Coach,
During the recent QOS podcasts, you’ve mentioned using minimal training volume between training cycles to become resensitized to hypertrophy training. I believe you’ve said it takes about 1/3 as much volume to maintain as to progress.
Is there a similar minimal amount of conditioning work that would allow us to at least maintain conditioning without necessarily improving? Would doing a minimal amount of conditioning even be advantageous during a hypertrophy cycle?
That’s a good question. And yes, there is very likely a minimum maintenance dose (like pretty much anything that works via adaptation). However, I can’t really tell you what it is as conditioning is not something that I researched, or experienced with, as much as lifting.
Oh, 100%.
“Conditonning” can impact gains (positively) in many ways.
Well, let me rephrase that…
The cardiovascular and metabolic improvements that come from conditioning work are beneficial in may regard for a hypertrophy phase.
The most obvious one is that better "conditioning (read more effective cardiovascular and metabolic functions) improves work capacity. Which isn’t just the capacity to be able to do more work but also to recover from that work. Volume of training X with poor conditioning will cause a greater negative stress response than volume of training X with good conditioning. So not only can you recover faster from your sessions but said sessions have less negative impact on physiological markers.
Muscle requires a “support system”. Muscle requires oxygen, nutrients delivery, metabolite clearance, etc. All of that is done through the cardiovascular system (pumping blood to the muscles to send oxygen and nutrients, then bringing metabolites from the muscles to liver, for example). More muscle = greater demand on the cardiac and vascular systems. If you add muscle without an fairly equivalent improvement in “conditioning” (cardiovascular function) that muscle puts more strain on your heart. Which might not matter when you are young (when cardiovascular function likely equals or tops muscle mass level) but as you are getting older, you need to improve cardiovascular function to be able to “safely” and comfortable support a large muscle mass.
A better cardiovascular system also helps during the workout by being able to both send more oxygen to the working muscles and to clear out metabolites (e.g. lactate) faster, speeding up recovery between sets.
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