Cardio Your Way To Death

Lately I've been speaking to potential clients who want to lean out but refuse to stop being a cardio bunny that just make their effort to lose weight even more difficult.   I finally decided to write something to clear things up.

My biggest frustration with this issue is that when it comes to losing body fat, cutting out unnecessary calories (from dieting) is the best way to do so.   So when I write out a program that require clients to eat at a caloric deficit, they go on and do stupid things like running for hours 5x a week which ramps up their hunger and end up binge eating over their targeted caloric budget.

Things I'm going to talk about...
1. Caloric deficit can be better achieved through fasting.
2. Insulin management is (one of the) key to fat metabolism.
3. Sprinting yield better result for body recomp. compared to chronic cardio.
4. A Minimalist approach.
5. An Ancestral look at exercise.
6. Workout for the right reasons - Cardio may be hurting your strength/muscle gain.
7. Cardio can slow down metabolism, shrink the heart, cause cellulites, and inflict joint pain.
8. The only times cardio may be beneificial.
9. Cardio may help get rid of stubborn fat, but not so much fat fat.
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Anyways, I want to start off this post with a quote from Leangains.com

"Worrying about how much fat you burn during exercise is just as silly as worrying about how much muscle you build during exercise.  Exercise is a stimulus for adaptations afterwards.

Cardio in the Morning is the dumbest fat loss strategy ever devised used by people that wake up early in the morning before going to work to do cardio and follow that up with "recovery shake."

Congratulations, you just wasted two hours of your life.  Cardio is good for cardiovascular health, but most people use cardio as a fat loss tool. 

Next time, sleep 2 extra hours and skip breakfast, fast til lunch time. This way you get the same caloric deficit with extra bonus of feeling more rested and having saved more time. - Berhkan

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Another great quote from marksdailyapple on Cardio and Fat Metabolism

"It all comes down to this: fat loss depends 80% on what and how you eat. Retrain your energy systems to burn fat and not glucose.

Cutting out all simple carbs is the key. It’s about insulin management.  If you can readjust the diet to encourage the body to burn fats, you won’t need to replenish lost glycogen every day.

You’ll always burn fats and you’ll always have energy. The low level aerobic stuff becomes “filler”…so you only do it if it’s fun, like a hike or walk with friends or golf or mountain biking.

The real muscle growth will come from the short anaerobic bursts like sprints, intervals or weight-training. 

Sisson also brought up a good study comparing Chronic Cardio vs. Sprint Cycling for Fat Loss.

"A study from the University of New South Wales followed the fitness and body composition changes in 45 overweight women in a 15-week period. The women were divided into two groups and assigned interval or continuous cycling routines. The interval “sprint” cycling group performed twenty minutes of exercise, which repeated eight seconds of “all out” cycling and then twelve seconds of light exercise. The continuous group exercised for 40 minutes at a consistent rate. At the end of the study, the women in the interval group had lost three times the body fat as the women in the continuous exercise group. (An interesting note: the interval group’s loss in body fat came mostly from the legs and buttocks area.)"

Keep in mind that this is "repeated bouts of 8 sec sprints", which is far shorter than your typical, bootcamp style training that last up to 30-45 seconds per set and take a HIIT work that should only last 20mins or less up to a hr long (in most commercial gyms).

If they had to perform movements with so many reps, the intensity is too low!  A new term for this type of training should be "Low to Pointless Intensity Interval Training" - LPIIT.  I rather spend my money on a good strength coach that can teach me how to lift heavy things that actually challenge my muscles (which in terms burn more calories in the long run) without getting injured.

My take.... 

Think of it this way, 1hr of cardio will burn you roughtly 300kcal (if lucky).  Real athletes can burn more.

If you carry more mass, you may burn "slightly" more due to more workload for the same amount of time you move compare to the guy next to you. However, the fatter you are,  the sooner you'll end your workout, too - Unless you're more fit, which you're not. 

Even if you do this 5 days a week (if you haven't hurt yourself already), you'll lose a pound of fat every 2 weeks (assuming nothing is changed in the diet).  This means if you're 50lb overweight (not uncommon in a lot of my clients), it will take 1 year.

Some of you will argue that sometimes you can easily drop 5-6 lbs after a session of workout/bootcamp but is it really fat that you're displacing?   let's move on.

If you're drinking soda already @ 2 cans a day, all you have to do is switch to diet coke or water and you just save yourself a hour of cardio/day and lose 2.5 lbs of fat a month without really making any major dietary changes to your lifestyle. 

The amazing thing is, this is done by performing absolutely ZERO exercise. Plus saved yourself almost 20 hrs a month sweating your butt off on the treadmill just to work up an appetite to overeat it later.

you can burn 300kcal jogging for a hour, the other 23hrs you're not exercising can burn you up to (depending on the individual but close to) 1800-2500kcal.  So the focus should be moving (elevating your heart rate)  more frequently throughout the day instead of going hard on the treadmill or the pavement  for a hour a day.   Drinking tea/coffee, taking the stairs, or spent your leisure time outdoor, walk the dog will do the trick.

Use your training sessions to improve sports performance (or some recreational activity you're into), de-stress (without the joint pain and eliciting hunger) & build functional/musculoskeletal strength (with heavy resistance loading).

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Here's a good ancestral explaination on chronic cardio

They walked at a very low level of exertion, burning almost entirely stored fats. Once you get into the zones where less fat is burned and where there’s a big dependency on glucose to fuel muscles, your body goes into a less efficient mode of fuel oxidation. There are biochemical costs associated with this shift. Your muscles and liver can only hold 500-600 grams of precious glycogen (stored glucose) at any one time, which means about 2 hours’ worth for the best trained individuals and less for most people. That means that to come back and work out hard the next day requires at least 600 more grams of carbs every day. That’s just too much glucose and insulin to deal with every day.

The fact is, our hunter-gatherer ancestors didn’t ramp up their heart rates significantly for over a hour every day, and I don’t think we should either.

So Workout For The Right Reasons from IFlife.com
Cardio burn less calories and fat in the long run compare to strength training.  So if you want to lean out while build muscle at the same time, do the RIGHT type of exercise. 

"We go workout to “hopefully” challenge our muscles to grow bigger. This involves enough stimulation through resistance/volume to signal muscle growth by the body .

Included will be the signal of muscle building hormones such as Testosterone. We can also signal GH which is key in helping us recover and burn fat.

Post Workout “Intense Cardio” May Be Killing Your Gains

The biggest mistake I see with anyone is the inability to “stop” doing more and more fitness. Cardio/jogging junkies, gym addicts and the likes. This is also the case with the cardio after a workout.

We have all seen the studies about intervals and how they increase fat burning (or really how they increase the “fat releasing” hormones such as GH). But slapping on a 30min interval session after 30-40 minutes of intense lifting is not going to work out.

That additional cardio is not going to give you a bigger GH boost (more than what you already got from in the initial workout if intense enough) and will just suppress Testosterone levels from the workout (who needs those to build muscle right? Ummm…You do!).

If you workout the “right” way in the first place…you will get enough GH and Test from the workout. With an elevated GH you now have your “fat releasing” hormones telling the fat cells to empty out. So you don’t need more sprints… you just need a slow and steady pace to burn a bit of extra fat (without compromising your Test or muscle building)."

Cardio hinders strength gain.
Cardio promotes catabolic stress hormones that hinders muscle growth and recovery.
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Running the risk: It can cause joint strain - is it time to stop jogging?
I'll just summarize this article with quotes and save you time reading the whole thing.

Joint Pain

"The next is that running causes injury through repetitive movements - an accusation that will be familiar to many whose knees or ankles have proved unequal to the demands placed on them.   'When you run, two-and-a-half times your bodyweight is transmitted through your joints, If that force is repeated over and over, eventually your weakest joint will give out.

Usually the ankles or the knees are the first to go, generally because of poor hip and core stability. Wearing a brace only exacerbates the problem by moving the strain on to the next weakest joint while maintaining the old injury."

Cardio Slows Down Your Metabolism
Contrary to popular belief that any exercise will speed up your metabolism, running can do the opposite. Long-distance running will often deplete your energy stores and then start breaking down your muscle tissue to use as energy.  If you want some serious muscle wastage and to reduce your metabolic rate, then keep running."

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Appropriate Cardio protocols while dieting

If you have to do cardio, do it right.  Excerpt from Martin Berhkan from Bodybuilding.com forum

Originally Posted by trader vlad
I re-read leangains.com for you:

Summary:

1. If you do cardio go for low intensity and short periods in a fasted state.

2. Don't do cardio after lifting.

3. Don't do high impact/moderate or high intensity cardio which may impact your recoverability.

4. If you really want to save muscle mass, it's best to not do cardio at all.

I do cardio once or twice a week on my off days. It's usually moderate intensity HIIT style (muay thai with a heavy bag, or mountain biking). I do it because its fun and keeps up my cardio for sports and maintains my skills.

Nice job finding all those quotes. Your summary is mostly on point. Perhaps with the exception of the last sentence. It has not been my experience that low intensity cardio on rest days (i.e. 4x/week, <45-60 min/day) has any compromising effect (at all) on strength or muscle retention during dieting.

There's a few reasons for this.

1. Walking does not affect AMPK (which blunts muscle protein synthesis).   Moderate to intense cardio does. Prolonged cardio, i.e. jogging at a good pace for >30 min has the most detrimental effect in this regard.

2. Walking does not stress the CNS. You're saving your nervous system (strength) and performance for the weights, which is crucial for muscle gains and muscle retention. HIIT is very stressful for the CNS. An all out sprint (i.e. HIIT done right) is not so different from a set of 3-4RM squats.

Lifting at a suboptimal capacity starts a downward spiral in my experience. If your nervous system cannot keep up with what your muscles can lift, muscle loss happens as a consequence of never being able to apply adequate stress/perform optimally. 

3. Cardio - HIIT in particular - tears up muscle fibers and require repair and recovery, just like a set of squats.

If you're adding 2-3 sessions of HIIT to your 3 sessions of weights, it is almost comparable to adding 2-3 days of weights.  Keyword is "almost", I'm obviously not drawing direct comparisons. That's all fine and dandy if you think working out 5-6 days/week is a good idea on a diet. But I don't think anyone - no matter what level of experience - needs more than 3 days a week in the gym when cutting. (Yes, this goes for competitors and beginners alike.)

In conclusion, if conditioning is not terribly important for you, if your goal is really about getting shredded while keeping your muscle, I highly suggest limiting moderate to high intensity cardio on a diet - or ditch it completely. Save it for some other time when your recovery is good and not limited by your diet.

"A calorie deficit is a recovery deficit. Avoid deficit spending"

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"Cardio" may cause heart disease
Kurt Harris - PaNu

1) The more marathons run, the higher the likelihood of heart disease. The number of marathons run was an independent and significant predictor of the likelihood of myocardial damage.

3) Compared to age and risk factor matched controls (a second set of controls with similar rates of smoking and other risk factors), 36% of runners had a calcium score or CAC above 100, versus 21% of age and risk factor matched controls. (High CAC means more coronary atherosclerosis)

Running a marathon is starting to look about as smart as boxing or playing football.

The really good kind of exercise, resistance training, makes you more functional and stronger. That is the only sensible definition of fitness.
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Cardio may help with stubborn fat, but not fat fat.

While higher intensity cardio like HIIT/intervals may be detrimental to body recomp during chronic dieting/resistance training, low-intensity/steady state cardio 30-60mins/day, especially in the fasted/zero serum insulin state may help lean folks (men under 12%, female under 17% body fat) to get even leaner with burning extra calories from fat oxidation (not totally from glycogen).  To read more about it, check out "Stubborn Fat Solution" by Lyle McDonald at Bodyrecomposition.com

The thing with leaner people performing cardio is that, since there is little fat left to lose (but need to get more shredded for photoshoot/contest weigh-ins) and some trainees/athletes having to meet a deadline or simply impatient with the rate of their fat loss, cardio is a great way to burn some extra 400-500kcal a day (1lb of fat/week) when use sparely. 

Obviously 400kcal means nothing to someone who's 20lbs overweight, they simply just need to lay off the bread/pasta/soda/fatty meat, but for dieters who are already eating 1000kcal deficit 3-4days/week on top of strenuous resistance training 3-4x a week, they simply can't train or cut any more calories.

1. It's probably a good idea to do the cardio ALONG with your leg training days so you have more days over the entire week/cycle to rest your legs.  This might interfere with your legs strength training but that's life. 

You certainly don't want to do cardio one day, then deadlift the next day, followed by more cardio, then squat, then cardio again... giving your legs only 2 days/wk of rest.  On top of that, a couple training sessions on the upper body, plus conditioning work for athletes.

2. It's preferably to jog/hike at a fasted state (absence of insulin) so fatty acids can be mobilized for oxidation.  When there's insulin (fed state), there is zero fat burning.  best done in the morning or if you're intermittent fasting, cardio before you break your fast.

3. Doing cardio post workout may bypass the insulin issue but this is also pointed out earlier that concurrent weight training followed by running may interfere with muscle recovery.  So pick your battle, you want to built muscle or burn an extra few calories?  keep in mind that muscle takes forever to built while fat is easier to lose if you're consistent with your diet. depends on priority, really.

4. Cardio is for lean people looking to lose stubborn fat, if you're above 12%BF (or female above 17%), you have fat fat to worry about and you should just focus on dieting down.

5. Some supplements may help boost blood flow, fat transport, and oxidation during these cardio sessions.  Caffeine (up to 200mg), tyrosin (1-3g) and a couple others I won't mention here.

6, By all means, if cardio make you feel low energy, interfere with your weight training, super hungry, you need to stop and rest.  if cardio make you feel better about things, keep your heart rate under 130bpm or 140bpm if you're caffienated. don't exceed 30mins.

7. My approach is this: you sprint or you walk, don't do anything that's in the medium. I hate medium training.

Which body do you prefer? endurance runner or sprinter?

I will address why interval/HIIT is great for conditioning performance athletes but not so much for fat loss folks.

Exercise should be fun!  the picture above is not fun and as a sidenote, bench dips are a dangerous way to work your triceps!  http://www.ericcressey.com/baseball-strength-training-programs-dips

When training, focus on getting the stimulating effect (anabolic hormones) for muscle growth and strength gain.  Not chasing how many calories you can burn, it's not going to be much.  If you can perform a movement for more than 15 repetitions in a set, it's probably too light and you're just wasting your time.  If you can perform movements with only having 30sec rests between sets, it's probably too easy.  

It's simple, move heavy things, put them down, repeat, and eat less.

If you're a beginner and is intimated to lift weights, this article can help you
http://www.fitocracy.com/knowledge/why-strength-training-is-sexy/

Quality over Quantity!