What can happen to your muscles when you do cardio exercise? Myth-busting article

Hi Guys, I'm Prabhat,

This is the only comprehensive article on the internet about the effects of cardio on muscle building.

Before making this article, I came across many rumors about cardio such as it can kill your muscle gain and many more. But there is no comprehensive article related to this on google.

So we decided to research to get our answer and came across myth-busting facts which we have covered in this article.

This article will cover all the queries.

So if you want all the answers to your queries, you will love this article.

• Can cardio kill our body muscles, if yes, then how?
• What should we do first: cardio or strength training?
• Should we do a cardio workout every day or a few days a week?
• Can cardio lead to muscle gain, if yes, then how?
• Have we noticed that athletes do cardio most of the time but still they have a decent muscular body, how?
• Both cardio and weight training burns calories. So why is weight training not used for fat loss?
• How can cardio be modified so that it can't kill our muscles, in fact, help us in building muscles?

(Note: if you have any doubt or query, then you can ask in the comment box. we will be very glad to answer your question.)

So let's start with our first question,

Q1: Can cardio kill our gain?

The simple answer is yes but wait, read more before making any decision. This is possible only if we do our cardio session just before the weight lifting session.

The reason is that after the cardio workout our body has lost most of its energy and doesn't have enough power to take our strength training with full potential.

Video proof, how cardio can hinder our strength session

Now if we go for strength exercise immediately, our heart shares its energy by pumping blood into two different parts. So the direct impact is, we can't do our powerlifting session properly and our muscles don't undergo the process of tearing properly. So the result is, there is a slower growth of muscles which seems like there is a loss of muscles.

Otherwise, there is no reason for muscle loss or slower muscle growth. So the whole thing comes on the implementation of cardio and strength training sessions.

This brings us to our next question.

Q2: What should we do first: cardio workout or strength workout?

Before going towards our answer, let's discuss an important concept of EPOC that will help us for better understanding.

Have we heard about EPOC (Excess Post-Exercise Oxygen Consumption)?

After a workout, our body continuously loses its calories for about the next 48 hours. This is called EPOC.

The reason is that our body requires energy for the repair of the muscles. And to meet this energy requirement our body burns calories. The calories burned in this process is more than a low-intensity steady-state session of cardio activity.

 But the less intensive session of strength workout can impact the effectiveness of EPOC. For that, it becomes important to put our 100% effort in doing the strength training for achieving optimum EPOC state.

A study published by the University of Tokyo in medicine and science in sport and exercise that, doing cardio after strength training burns more fat in the first 15 minutes than doing cardio before the strength training session.

This is the one benefit and reason for doing cardio after weight-lifting but another benefit is, we can do our weight-lifting workout with our full efficiency which is good for our muscle growth.

So the answer is clear that we must go for weight training first,

(But weight training must be under proper rules and full guidance, there are hidden steps that by just watching exercise, we can't see, therefore we make 22 days abs workout challenge where you will get proper guidance step by step)

then we can do our cardio part. This should be done if we have less time and want to do both cardiovascular and muscular fitness exercises.

But keep this in mind that if we want to do weightlifting for our biceps then we must go for cardio for another body part such as legs, thighs, etc.

But there are other alternatives that we can use for better results which we will discuss in the next question.

Q3: Should we do cardio workout every day or a few days a week?

We can do cardio every day with our weight lifting but for this, we have enough time because if we want to do both on the same day then there must be a maximum time gap between cardio and weight-lifting session. For instance, if we are doing our cardio in the morning then we should do our muscle building in the evening.

But there is a better alternative. 

We can do cardio and weight pushing on alternate days. This is a better option because...

As we have discussed earlier, our muscles tear after doing weight-lifting, and cells called fibroblasts, want 48 hours for the healing or repairing of the tissues. And if we don't give this much time to tissue for rebuilding, our muscles start depleting.

When we go for alternative days, our muscles have enough time to repair itself. So in these free days, we can go for a cardio workout.

So in this way, we can take care of our heart as well as body strength.

Moreover, we can adjust the days or increase or decrease the days for cardio and weight lifting according to what our primary goal is.

But fix a day in a week where we will take our complete rest which helps our brain to refresh and motivates us and provides us an energetic approach for the next week.

But if you are feeling that you are losing your gain, then you can follow these tips that will compensate for the loss, even more, these tips will help you to make your muscles in a shorter period of time.

(Note: This article is about abs but most of the tips are applicable to every muscle of the body)

But don't worry our cardio day doesn't much interfere with the tissue recovery.

So this might raise a question that cardio is not that much responsible for breaking down of tissues then how it leads to muscle gain?

For this query, our next question will give the answer.

Q4: Can cardio lead to muscle gain?

Yes definitely, cardio can lead to muscle gain. 

It is very interesting to know the reason behind this…

Cardio can't make our muscles but can help in making muscles. A cardio workout has nothing to with the breaking down of tissues. But the thing is, it can improve our performance of load lifting.

Cardio basically does that it strengthens our heart, increases the vital capacity of lunges (maximum volume of air), strengthens the whole respiratory system so the effect is that our stamina will increase. Now we will require less recovery time between the two repetitions of an exercise to recover ourselves 

And the other thing is, cardio helps us to shed our extra body fat which was hanging with us all the time. So the result is we feel more active and save our energy from that chunky fat and we can utilize this energy in the gym for the tearing of tissues.

So doing cardio has a significant role in fastening the process of muscle gaining. For this, we have covered some of the most effective exercises in the article (weight training is not enough, do these 10 best cardio abs exercises for shocking results) that will help you a lot in muscle building.

But how athletes have muscles who do only cardio workout most of the time. 

This is the reason which forced us to find out the answer to this question.

Here is the answer, 

Q5: Have you noticed that athletes do cardio most of the time but still they have a decent muscular body, how?

There is no magic behind this, the reason is the same for the muscle growth that is tearing of muscles and recovery of tissue. 

The reason for the breaking down of tissues is their explosive movement. When an athlete participates in a 100m or 200m race, in the starting of 4-5 seconds he takes an explosive start for the acceleration of his body and that sudden and powerful force caused by legs creates breaking of tissues. While running, he swings his hands by sudden acceleration and retardation causes tearing of tissues.

This principle is applicable to all types of sports. So this is the secret behind their muscular body.

Cardio is for weight loss, but to some extent, it can help in muscle building.

Same as weight-lifting is for muscle building, is it helpful in weight loss?

Let's discuss this in the next question.

Q6: Both cardio and weight training burns calories. So why is weight training not used for fat loss?

Sadly weight training can't help us on the journey of fat loss. 

Here is the reason…

Fat requires enough time to metabolize itself. That's why for its metabolism, we go for that activity which we can do for a longer period of time. So cardio comes out to be a good option for this.

A term which is commonly used among those who want to lower the fat percentage is a "fat-burning zone". In this zone, you will get the maximum results of the fat-burning workout.

You can check here how your abs muscle looks at a different percentage of body fat

To achieve this zone, our heart rate must be at 70% of our maximum heart rate.

Here is your maximum heart rate, subtract your age from 220. 

The answer that comes is your maximum heart rate.

When we reach our 70% of maximum heart rate, our body utilizes stored fat to meet energy requirements and hence our body sheds stored fat.

But in weightlifting, we do the explosive movement in which we spend a lot of energy in a short period of time. Fat can't metabolize itself in this short period, so here, carbohydrate plays its role and takes responsibility to meet the energy requirements of the body.

This is the reason that fat stays on our body after weight lifting.

Q7: How should we modify our cardio and gym portion for satisfactory results?

I hope from all the above discussion you have gotten all the answers. But for a quick overview here are the main points that we follow while collaborating cardio with weight-lifting:

• If we want to do our drill in just one sitting, then go for weight lifting first and after that go for our cardio portion.
• If we can fetch enough time to manage our fitness and health routine then we should give the maximum time gap between cardio and load lifting. For example, if we are doing cardio in the morning then do strength training in the evening.
• But the better option is to do our cardio and muscle building session on alternative days.

I hope, this article clears all your confusion and doubts about the impact of cardio on muscles.

But still, you have any doubt then please let me know in the comment box.