Conditioning - If, When and Where

Hey,

It’s been long debated - whether a person concentrating on bodybuilding and gaining mass should devote time for conditioning.

In my humble opinion - such a person should.

However, the question remains - when?
Pre workout would constitute a warm-up, but it might impair performance if taken a bit too far.
Post workout would impair recovery and might inhibit muscle gain.

Doing conditioning on a separate day from your lifting might prove beneficial,
however, it too can impair recovery and strength-muscle gains.

So, what are your opinions on the matter?

Also - I personally sprint outside, but I’m considering doing it on a treadmill, is it considerably worse?

I’d like to hear your opinions!

Have a good weekend!

You say you do sprints, and that may work totally fine. But after reading this Do Cardio, Keep Your Gains , I started doing some aerobic work on off days, and it never hindered any performance, and kept me pretty lean. I also noticed I could go longer in martial arts classes.

How many times per week do you train? that would make it easier to anwser

I train 3 time per week - AB split - AXBXAXX and BXAXBXX
I usually sprint once a week, tried doing it twice but it was too hard to recover.

If you have a hard time recovering from the sprints, I would most definetely try doing some “zone 2 work”.

  1. It makes your recovery better. Your body will be more efficient in recovering
  2. It doesn’t take as much out of your muscles and mostly CNS. So easier to recover from
  3. I found that doing some chill work for 30 minutes actually made me feel far better afterwards. Bloods gets flowing…and well, blood heals.

If you sprint too get a good sprinter, sprint. If you just want to stay quite lean and get your blood pumping, try some zone 2 work. If you want to do “short and furious” conditioning, check out Alpha V at the logs to get some inspiration.

Hope that helped out a bit. And well, keep experimenting, it’s your body.

Thanks for the answer, much appreciated!
Fast and furious would be quite the same recovery wise as sprinting, so I think I’ll look into some zone 2 work.

Any suggestions? except light jogging?

I’m not sure if Fast and Furious is some protocol I don’t know about haha…
Assuming it’s not, I doubt it would have exactely the same recovery requirements: sprinting is really hard on the CNS. I never really felt as mentally drained after, say, Burpees and speed squats, than after sprinting. However, if that is your experience, I who am I to argue with that.

For zone 2 work, I mostly do easy rope jumping of shadowboxing. But hey, it really doesn’t matter that much if your hearthrate stays the same, so try doing some easy sandbag routine or something, just get blood flowing to every muscle. Carry it a bit, squat down with it a bit, push it overhead, just move it in as many ways as possible. And keep doing that relaxed for half an hour. If you can, use a hr monitor, since most people over here are zealots.

Rope jumping and shadow boxing actually sounds really good!
I think I’m gonna start doing that, maybe sprint like once a week for the feeling.

Thanks!