Other than the obvious reasons involved with not doing cardio while bulking (having to eat more calories to replace the ones burned while doing the cardio)
Are there any benefits involved with doing cardio on a bulk?
I remember reading an article somewhere on here that listed the benefits but I can’t find it. I think it was a Berardi or roundtable article.
Help please!
Well your heart will like you.
also low intensity even light moderate can aid in recovery from the Hopefully very intense weights sessions you are doing while packing a ton of food in.
shuttling nutrients, flushing out the garbage/waste etc.
Phill
Better insulin sensitivity and nutrient partitioning.
doing cardio has tons of benefits.
as your cardiovascular conditioning improves , your v)2 max will increase, as will your resting heart rate, your heart will become more efficient , your cappillary networks will become more complex, your oxygen carrying capacity in your blood will improve, etc…
tons of benefits. it’s also great to perform before and after your workouts for a short time, i’d say around 10 minutes is good. break a sweat both times. cleans out waste, aids in recover, etc…
it’s just another thing to do to add to the probably already long list, but it’s useful for many reasons.
I’ve been doing it between lifting days (TBT). 2 days of HIIT style sprints and 1 day of long duration with one day off. I’m currently at 3000 cals a day. I’m trying to keep my gains as lean as possible.
Do yall think this time would be better spent doing active recovery? Since I’m doing TBT I’m always sore everywhere. When I go to the gym it’s pretty much dead so what I usually do is do one set on a machine that targets my sore muscles and hit about 30-40 reps on it (no where near failure) and move on to the next machine with no rest in between.
I want to keep my overall energy expenditure the same for the 6 days that I’m training a week with my one day off that is a no starchy/complex carb day.
i don’t know what TBT is, but if i understand you correctly, you lift one day and do cardio the next.
that sounds reasonable to me! just make sure that over time the weights are getting heavier and that you are laying down muscle mass.
i don’t know how useful 40 reps is on a machine… IMO, that time would be better spend doing a few sets of 15-ish reps with some freeweight movement… maybe 40-50% of your 1RM. whatever feels easy but still activates the muscle to get the blood moving. that’s real active recovery.
alternating between HIIT and steady-state cardio also seems like a good idea.
TBT is Chad Waterbury’s Total Body Training Program.
I do the high reps just to get the blood flowing. It works pretty well.
The TBT program lays the foundation for me to constantly increase my weights using different rep numbers and rest periods each week.
also, being chronically sore isn’t a good thing. but maybe you were just exaggerating?
Exaggerated yes. It does get me sore though.
[quote]Florida Titan wrote:
Exaggerated yes. It does get me sore though.[/quote]
if you’re sore on a regular basis it suggests that you’re asking more from your body than it can deliver.
i mean, if you’re getting stronger over time you’re headed in the right direction, but chronic soreness <after the first little while of getting adjusted to new exercises or set/rep parameters> suggests that you’re not conditioned well enough yet to deliver what your program is asking for.
maybe i’m reading a bit too much into it, but it’s important to understand that although this runs contrary to traditional bodybuilding mentality, soreness is not a precusor for growth. you shouldn’t be sore after the first few workouts of a given routine, unless you’re getting back into it from a big lay off/illness.
i’m not saying you should avoid hard work, but i think you catch my drift.
good luck.
As many others have said, one of the main benefits to doing cardio while bulking is to aid in recovery. This is only true in one case.
You want to concentrate on low intensity cardio rather than high. Stay away from things like sprinting intervals or other highly intense cardio. This kind of cardio stimulates your fast twitch muscle fibers, the same ones you used to lift with. This will only aggravate your recovery.
If you stick with low intensity cardio, then it draws blood not only to your slow twitch fibers that are working, but your fast twitch fibers which are not working and need to recover. The extra blood to those fibers is what will aid in your recovery.
[quote]jenheath wrote:
As many others have said, one of the main benefits to doing cardio while bulking is to aid in recovery. This is only true in one case.
You want to concentrate on low intensity cardio rather than high. Stay away from things like sprinting intervals or other highly intense cardio. This kind of cardio stimulates your fast twitch muscle fibers, the same ones you used to lift with. This will only aggravate your recovery.
If you stick with low intensity cardio, then it draws blood not only to your slow twitch fibers that are working, but your fast twitch fibers which are not working and need to recover. The extra blood to those fibers is what will aid in your recovery. [/quote]
word. good advice.