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Should I do cardio and weights on different days?
So weights 3 days a week and cardio 4 days a week? Lots of research and science has proven that you technically don't lose it but you also don't gain it by doing cardio less than 6 hours. So it says either wait 6 hours plus or preferably 24 hours
What is your experience?
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I believe that answer centers around over-training and caloric deficits.
Cardio can be beneficial and even help you perform better with your lifts.
But, where it can kill your muscle gains is by putting you in too much of a caloric deficit.
Whenever you’re in a caloric deficit, you’re going to be losing fat AND muscle.
It’s just a matter of ratios and how much of what will be lost.
If you want to minimize the amount of muscle you lose in a caloric deficit, you’ll want to stimulate your muscles properly with resistance-training and sending the right signals to your body with effective anaerobic exercise, all while eating sufficient protein.
If you aren’t sending the right signals to your body to hold onto muscle or build muscle, and you aren’t consuming enough protein, your weight-loss will consist of a higher percentage of muscle lost.
It’s important to factor in how many calories you’re burning while you’re doing cardio, to make sure that the number you end up with is intentional.
If you’re eating more calories to compensate the additional calories you’re burning, you’ll be able to improve your cardio without losing muscle.
If you are doing a ton of cardio, putting yourself in a big caloric deficit, you will lose muscle, and depending on your training and diet habits, you may lose a little or a lot of muscle.
Another thing is if you do too much cardio, you can overtax your body’s nervous system and cause you to perform worse on your other exercises, which in turn can hurt your muscle gains.
Don’t do so much cardio that you notice you’re performing worse on your other exercises.
Pay attention to your performance and adjust accordingly.
So, if you want to do cardio without losing muscle, you can, but you’ll need to be smart about it.
If I want to lose 16 pounds but keep the muscle I have (I have good natural muscle in all the right places) so I just want to tone a little. People think I already go to the gym and the fat I do have is not excessive its also not soft and too flabby. Do I still go in a calorie deficit but keep high protein or do I eat the same calories to maintain my weight but eat cleaner?
The first approach is correct.
Although the second approach can be used alongside it later on, which I’ll explain.
You’re going to want to eat enough protein (you can look up online the ideal grams per pound of lean body mass that you need for active individuals) and you’ll want to be in a caloric deficit.
Research has shown that smaller caloric deficits will allow your body to hold onto more muscle during the cut.
So the more aggressive the deficit, the more muscle will be lost.
The less aggressive the deficit, the more muscle will be held onto.
Slower cuts will take more patience, but you won’t lose as much muscle.
I’d recommend figuring out what your maintenance calories are for your current activity levels and lifestyle, then reducing your daily calories by 100-200.
You’ll be able to track your progress, and then you’ll naturally hit a plateau, which then you’ll drop another 100-200 calories until you plateau again, and so on and so forth.
Your body will cut fat, then adapt, then you change one factor to break the plateau, then your body will cut fat again, then adapt.
So you’ll want to be systematic about what factor you’ll be changing next, e. g. reducing calories, eating cleaner, adding cardio, etc.
You don’t want to do everything at once because then your body will adapt to everything and it’ll be harder to break past those plateaus.
I'm trying to gain more muscle with just body weights, resistance bands and light dumbells (9Ibs per dumbell) i want to gain a significant amount of muscle than I already have because I was blessed with natural muscle. Can I still eat (first choice) if im. not doing heavy lifting
I dont want to gain a significant ****
Okay, if gaining muscle is your goal, but you don’t want to gain too much, then you’ll want to be eating enough protein and exercising in a way that allows you to perform better and better at you exercises.
As for calories, if you want to gain muscle and minimize fat gain along the way, you’ll want to do a “lean bulk” where you’re only increasing your calories by a little bit at a time (e. g. 100-150 calories) then watching your exercise performance improve, then plateau.
Then you’ll be increasing your calories again (while always making sure your protein intake is ideal, as always).
It’ll be similar to a slow cut, except instead of monitoring your weight, you’ll be monitoring your exercise performance.
You can build a great physique with body weight exercises and resistance bands and dumbbells, with an emphasis on body weight exercises (aka calisthenics).
Once you have developed a part of your body to the ideal size (e. g. arms or shoulders) all you’ll need to do is maintain that, and stop increasing the difficulty for that body part.
Let’s say you’ve been doing 100 push-ups per week and your arms are now perfectly how you want them. Then, you just need to stop adding additional reps and sets and resistance to keep things as is, or you might even lower your reps and sets just a little bit to find out exactly how much work you need to do to maintain that look.
Let’s say, you want to develop your legs more. That’s fine. You would then change nothing for your arms but you’ll still be adding more resistance or reps and sets for your legs until they develop how you want them to.
You can’t spot-reduce for fat.
But you CAN train in ways to specifically grow or shrink different MUSCLES for your physique.
Muscles that you want to develop further, you give them more attention. Muscles that you want to shrink, you give them less attention. (As in less exercise.)
I hope that helps! 🙂
I forgot to mention body recomposition.
That’s another thing you can look into which is essentially doing a lean bulk, followed by a slow cut, followed by a lean bulk, etc.
By going back and forth like that every month or two, your weight will remain relatively the same, while your muscle slowly increases and your fast slowly decreases, essentially slowly replacing your body fat with lean muscle.
And of course, you should always keep track of what you’re doing, so when you’re at a good spot, you can focus on what diet and exercise you did to get there, and from there you’ll just figure out how you’d like to maintain your physique (which would usually only be some minor adjustments from what you’ve already been doing).
Thank you so much. Because I'm using low weights and my bodyweight can I do these glute workouts everyday or should I still have rest days so only 3 times a week?
You’re welcome! 🙂
Unless the exercise you’re doing is a light exercise, it’s usually best to give muscle groups at least a day of rest, so alternating days would be best.
The 3x a week would be a good plan for major body parts. 🤙
A lot of stuff you read like that doesn't matter unless you are seriously min-maxing or trying to gain as fast as possible.
Do whatever is most comfortable and convenient for you, and you are most likely to keep up with. I'd be extremely surprised if the average person could notice the difference. If they do, it's probably a placebo effect.
"you also don't gain it by doing cardio less than 6 hours"
That is completely absurd. Granted, there is a ton of new science about this stuff. But it's not like people in the past (like me) never gained when they did totally mixed workouts, immediately switching back and forth.
But was it a slower growth do you think when you did grow?
If I want to lose 16 pounds but keep the muscle I have (I have good natural muscle in all the right places) so I just want to tone a little. People think I already go to the gym and the fat I do have is not excessive its also not soft and too flabby. Do I still go in a calorie deficit but keep high protein or do I eat the same calories to maintain my weight but eat cleaner?
If you have the time and patience to wait six hours, that's fine. But mixing is also fine, as long as you don't have so much calorie deficit that you lose muscle mass. I think that's very unlikely since your body will not burn muscle for energy until you are in starvation mode. If that happens you have a lot more to worry about than loss of muscle.
You need energy to stay alive. Your body will burn carbs for energy as long as you have them. Then it will burn fat as long as you have it. It won't start burning your organs until you enter survival mode, which means starvation. Your body is smart enough that it won't burn important organs when it doesn't need to.
If you reduce calories, keep enough protein to maintain muscle. Reduce calories from anything above that.
No that’s crazy. Cardio is how one gets that top layer of pudge off so that your muscles look larger and stronger. It’s impossible, for the regular gym wrat to look good without cardio. That what gets the fat hanging off interior organs etc gone.
Yes so wouldn't it make sense to do cardio first to get near enough your weight then start building muscle etc? Because honestly I've been reading about it in depth and it does affect it, its between no growth and only 40/60% growth when it could be 100% without the cardio. (If its more than 6 hours) its all online. Research, studies etc