How to use Cardio to Get Stronger, Faster and Better
Cardio to get Stronger:
Many bodybuilders, strength athletes and those just looking to get strong and jacked have vehemently avoided “aerobic” exercise for fear that any type of cardio training will steal their gains and make them weaker and smaller. In reality, you can use cardio to get stronger in the weight room, if you program and perform it right.
The common anecdotal advice is that running or any long duration cardio will make you skinny and weak. Some strength trainees fear that cardio will steal all their gains and hamper their progress in the weight room.
Will Cardio Interfere with Weight Lifting?
First, I would like to note that cardio can interfere with your results in the weight room. But it does not have to. And if you do it right, it won’t negatively effect your lifting. In fact, you can use cardio to get stronger as a lifter.
Long distance cardio (marathon and ultra distance events) and 1 rep max efforts are on opposite ends of the spectrum.
The more specialized you become at either discipline, the more difficult it is to add in different disciplines of exercise without affecting your primary sport.
When you are a true beginner, you can do basically anything and still make progress. But as you start to devote more time and training to strength (or endurance) and the closer you get to your genetic potential, the less recovery resources you have left to develop different physical capacities.
In your first year of strength training, when you have a beginner strength level, you can probably do more cardio without affecting your strength progression.
But by the time you are really strong, or have been training seriously for 5 or more years, and are training most or all days of the week, you will likely have a harder time adding in more exercise of an aerobic nature without affecting your primary exercise.
For instance, if you are training hard 5-6 times per week, and your strength program is already pushing you to the limits, do you really believe you can add in 3-4 days of high intensity intervals without blowing out your legs ?
If you are a natural trainee, than the answer is probably a hard NO.
But, there are ways you can implement cardio into your routine in ways that will benefit your strength training–including your ability to do pull ups.
Benefits of Doing Cardio: Cardio to get Stronger
Traditional cardio will strengthen your heart and circulatory system–and is pretty important for your health!
Cardiac disease is still the number one killer in America and having a fitter cardiovascular system can help you prevent heart disease and stroke.
Additionally, cardio can help improve your ability to get through long strength workouts with less fatigue and in less time.
When you are more aerobically fit, strength workouts will feel less taxing and you will be able to recover more quickly.
Additionally, your sets themselves won’t feel as demanding because you will be producing more energy aerobically versus anaerobically.
In addition, cardio training improves muscle capillarization, meaning you will be able to clear out waste products from your muscles faster.
Low intensity cardio in particular (the kind I recommend to strength fanatics) helps increase mitochondrial density, which allows your muscles to produce energy more efficiently and with less fatigue (allowing you to train longer with less fatigue).
Cardio training might also make you just feel better and might be a nice stress reduction technique, because cardio helps shift your body out of a sympathetic state (fight or flight) into a more parasympathetic state (rest and digest). You might just feel better and have less stress, anxiety and depression overall.
And finally, cardio training can help with weight control and body fat loss. Cardio can burn several hundred calories per session, and if you burn 500-1000 calories per week doing cardio, you can either create a calorie deficit to lose excess weight, or allow yourself to eat that much more food without gaining weight.
Yes, you can actually use cardio to get stronger.
During a weight gaining phase, cardio is especially helpful because it helps keep fat burning pathways active. During gaining phases, cardio also helps you to maintain work capacity that might otherwise decrease during a weight gaining phase.
Cardio Training Modalities:
Ok, so now on to the practical implications! How to do cardio to get the benefits, without experiencing the potential drawbacks!
Avoid these:
Avoid high intensity intervals, running and forms of cardio that include either an eccentric component (running, sprinting) and/or a lot of joint impact.
I’d recommend avoiding exercises with an eccentric component because they cause more muscle damage– and more leg fatigue and soreness.
If you already know the feels from squatting or doing leg work multiple times per week, do yourself a favor and limit or avoid any running/sprinting entirely.
(If running is a non-negotiable and you must do it for enjoyment or another reason, keep most of your running on soft surfaces and at easier, more aerobic paces –heart rate below 140 beats per minute and limit the time to 30-40 minutes tops).
You probably also want to avoid high impact cardio because weight training can be a high impact activity. Especially if you are a heavy-weight athlete, pounding types of cardio might not be a good choice.
Even if they seem to be ok now, they might not be a good long-term choice if you want to stay in the iron game as long as possible.
What cardio should lifters do? Cardio to get Stronger
Really good cardio choices include using an elliptical, riding a bike, walking, walking with a weight vest, or doing some form of sled pulls/drags with minimal weight for 20-30 minutes, on an off day (but not the day before an intense lower body lift).
Circuit training may also be a good option, especially for the time crunched. Circuits won’t work for your heavy weight training, where you want to be well-rested for your sets (read Mike Robertson’s article about low intensity cardio if you want to learn more about the scientific benefits of low intensity work) but for your accessory work, circuit training is a good way to strengthen your heart and get more work done in less time.
For lighter exercises in your program, try putting them back to back in a giant set and taking only as much time as it takes to move to the next exercise between sets. You can do 3-5 sets here and achieve an aerobic training effect.
This is also a really enjoyable way to do cardio, especially if traditional cardio bores you.
I completely endorse circuit training for strength trainees. If you are a fan of pull up training and/or body weight training, this is also a super simple method to execute because you need minimal time to transition between exercises when you are working with just your body, and you don’t need any equipment at all!
How much time, what intensity, and how many times per week?
I would suggest you do low intensity cardio about 20-30 minutes, heart rate 120-140 beats per minute, 1-3 times per week.
Do err on the side of caution and only add in a little cardio at a time. You can always add more later if you find yourself needing better endurance for lifting.
For most people with an average maximum heart rate, about 120-140 beats per minute is a good heart rate to strive for. Even if this seems a little too easy, err on the side of a bit too easy versus too hard.
You can also use the talk test to determine if you are at the correct intensity. You should be able to talk a bit. If you can’t talk, or can’t breathe, while doing cardio, you need to bring the intensity down a notch or two.
Low intensity cardio helps you bypass the potential drawbacks of cardio. Since low intensity cardio is easy to recover from, and you won’t be using fatiguing or pounding methods, you won’t divert recovery resources from your weight training or put yourself in a recovery debt.
With just a few cardio sessions per week, you can actually improve the ceiling of work you can recover from.
But I thought cardio had to be super hard to be effective ?
You do not have to be gasping for air to get some positive adaptations from cardio. Actually, if you train hard in the weight room, you will get most of the benefits of high intensity intervals just by lifting weights.
Low intensity cardio can help round out your intense lifting program and provide an easier, recovery stimulus.
Cardio training at a low intensity provides unique benefits NOT offered by higher intensity forms of cardio. To reap the rewards, save the intensity for your lifting sessions and do lower intensity cardio.
Remember, low impact, non-leg fatiguing modalities, heart rate 120-140 beats per minute, 2-4 times per week, and you will be singing the praises in no time!