Cardio Helps In Burning Fat
You get the maximum fat burning effect from the cardio. Now days people are putting too much emphasis on cardio. Most people structure their cardio training in a way that negatively impacts their muscle’s ability to grow. That’s not good and is certainly something you want to correct.
Cardio has three main benefits:
- Expends energy by burning calories - hopefully in the form of stored body fat
- Enhances cardiovascular health
- Enhances endurance
The effect cardio exercises have on improving cardiovascular health is their most important function. However, most people that train view cardio work as a necessary evil to help burn body fat and achieve a lean appearance.
In fact, most all lifters only do cardio for that purpose and that purpose only. Well, like it or not, you’re doing your entire body good by incorporating a cardio routine with your training, but you need to understand the ramifications on muscle growth.
Cardio
Cardiovascular exercise is very important for overall health. No question about it. But too much cardio can certainly impede muscle growth. Cardio impedes muscle growth by taxing the reserves in muscle that would normally be used for growth and repair. Cardio also burns calories that could be used to fuel the muscle growth process. 
From a health standpoint, some cardio should always be done. What you want to do is strike a balance between your cardio and weight training so that you maximize the fat-burning benefits and reduce the negative impact the cardio will have on building muscle. The most important thing here with regards to the cardio maximizing fat-loss while having minimal, if any, negative impact on muscle growth is the intensity of the cardio, the length of your cardio work, and the time you do your cardio in relation to your weight training.
I recommend doing cardio exercises 3 to 5 times a week for 30 minutes each session. The key is timing your cardio for maximum efficiency.
Tip:
You should approach your cardio exercises with the same mental focus and intensity you do your training. Cardio is not a walk in the park. It’s intense, it’s short, and it’s scientifically structured to burn fat while preserving muscle. Intensity is more effective at burning fat. Research shows that high intensity training for brief periods of time is more effective at burning fat than long duration low intensity aerobic activity
Intensity
Intensity and cardio volume are the two energy expenditure barometers during aerobic exercise. There are some unique physiological factors that occur only in high intensity short duration activity that favorably impact muscle recovery.
The higher the intensity of the cardio the greater the fat-loss and the greater the calorie expenditure during the length of exercise. And most importantly, the less of a negative impact it has on muscle breakdown. Longer duration, lower intensity aerobic exercise tends to impact muscle growth negatively and has less of an effect on fat loss. Though you may burn calories, this type of aerobic exercise derives the majority of the calories burned from lean tissue and less from fat. This is exactly what you don’t want.
Tip:
To minimize cardio’s negative effects on muscle growth you must schedule your aerobic sessions as distant in time from your weight training as possible. This means do not do both cardio and weight training in the same workout. Don’t do cardio immediately before you weight train and don’t do cardio immediately after you weight train. This is how most people do it and it’s completely wrong and detrimental to optimal muscle growth.
Timing of your cardio approach
Your cardio exercises should be done approximately 8 to 12 hours before or after you weight train. Never do cardio immediately before or immediately after your workout. This means if you train in the morning you do your cardio at night. If you train at night then do your cardio in the morning. And to take it a step further, you should preferably do your cardio on your non weight training days.
And as I said earlier, the intensity of your cardio is a major factor in both the benefits from cardio (endurance, fat-loss, and vascular health) and the negatives of cardio (reduced muscle growth response). Timed correctly however, will allow you to maximize cardio’s effects without any negative impact on the muscle building effects of weight training
Tip:
It’s more effective to lower your calories than to increase your aerobics. Increasing aerobic exercises to burn more fat will physically tax your muscles energy reserves. This negatively impacts muscle growth. Remember, to lose fat you must burn more calories than you consume. The simplest thing to do is to intelligently reduce you caloric intake. This method preserves maximum muscle mass while dieting. You lose more fat and keep more muscle.
