How Cardio Helps To Build Muscle

Why oh why is there a perception that cardio will destroy all your muscle gains? Cardio does the opposite; it will help you build more muscle. This is how it works.

Energy

A good hard weight training session is going to take a lot of energy. If you don’t have good cardiovascular fitness it won’t take long before you wear yourself out and you’ll have nothing left to go heavy. Cardio will fix this. By increasing your cardiovascular fitness, you are improving your energy levels which means that you’ll be able to lift longer and heavier.

Keeping Lean

Whether you want to body build of obtain a figure fitness level, cardio will help you along this path. Both aerobic and anaerobic can help you to burn fat and achieve a lean physique. Aerobic exercise is going to burn fat because it uses fat and glycogen as a fuel source. By working in the low to moderate fat burning zone for up to 30 minutes you will burn fat not muscle.

30 Minutes of Exercise Fat Calories Burned Glycogen Calories Burned

Low Intensity Group (50%) 120 80

High Intensity Group (75%) 140 260

For anaerobic exercise your body uses only glycogen as a fuel source. Anaerobic exercise helps build lean muscle mass. Calories are burned more efficiently in bodies that have more muscle. Anaerobic exercise is especially helpful for weight management in that it helps to burn more calories even in a body at rest. Anaerobic exercise can also help build endurance and fitness levels.

Cardio is great at helping a muscle recover for a heavy workout. When you completing a cardio workout, you are increasing your cardiovascular fitness which mean you are improving the flow of oxygenated blood around your body as well as improving the dispersal of the nutrients your body needs. So, your muscle are receiving everything they require to build and the blood is taking away all the toxins. Without good cardio your body can’t be effective in its delivery and removal of muscle waste and consequently your weight training sessions will suffer.

How to use cardio

Firstly you need to know what body type you are, that being Ectomorph, Mesomorph or Endomorph. Your body type will determine what type of cardio you should do and how many times per week.

Ectomorphs. Ok so you ectomorphs are generally people who don’t hold onto fat that much. This means that you don’t need to do a lot of cardio. Your focus is on building and too much cardio will strip off your gains. For ectomorph’s light to moderate cardio 2 to 3 times per week will be more than enough.

Mesomorphs. You people are the lucky ones. Your body type is naturally designed to add muscle but if you’re not careful you can add fat as well. So, for the mesomorphs you will need to do cardio 2 to 3 times per week. I would suggest that you mix your cardio between moderate and intense to make sure you burn the fat but don’t burn off your gains.

Endomorphs. Your body type is naturally ‘heavy set’. You are lucky in that you can make muscle gains quickly BUT without cardio you can also gain fat quickly. For you, your cardio should be 3 times or more per week and 2 of those time should be high intensity.

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