Cardio Kills Your Gains Bro

Training For Life: Be Strong & Conditioned

Cardio won’t kill your gains. Athletes will often do hours of cardio each week and still have good physiques, yet somehow the misconception that doing cardio will keep you forever small still permeates.

There is research showing the contrary, that greater aerobic fitness can actually improve your gains. The physiological mechanisms also make perfect sense. Aerobic training can increase blood flow to your muscle tissue, improve endurance in type 1 fibers, and even enhance muscle protein synthesis.

Researchers in one study actually found greater mTOR activity with a combined aerobic and resistance training program compared to only resistance training.

mTOR = Mechanistic Target of Rapamycin. Promotes cell metabolism and growth.

• More mTOR Activity = More Cell Growth

“Surprisingly, our AE+RE paradigm prompted greater mammalian target of rapamyacin (mTOR) and p70S6 kinase (p70S6K) phosphorylation than RE only”

Lundberg et Al 2013

A recent meta analysis by Schumann et Al. 2023 also concluded that concurrent training also had no significant impact on hypertrophy (muscle growth). This doesn’t mean there isn’t any negative outcome, however there is much less interference than we once though.

However, explosive power or speed can be negatively impacted by endurance training. We also see reductions in hypertrophy, strength, or speed when sessions are done back to back. This can easily be mitigated by not going on a long run immediately after a heavy squat session.

Be strong, jacked, and have good conditioning. Have it all, it isn’t as complicated as it seems. Here are a few key points to key in mind.

Concurrent Training = Training many qualities at the same time

Recently the term “Hybrid” has been thrown onto this style of training. To be honest, to some extent most people should train this way to be fit for the demands of life.

Got a question for next week? Drop it in the chat and I’ll answer it.

Quick tips

• Focus on multi joint compound movements

  • Since you’re training so many things, you won’t have time for 10 sets of biceps. You need to prioritize big movements. Presses, Pulls, Rows, Squats, Lunges, Hinges. These movements need to make up 80%+ of your training.

• High, Medium, Low

  • Recovery is going to be paramount if your training volume each week is high. Alternate between high, medium, and low stress days. Don’t hit heavy squats one day, high intensity intervals the next day, and heavy deadlifts the third day. Alternate between higher and lower intensities to avoid burying yourself in fatigue.

• Go slow

  • Progressions will come slower, you need to be patient. You’ll be sending a lot of signals to your body. Just realize it’ll take more time since you can’t dedicate the bulk of your training volume to only improving one thing.

• Train in phases

  • This can be complicated so to keep it simple only worry about 3 phases. You can subdivide each phase further as well but that’s beyond the scope of this article.

    • Strength

    • Endurance

    • Hypertrophy

• Use Mixed Modal Conditioning methods

  • Zone 2 cardio is cool but overrated for 90%+ of people. You need higher intensities. You can always start with 20-30 min of zone 2-3 cardio and finish with intervals.

  • Mixed Modal Conditioning means hitting two forms of cardio within the same session. My favorite is to start with Zone 2 and then do tempo intervals in the same session. Something like 15-20 min zone 2 and then 3-4 x 5:00 tempo intervals with 2:00 rest.

    • You could also do zone 2 and then 10-60 second intervals for high intensity training. It’s best to mix it up.

Templates

The training splits above are more strength training intensive because that’s who I write to. If you’re a runner or endurance athlete I’d probably only do 2 to 3 full body strength sessions per week. You could also program in phase where you do more cardio for 6 to 12 weeks and then more strength for the next 6 to 12 weeks.

Conditioning Resources

Strongman Circuits

Concurrent Training for Strength Athletes: Workhorse Program

Got questions? I got answers. Drop them below in the comments.