How Much Cardio Is Needed When Building Muscle? 5 Tips For Optimizing Cardio

Building more muscle is smart for a lot of reasons. First, it just looks good to have a well-muscled, toned body. Also, having stronger muscles reduces your chances of incurring serious injuries. And, there is an added health benefit: the more muscular you are, the faster your body will burn fat naturally. That is because your resting metabolism rate - the rate at which you burn calories while at rest - actually increases when you have a lower body fat percentage.

People who have experience with working out with both weights and with cardio techniques (e.g., walking, jogging, swimming, biking, etc.) know that it can be hard to balance both within a regular workout routine. In other words: to really "go intense" with a cardio workout can take away from the energy and muscle strength you need for an intense bodybuilding workout - and vice versa.

Even if your primary goal is to build muscle while staying at least in fairly good shape from a cardio perspective, you still may be at a loss for just how much cardio to work into your weekly workout routine.

If you are wondering, "How much cardio is needed when building muscle?", here are 5 tips for optimizing cardio in your workouts:

1. Too much cardio can detract from your muscle-building goals:

While everybody is different, in general doing too much cardio each week can take away from your ability to build muscle at the maximum rate. This is because doing a lot of running, swimming, biking, etc. between workouts can deplete the muscle energy that you would otherwise be devoting to doing strength-building exercises.

2. But some cardio is a good idea:

Still, even if your only real goal is to build bigger muscles, doing some cardio is a good idea. For example, cardio can help you to keep from getting winded during your weightlifting workouts, and it can also help to increase blood flow to your muscles.

3. Do cardio 2 or 3 times per week for about 20 minutes:

By doing cardio exercises not more than 2-3 times per week for about 20 minutes at a time, you should be able to get enough exercise in to work your heart and burn some calories in a healthy way.

4. You will eventually want to choose to focus on either cardio or weight training:

Of course, if down the road you believe that you will want to really focus on getting into shape on the cardio side of things - such as when you are gearing up for a marathon - you will likely need to scale back on your weight workouts. It is difficult for anybody to really focus with maximum intensity on both types of exercises for long periods of time.

5. Pay attention to the needs of your body:

Remember, no matter what you read here or anywhere else, be sure to continue to listen to the needs of your body. Each person's body is unique and it has its own wisdom. Listen to what your body is telling you in order to maximize your workouts for desired results.

Take these 5 tips into account as you focus on getting the balance right between cardio and doing strength-building exercises to build more muscle.

How to Get Your Metabolism Up: 3 Tricks to Burn Calories on the Fly

Do you want to know how to get your metabolism up for good. A big part of what helps is your genetics.

Some of us are just more prone to burning fat or calories at a faster rate. This article is all about how to make this happen for you no matter what your genetics are.

Read on to get the real inside scoop on this topic at hand.

Trick #1: Quit Your 3 Meals a Day

First off, it is recommended that you cut out the 3 meals a day routine. This has been a standard of most people,yet it is not necessarily the best practice.

When you only have 3 meals a day it makes you more prone to over eat at these times.

The best thing to do to solve this is to increase the number of times you eat but decrease the serving amounts.

You could start off with a good breakfast of oatmeal, bacon and a piece of fruit. Then, your next small meal could be about 3 hours later with raisins and nuts.

Your day would progress on like this until you have reached 5 to 6 meals. You will find that your mind will not be on food all the time, and you can focus better throughout your day.

You body will naturally start to drop pounds and your natural ability for burning calories will increase.

Trick #2: Start Running or Walking on a Regular Basis

Another way to make this happen is by simply walking or running every day. This is an activity that just about everyone can do.

It does not require any special equipment and you can do it just about anywhere. It is recommended that you choose comfortable clothes and shoes to do it in. This makes the exercise even easier to do.

You should take time out at least four times a week to walk or run for 30 minutes.

As a way to get even more benefits you can mix it up. For instance, you can run or jog for 2 minutes and then walk for 4 minutes.

Trick #3: Make Water a Priority

One more option for how to get your metabolism up is to drink more water. This is a natural substance and has tons of benefits attached to it.

It is a smart idea to drink a full glass of water before each meal. This helps you to not over eat. This would mean 6 full glasses if you were eating 6 meals day as suggested earlier.

While this is a good start. There is much more you should look at before taking on such a task.

Can You Do Cardio While Building Muscle?

Yes, in a nutshell, you can do cardio while building muscle but you need to go about it in the right way. You need to learn how to do cardio efficiently so that it does burn fat but isn't to the detriment of the lean muscle that you've gained.

The most successful way to do cardio while building muscle is by choosing an exercise which moves your body around more than any other kind. You can lose calories by walking but jogging and running are far better. It's the intensity of the cardio that counts; short and sharp will enable the increase in muscle.

Too much aerobic exercise may give you stamina for distance and it will use up fat, but it won't build muscle if the body doesn't get enough rest.

To do cardio while building muscle, you need to do really intense cardio for something like fifteen to twenty minutes three or four times a week. The intense exercise should be for the whole of the period without rest. You won't lose more weight or build more muscle if you carry on for longer than twenty minutes and neither will you do so if you do it every day. The intensity of the cardio will burn the calories and body fat but you need that rest in between.

Now you need to choose which sort of cardio you can maintain at high speed for fifteen to twenty minutes. The following are good ways:

Running or jogging
Elliptical trainer
Exercise bicycle
Treading water in a pool (hard)
Rowing machine

However, you need to remember that you will be moving your body so much that you can't read a book while you do this exercise. Choose whichever method suits you best and which you can maintain a high intensity with.

On the days when you're not doing cardio, you can do separate muscle building resistance exercises with weights or weight machines. The cardio will then help with recovery from the weight training and you'll burn a few more calories.

If you want to build a lot of muscle, cardio can help because it obviously improves the condition of your cardiovascular system but it will burn the excess calories you will need to eat to build muscle effectively. If you do the eating without the cardio, some of those calories will turn to fat.

Doing cardio while building muscle is perfectly possible but do consult a professional for the right exercises and timings, particularly if you don't normally take regular exercise.