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Hey everyone, I have a simple question I am sure it has been addressed a thousand and one times on here. However I couldn't find a sticky that went over it and I dont feel I got adequate information on it form the CNS book. I am at 40% bf which to me is a bit extreme. I weigh about 300lbs so my lbm is somewhere at about 200lbs. After unsuccessfully just "eating right, lifting, and doing cardio" I decided to give CNS a shot.My question is if I CAN tolerate it. If i continue to lift heavy and do cardio ( a mix of HIT and steady state) 5 to 6 times a week (meaning lifting and cardio this many times). With that impede my results in anyway. I eat a lot of protein and fat so I dont think I have an issue with getting enough food. I just want to maximize the efficiency of this program for me. I am planning on keeping my carb nite to every 7 days after i end this first 10 day stretch. My plan would be once I drop to about maybe 20 percent bf then up the intensity and go for a CN every 5 days or so.
by steady state i mean like 20 to 30 minutes of my HR at about 60 to 75 percent of max and once i find the pace that produces that hold it there for 20 or 30 minutes.
Awesome but doing that much HIT and heavy lifting would not hurt my progress as long as my calories are sufficient correct? I dont want to lose any muscle here but Im thinking with such a high BF my body will burn fat long before muscle.
1-2x a week for HIIT would be ideal. If you're following CNS, I'd keep HIIT within a couple days after the initial CN.
Awesome but doing that much HIT and heavy lifting would not hurt my progress as long as my calories are sufficient correct? I dont want to lose any muscle here but Im thinking with such a high BF my body will burn fat long before muscle.
And you can do HIIT in a variety of ways. I'd drop the steady state cardio and just walk and do like Tex says. He is the Master! I HIIT on a spin bike, then when I got out of school for the summer, I've been running sprints on a track one day and hill sprints another day. Now I'm incorporating them into my walks some days and I get flat and hills. I'll be going back to the spin bike or rower 1x/week in a few weeks and hill/flat/walk combo 1x a week.
Did back today lifted heavy-high intensity didn't do cardio. I feel pretty good going to throw in some HIT later this week maybe tomorrow. And I will stay away from steady state.
Just my two cents, steady state is fine as long as you do it at around 60-70% intensity or something like that. It depends on what you are trying to achieve. To improve recovery, health and just general conditioning do as much as you like but don't adjust calories for that. If you are using it as a fat loss tool, HIIT would be better but that has to be a very infrequent thing and you should almost treat it as a lifting session from a recovery standpoint. If you have the time going for a walk or a light jog outside is great as active recovery.What you want to avoid is that crappy zone in between easy pace and intense pace as this is where you will tap into your recovery and not get much out of it from a performance standpoint. If you are doing cardio it should be to be better at cardio, not to lose fat anyways. Your lifting and diet will more than take care of that.
StiffMeister, awesome rundown on cardio. That should be made a sticky, IMHO
You're very welcome, and only recently have I begun to dig deeper into how I program my own concurrent training, especially the cardio side of things which I foolishly believed I could just randomly add to my programming almost as an afterthought. I would highly recommend reading articles by Alex Viada, Greg Nuckholds, Joel Jamieson and other authors who have written about how to optimize recovery when training different qualities requirement different energy system..It's fascinating stuff.Not to get too much outside the scope of this thread, however, I just wanted to play Devil's advocate and highlight that while HIIT can be a powerful tool, steady state definitely has its own advantages and shouldn't have such a shitty reputation in some forums including this one. I totally forgot the thread starter is doing CN in which case I do not recommend doing HIIT as this will dig into your already limited energy reserves which should be saved for lifting.Ketogenic diets and highly glycolitic/frequent exercise, as those of us who have tried it will tell ya, are a recipe for disaster. You can't increase your endurance, put on muscle on and reduce your body fat at a decent pace, all at the same time. This being said if you are gonna lift a couple times a week and go for a brisk walk, even a light job on the daily, you can absolutely maintain and even gain strength..gaining muscle being more difficult. The cardio won't kill your gains.
+1!The backlash against cardio is really fairly interesting because it's a historical yo-yo. Arnold told us that steady state cardio enhanced his lifting by shortening his rest time between sets and improving active recovery. Then fitness gurus told us that cardio was the ONLY way to burn fat, incorrectly guessing that being in the fat zone = more fat calories even though more total calories are burned during HIIT and thus more fat is burned. Then the latest trends backlashed against the ridiculous notion that cardio is the only way to burn fat and couldn't do a 90 degree turn when a whole 180 degrees was easier. Cardio definitely has a place and should be in everyone's toolkit. It has obvious health benefits in both steady state and HIIT capacities. Unfortunately, there are people joining the HIIT community that are out of shape to the point that it would be detrimental to their health. It's the CrossFit of cardio.The moment we put our blinders on and accept one answer for every question, we stall scientific progression and limit ourselves.
The question that must be asked when talking about any kind of exercise is, “What is the hormonal response of the body?”Steady state cardio down regulates many hormones causing a downward spiral in metabolism as it teaches the body to be more efficient. HEAVY lifting and HIIT type cardio does exactly the opposite and up regulates many hormones causing a higher metabolism as it teaches the body when you demand energy give it all up.http://athlete.io/4752/anabolic-cardio/
The question that must be asked when talking about any kind of exercise is, "What is the hormonal response of the body?"Steady state cardio down regulates many hormones causing a downward spiral in metabolism as it teaches the body to be more efficient. HEAVY lifting and HIIT type cardio does exactly the opposite and up regulates many hormones causing a higher metabolism as it teaches the body when you demand energy give it all up.http://athlete.io/4752/anabolic-cardio/
That is true, but in the context of most athletes and people into fitness these days, they typically do too much HIIT and avoid steady state entirely unless you are talking about the people who slave away on the treadmill/eliptical every day. We are talking about cardio as a supplement for someone who lifts heavy or as an alternative to HIIT when you are a bit banged up, not something you should be doing all the time. I never said it was absolutely essential, just that it would definitely not hurt and has some interesting advantages depending on the type of athlete and if you have the time to do it. And honestly if I followed all the hyperbole that goes on around these parts, I would be weak and dying because I do a shit ton of cardio, HIIT and steady state, and I am still putting on muscle and definitely gaining strength. Again, it all depends on what the goal is, but the less strenuous the activity, the more liberal you can be about inserting it wherever. I do not freak out that I am gonna lose my benching gains when I go shadow boxing on the beach right afterward if you catch my drift.
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