and Eric's interpretation of it and his explanation of not just it, but the other research that has been done on the subject is going to help shed some light on the matter for you. This is where I would normally plug a sponsor to pay the bills, but I'm not big on promoting stuff that I don't personally use and believe in. So instead, I'm just going to quickly tell you

about something of mine. Specifically, my fitness book for women, Thinner, Leaner, Stronger. Now, this book has sold over 150,000 copies in the last several years, and it has helped thousands of women build their best bodies ever, which is why it currently has over 1,200 reviews on Amazon with a four and a half star average. So if you want to know the biggest lies and myths that keep women from ever achieving the lean, sexy, strong, and healthy bodies they

truly desire. And if you want to learn the simple science of building the ultimate female body, then you want to read Thinner, Leaner, Stronger today, which you can find on all major online retailers like Audible, Amazon, iTunes, Kobo, and Google Play. Now, speaking of Audible, I should also mention that you can actually get the audio book 100% free when you sign up for an Audible account, which I highly recommend that you do if you're not currently listening to audio books. I myself love them because they let me make the time

that I spend doing things like commuting, prepping food, walking my dog, and so forth into more valuable and productive activities. So if you want to take Audible up on this offer and get my book for free, simply go to www.bitly.com slash free TLS book. And that will take you to Audible. And then you just have to click the sign up today

and save button, create your account. And voila, you get to listen to Thinner, Leaner, Stronger for free. Alrighty, that is enough shameless plugging for now, at least. Let's get to the show. Eric, you have returned. Sorry, Dr. Helms, PhD, you have returned. You got it right that time. I was about to hang up if you didn't. You know, I'm a soul learner, but I learn. Hey, as long as you're learning, that's all that matters. That's all that matters. Small progress is all progress.

Gains are gains, bro. Or something. That's right. Even brain gains. True, true. All right. So now in this round, we are going to be discussing combining lifting with cardio, which of course many people do for various reasons, some reasons being better

than others. And then not just any cardio, but high intensity interval training versus more moderate or lower intensity. And which is better for what and why? Great question. So yeah, this is a pretty cool study. We reviewed it again in that first issue of Mass we did. And I think Greg wrote this one, if I recall correctly. It's been a while now. We're on like our last issue of the year, which is cool. But anyway, this is a study by Fife and colleagues, easier to pronounce than our German volume training study author. But it's titled Endurance Training Intensity Does Not Mediate Interference to Maximum Lower Body Strength Gain During Short-Term Concurrent Training. And I'll talk about why that title is important.

training. And I'll talk about why that title is important. So back in around, say, a long time ago, we established that at the molecular level and kind of the, without getting too detailed, the adaptations that you make to get better at cardio are fundamentally different to some degree in certain areas than adaptations you make to strength training. Metabolically for strength training, you've got to be able to put out a high output of energy and not have any care about quote unquote pacing. You want it right now if you have to do like a snatch, right? And those are specific adaptations that are going to happen. However, with endurance training, you're basically telling your, hey, I need a constant stream of low energy output. And those do quote unquote interfere. And that's where the term the interference effect came from and then there's a meta-analysis back in 2012 which really kind of painted the picture the broad brush strokes of the interference conversation and we saw from that that there was an inverse relationship or rather a a linear relationship with the amount of total volume of cardio you do is related to how much interference you experience.

And that makes sense. Obviously, you go walk your dog or you become an endurance athlete, you would expect those two things to have different effects on your resistance training, right? And that's systemic, right? It's not like, oh, but you know, running, yeah, it might just mess with my squats, but it won't mess with my overhead press, right? You know, interestingly enough, that is something that is still getting teased out. And the answer might be yes or no, depending on the study you're looking at. What are your thoughts on, I know it's kind of tangential, but I'm just curious, what are your thoughts on based on what you've seen and what you know? Well, I think it's both. And that's because when, if you really want to drill down to the concurrent training

hypotheses, there's both an acute and a chronic hypothesis. There's one that says, hey, this is a molecular level issue and therefore it's not going to be specific. And if you're doing endurance training, which is largely, you know, whole body, or at least it's going to have adaptations that affect a lot of your body, it's going to affect a lot of your lifts and vice versa. And then there is the kind of the acute hypothesis, which is really simple. That's saying, hey, if you are tired from cardio, you're going to be poor at lifting weights. And they're both true.

You know, if you think about it, if you go to the gym and bust out a hard cardio session and try to do squats, it's not going to go well. And therefore, the adaptations you get afterwards are not going to be ideal. But there's also some things happening at the level that we can't really see that are at that molecular level where there are competing adaptations. And that could be relevant even if you have your workouts separated, right? So, even if you did your cardio on one day and did your lifting on the next day. Well, yeah. I'd say if we want to jump to the punch here. So, there is a number of ways to kind of mitigate interference globally. The worst thing you can do is right before you lift,

do cardio. Kind of when stepping down the hierarchy of the next best thing you can do is right before you lift, do cardio. Kind of when stepping down the hierarchy of the next best thing you could do would be to do weights and then cardio. Then at least you're avoiding that acute fatigue going into your resistance training. And that seems to be better than the latter. But even better than that would be to do them at least six hours apart or on separate days. And we have a fair amount of research now that would suggest that that's kind of like the ideal succession of things to do. And then probably even one step better than that would be to minimize your cardio as much as you possibly can. And that's an option for someone who is like a contest prep bodybuilder or a physique athlete or someone

who has to diet for a weight class or is just dieting, let's say a, you know, a model, someone who's dieting for a photo shoot, you can definitely get effective fat loss without using cardio. Cardio can sometimes just make it a lot easier. So your food doesn't have to totally tank. It might help you kind of mobilize fat and just kind of make the process a little bit better, but more or less a deficit to deficit. So when it's purely a fat loss goal, you can certainly minimize the amount of cardio you're doing. And I think that's probably a good idea in most cases, unless you just really enjoy it. And that would improve adherence. What are your thoughts on just getting to the goal faster? I mean, that's

been, I guess, the main thing that I've recommended to people is like, being in a deficit kind of sucks. And it's actually just been kind of my personal approach, but I tend to be, I mean, you mentioned that the last time around, I tend to be one of those more masochistic kind of people that I don't really care how I feel about things. It's just what's most effective. So, if I can lose fat faster without sacrificing muscle or feeling like a zombie, then I'm going to do it. And so, including cardio, if that means I can take my cut, if I can make it 25% faster and then get back to feeling good in my workouts and making progress, then I'm going to do it. You know what I mean? Well, yeah, I think that's, that's totally valid.

And the real question is if you can, you know, I think, and that, that all depends on the dosage, right? So if you're doing two to three cardio sessions a week and they're not going over 30, 45 minutes and they're not on the same day or they're separated from your training, it's probably going to cause a negligible amount of an issue. That's always how I've done it. More like 25, 30 minutes, a couple of two, three times a week. And I personally have always preferred high intensity. I do, I would do it on like an upright bike. That's just what I've, what I've always liked. Yeah. So I think it all depends on how you're going to, how you're going to distribute it and how much you want to do. If someone

is going with that same philosophy, but start to bang it out post resistance training cardio every day and morning sessions and it's doing two days then i would think there would actually be a significant loss of muscle mass in that process and that might not be worth it you know i've never done it also depends on your goal it sounds awful no yeah but but it's not uncommon and it depends on your goal too like uh if you were a bodybuilder at the end of your diet or near the end of your diet you're going to be getting on stage multiple times, either once, maybe finishing and kind of eating up into your show. But you can't really put fat back on and do well, you know.

So if you are kind of eating up into your show, it has to be very conservative. You know, you're dropping cardio off in a titrated manner, increasing food in a titrated manner. But let's say you're a strength athlete. Well, shit, man, you might want to diet off five kilos in six weeks and do a fair amount of cardio and just have shitty training for five weeks. But then you've got a whole 12-week prep period where you're increasing calories, decreasing cardio, and just making sure you don't go over, say, you know, 2% higher than your weight class, knowing that you can still make it with a mild water cut or, you know, a little shift from,

you know, high fiber to low fiber foods right towards the end. And that might be a better payoff versus kind of having a slow diet the whole time where you're training just kind of always slightly sucks. So, it does depend on the goal and what makes sense in a practical manner. But there are times when you'd probably want to minimize the amount of cardio you could do. There's other times where, you know, you want to get away with as much as you can without causing a problem like you were talking about. And there's other times where you don't care if you lose a little muscle briefly, if your primary goal is just performance output and muscle is just one component of that, and then maybe you could regain it once you actually finish the diet and then have

a solid block of good training. Yeah, like I've spoken with people, what's fairly common is people training for marathons or half marathons, and that's really their focus for a bit. And they just want to know what can they do in the gym to minimize the muscle loss. I mean, ideally they would like to lose no muscle, but if they have to lose some, they're okay with that. They just want to minimize the damage. Yep. Well, what I've been getting at here is that there's a bunch of different strategies out there to try to see if we can minimize the interference effect. And the meta-analysis I was referring to before had a few strategies in there. It suggested, hey, maybe cycling is a good way to go.

The theory being there that you're not doing a whole lot of eccentric actions, which is lengthening under contraction and kind of what we do to break, very common in most movements, but cycling, just kind of a constant push forward. So you're removing some of the muscle damaging eccentric action. In addition, there's no impact for cycling. So some of the joint stress won't be there. There's evidence showing that cycling and you'd think other similar movements like an elliptical or maybe a row or things with no impact and little to no eccentric would also have a lesser effect of interference timing, like we already talked about. Those are the main strategies that have been looked at to minimize the interference effect. And then also the one that is in this present study we're

going to discuss by Fife is the intensity of the cardio itself. So there is the thought, the prevailing thought and the hypothesis that came out from that meta-analysis and other studies that the issue is the difference in intensity between the cardio you're doing and the resistance training. And that if you were to do short bursts, say a 30 second or 45 second sprint, followed by a recovery period, because that's essentially the same metabolic work to rest ratio and intensity of resistance training, therefore you would not have that molecular interference. And that is probably true. However, there is a issue with doing that in that if you are going to do hit, true hit, where, you know, for that, say 30 or 45 seconds, you can't hold a conversation,

you can't do anything except breathe as hard as you can to actually complete it. We're talking all out, 100% sprint on a bike, an elliptical, a rowerower on flat ground, whatever, that is something that's going to have a increased recovery cost. You know, higher intensity means higher recovery. And I think we got on kind of this, we put hit on too much of a pedestal in the 2000s, where we just focused on that one aspect that is shares all those metabolic traits with resistance training. And it was more time efficient for burning calories. So therefore it was the holy grail. Oh, and hey, cherry on top, there's a little bit of an afterburn effect where you burn calories throughout the rest of the day. Nevermind that that's only going to be like 10, 20, 30, 40 calories. It's still something,

therefore HIIT is the solution. While all of those aspects are true, there is an afterburn effect, there shouldn't be a molecular interference, and it is more time efficient. I think everyone's just really forgotten about the recovery cost of HIIT. And this is probably the first study that really kind of highlights that. And in fact, in this study, they essentially found that sprint intervals on a bike, even cycling, were problematic compared to moderate intensity steady state. So they compared modern intensity steady state cycling to hit sprints on a bike. And they found that the sprinting actually decreased hypertrophy and strength more or had a larger interference effect, I should say, compared to modern intensity. And this most likely comes down to not the molecular differences, but actually

just the fatigue caused by it and actually preventing you from training effectively and from recovering so that you can get in the gym and do the work that's really going to help you gain strength and you'd retain muscle or gain muscle. Little thing I always say when people are telling me that they want to do sprints on the ground for their cardio for contest prep, because they've seen someone else do it, or they think it looks hardcore. It sounds fun as I go, well, look, you know, you can make this argument that hits going to help you, you know, retain more muscle, but it's really hard to make that argument when you're on crutches. Because I've seen so many bodybuilders strain their hamstring or fully tear it because they're trying to be sprinters. And even sprinters don't sprint max speed four to five times a week. program and they carefully integrate it with resistance training. So this trend of bodybuilders just getting out there and just hammering sprints without training specifically

to be that kind of an athlete has led to a lot of hamstring strains. And this is some... And it just wrecks your legs. I mean, I've done it. And when I was younger, I was like, yeah, I'll try that for cardio. Yeah, that lasts about a week. And I was like, I think if I do this, I'll probably like never squat again so i'm gonna stop doing this yeah exactly so essentially there was you know less strength gain less muscle mass gain and more signs of a an interference effect really in the hit group so it really kind of puts that that nail in the coffin in my opinion of going hey we can't just lose context and just look at the molecular differences. You have to think about exercises having a recovery cost and how that's going to affect everything else.

And sure, overall, you just want to limit your cardio. But if you have to do cardio or you want to do cardio, let's say you're doing CrossFit or something like that. You're thinking about where to position it relative to your resistance training and how to sequence your training becomes a little more complicated and you do have to consider it versus just kind of applying this carte blanche. I'm going to just go hard and go short and that'll be just better because it's more like my lifting. Well, it's like, well, you wouldn't just double your lifting to lose fat, would you? Like if you had four hard days of training and you needed a diet, you wouldn't just go to four two-a-days of lifting weights and double your volume. You know that would be bad.

But in many cases, you're trying to do something similar by adding a ton of HIIT. Interesting. And have your personal experiences working with people agreed with that? Because the reason why I ask is over the years, again, I myself have done what I would say is probably qualifies as HI hit. I mean, the high intensity intervals were hard. In terms of length, they were never longer than 60 seconds, probably more like 30 or 45 seconds. I've recommended it again for people that want to lose fat as quickly as possible. Now, to be fair, if we're looking at it in the context of what weightlifting they

were doing, the basic programs that I have out there for men and women are not tremendously difficult. They're essentially push-pull legs programs with some accessory work, and none of your workouts are more than 45 or 60 minutes. So we're looking at two kind of harder workouts per week, and then anywhere from one to three not so hard workouts per week. know, one to three, not so hard workouts per week. And I, myself in doing that and doing hit when I was cutting, I don't know. I never, I never had any signs of falling behind in recovery now to be fair. Yeah. My lifts stagnated and I just kind of whatever took that in stride and in just working with a lot of people, nobody comes to, no individual case comes to mind where it was like, okay, this is clearly too much. You should just be walking instead. Now, of course,

you could make it too much, but what are your thoughts on that? Well, it sounds like you're already in the realm of reasonable when you start out with what you're doing with your clients. So you're not starting off with, I'm going to crush these people and then I have to walk it back. I oversold the differences in the kind of my, my just inflection of my voice and how I presented the results. Like in this study, if you were to truly kind of look at the statistics and kind of go hard line, like what was the main outcome? The main outcome was that, man, it didn't seem like there was a big difference between hit and moderate intensity steady state. There was a slight difference in favoring the moderate intensity steady state for hypertrophy and maybe the interference effect a

little bit. But overall, it looked like, hey, HIT didn't beat out modern intensity steady state counter to what we've, the dogma we believed. And that's probably the safest bet to make from this study. So, let me just kind of walk back the extremity with which I presented these findings. So, I think basically people should feel a little more safe doing steady state cardio and knowing that probably on a, if you like look at time matched or number of sessions per week, it's probably not going to be that much worse or that much better to do hit or miss or vice versa. And I guess then the context of why you're doing it matters too. I mean, you mentioned that. But are you doing it?

Because again, I really only do – I mean, that's not true actually. These days I do, yeah, I'd say moderate intensity biking just because I like to do cardio, but I would do HIIT when I'm cutting and otherwise I wish wouldn't be doing it. But for those people out there that are doing cardio for longer periods of time for whatever reason, that's also a different circumstance than someone who's like, look, I want to lose a lot of fat over the next 10 to 12 weeks and I want to feel good. If that means sacrificing some potential progress in my weightlifting, then I'm fine with that. That's just a different context. Yeah.

If the trade-off is worth the speed, that's totally fine. And I think that that's exactly what you have to do is kind of look at, all right, what are my goals? And then how soon do I want them? Is that reasonable in the first place? And then what level of sacrifice do I not care about? You know, you look at the study and you go, right. So the hit group didn't gain as much lean body mass. And it was a small amount, but maybe if I do, if I add hits to my training

and moderate intensity, steady state, sure. Maybe I won't gain or retain quite as much muscle mass, but if I get leaner faster and I can maintain that and then go into a bulking phase, maybe that will be it won't even matter six months from now. And I think that's a fair perspective. But really, people just need to be informed going into what they're doing. If you are starting a diet, and you come into it, and you're thinking that you have to do HIIT, because that's going to be better for maintenance of strength and hypertrophy. You know, this study tells you that strength will be roughly the same. And in terms of hypertrophy, it might actually be slightly worse than doing less fatiguing cardio. And if you're afraid of miss because you've heard of the interference

effect and you think, well, wow, that's the intensity zone that's going to interfere the most with your training. Well, it depends on the dosage and it may cause actually slightly more problems to really beat yourself up. So think about the modality of training you're doing. If you're doing cycling or elliptical and you're keeping it to say one to three sessions per week and the HIIT sessions are brief and you're auto-regulating it or you're mixing the two, you're probably going to be fine. In my personal practice, I'm typically not having people do more than one, two, three cardio sessions per week and certainly not more than one or two, maybe three HIIT sessions.

I am trying to make sure that it's low impact, low eccentric action, and that it's separated from resistance training if possible, and if I have to, after. I think from what I've seen is that the benefits are worth the trade-offs in those cases. If you can moderate it, and if you want to have effective fat loss or faster fat loss or if you just need that extra edge to really get quite lean, if that's your goal in a reasonable time frame and you want to have a decent amount of calories to play with to eat, then yeah, there's all reasonable applications of cardio. And I think the big take home from this study is just that HIIT is not the holy grail.

And if taken too far, it might be slightly worse than a lower intensity. Absolutely. And where would you like to see this research go from here? What's the next question that you would like to see answered? Yeah, I would like to see like some practical comparisons of different types of configurations combining them. Because I think what you rarely see, research always pits one thing versus another, you know, it goes is hit better than than miss or vice versa, you know, or is heavy load training better than light load training, but rarely do we have studies of hey, is a combined heavy and light load training program set up in an intelligent way, compared to something that's just high reps or just low reps better or is all hit or all low

intensity steady state better. But what if we combine them? So I would love to see someone have a mix of different cardio intensities and see if that was a bit better and try to figure out, okay, based on prior research and what we think makes sense logically, what's the most hit we would give somebody? Okay, maybe one to two sessions and we'll do the rest from miss and compare that to an all miss group or an all hit group and see if perhaps that one in the middle can maybe lose fat faster without actually losing any more muscle mass and maybe better than both. I think that's possible. So, I'd love to see a study set up in that manner. Maybe you'll be the one doing it.

Maybe. Okay, great, Eric. Well, this was, I'm sorry, Dr. Holmes, PhD. This was very enlightening. I'm excited to do the next one when, uh, when the time comes. Sounds good. I look forward to it. Hey there, it is Mike again. I hope you enjoyed this episode and found it interesting and helpful. And if you did, and don't mind doing me a favor and want to help me make this the most popular health and fitness podcast on the internet, then please leave a quick review of it on iTunes or wherever you're listening from. This not only convinces people that they should check the show out, it also increases its search

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Thanks again for listening to this episode and I hope to hear from you soon. And lastly, this episode is brought to you by me. Seriously though, I'm not big on promoting stuff that I don't personally use and believe in. So instead I'm going to just quickly tell you about something of mine, specifically my fitness book for women, Thinner, Leaner, Stronger. Now, this book has sold over

150,000 copies in the last several years, and it has helped thousands of women build their best bodies ever, which is why it currently has over 1,200 reviews on Amazon with a four and a half star average. So if you wanna know the biggest lies and myths that keep women from ever achieving the lean, sexy, strong, and healthy bodies they truly desire, and if you wanna learn the simple science of building the ultimate female body, then you wanna read Thinner, Leaner, Stronger today, which you can

find on all major online retailers like Audible, Amazon, iTunes, Kobo, and Google Play. Now, speaking of Audible, I should also mention that you can actually get the audio book 100% free when you sign up for an Audible account, which I highly recommend that you do if you're not currently listening to audio books. I myself love them because they let me make the time that I spend doing things like commuting, prepping food, walking my dog, and so forth into more valuable and productive activities. So if you want to take Audible up on this offer and get my book for free, simply go to www.bitly.com slash free TLS book. And that will take you to Audible. And then you just have to click the sign up today and save button, create your account. And voila, you get to listen to thinner, leaner, stronger for free.