Cardio help

[jonafat]

Hi everyone,would like some help with my cardio plan please.I have been told by a couple of trainers that i should only do 2 40 minute sessions per week on the tread mill H.R. is between 95 - 100 at finish.I feel that i havn't done much hardly sweating.Any help would be appreciated thankyou.Im 45 years old B.F. is 23% weight is 94kg.Weight training is going really well.I am in a bulking faze at present for another 5 months being a meso ive got a lot of work to do on the flab.

[teamfatboy]

95-100 Beats Per Minute heart-rate...but after how much cool-down?

Remembering that the optimum 'steady state' % Max Heart rate (Max is approximately 220-age, in your case 175) to burn fat is 65%, when you're actually working, you should be showing around 115 bpm. If you cool down to around 95 bpm after a few minutes, that's more a gauge of your ability to recover.

Without knowing how your trainer settled on 2x 40m sessions, it's hard to say how increasing it would necessarily affect your bulking - but going harder - at the "cardio" range of around 80% MHR would probably be detrimental to laying down bulk muscle.

If your trainer simply has you grinding out 40m more-or-less steady, talk to him/her about High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT), which is increasingly accepted (my personal view) as the best way of burning fat in a given cardio session.

The other thing to consider is cardio timing - when are you doing it? Before weights is the worst, after weights is better, before breakfast (on an empty stomach) or last thing at night are better again, if you can manage it.

Just my 2c worth..

[jonafat]

Thanks very much TFB for the info.I always do my cardio on none weight days or after weight training.I understand it a little better now.I apprciate your help thanks again.

[teamfatboy]

Been there- it's like "was that all"...but steady-state cardio for fat-burning really isn't that intense, compared to cardio for building cardio-vascular fitness.

It's a balancing act where you can burn fat, or get fitter, but one is always at the expense of the other to a large extent.

If your heart-rate really is dropping to that sort of level (around 50%) within a few minutes, you can probably take comfort from actually being quite fit in the cardio-vascular sense.

Did you get a blood-pressure check? that might help confirm cv health. Alternatively, see if you can borrow a heart-rate monitor, and check resting heart rate, by wearing it while seated, or even better, while sleeping, and check it while lying in bed first thing in the morning upon wakening. That'll give you a clue to cv fitness.

Cheers

[jonafat]

Thanks mate some great ideas there.My fitness isn't to bad.Up until 8weeks ago i was biking 5 days and knocking out over 300k's.Have stopped doing that since starting the weight training deal.Im training with a BB but he's an ECO skinny bitch lol so he doesn't do any cardio cause our workouts are very intense.Good for him more than me.today i did chest & traps then did 40 mins cardio.I walked for 5mins to warm up.Then i ran for 15mins.My h/r was 145 so for the next 20mins i walked and h/r came down to 121-125 bpm.I work on 70% work rate which was 220-45age=175x70% which worked out to be 122 bpm.that was much better got good sweat up but wasn't buggered twice a week.You were right in saying(is that all).Like you said got to find that even ballance.But ive made some good gains in 6weeks start my first cycle in 2weeks so looking forward to that.My goal is to be sub 10 bf by xmas.Blood pressure was check when i joined 6weeks ago everthing ok.Doctor check me out a year ago and said i had the blood pressure of a 20 yr old more biking back then.So thanks again take care.

[Darwinstef]

I can't run at the moment but can cycle.....never done cycling for cardio, does anyone here do HIIT cycle training and if so what duration do you look at?

[teamfatboy]

I can't run at the moment but can cycle.....never done cycling for cardio, does anyone here do HIIT cycle training and if so what duration do you look at?

I've used the routine in this article by Lance Armstrong's trainer. Sure, it takes a while, but it can be cut down to suit anything from about 30m or so.

[Darwinstef]

Thanks ftaboy, looks good. First thing on my list to do though is improve my saddle endurance . 15 minutes this morning was about all I felt like putting up with hahaha....will get there

[teamfatboy]

Just point the bike at St Arnaud and go for it...remember, it's downhill all the way back to town!