In this episode we discuss which types of cardio are best to cut up before a show?
How much is too much so you don't lose muscle mass.
Types of cardio that are effective, AND we even discuss how doing the stairs can be detrimental.
Muscle Talk - Bodybuilding podcast by International Protein
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A Thinkroom production.
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In this episode we discuss which types of cardio are best to cut up before a show?
How much is too much so you don't lose muscle mass.
Types of cardio that are effective, AND we even discuss how doing the stairs can be detrimental.
Muscle Talk - Bodybuilding podcast by International Protein
If you want your own questions answered on our bodybuilding podcast, then join our private Facebook Group and share your ideas, https://www.facebook.com/groups/muscletalk
If you'd like to learn more about International Protein, visit https://www.international-protein.com/
A Thinkroom production.
https://www.thinkroom.com/
Ash Horton:
Our host, the world-renowned Christine Envall, an IFB professional, three times world champion, a mentor, an icon, and of course, a founding co-owner of the best supplement money can buy, International Protein.
Ash Horton:
In this episode, we discuss which types of cardio are best to cut up before a show. How much is too much, so you don't lose muscle mass, types of cardio that are effective, and we even discuss how doing the stairs can be detrimental.
Ash Horton:
It's interesting. How does cardio work into the bodybuilding routine, especially coming up for a show?
Christine Envall:
Okay. For most people, it's an essential part of cutting up for a show. So, you're always going to find that person with an incredibly quick metabolism who says, "Oh, I cut up for this, and I didn't do not one bit of cardio." So, there are those people that are genetically blessed, probably very young and have incredible metabolisms, but for the majority-
Ash Horton:
That everybody hates, right?
Christine Envall:
Yeah, but the thing with cardio is I actually love cardio, and a lot of bodybuilders don't like cardio, but to me, it's a component of fitness and it's a component of being healthy and having heart health. So, to me, it's not just about cutting up for a show, it's about being overall healthy. And it's also being fitted for my weight training, because that's the aspect that, the more cardiovascular fitness that you have, whilst you're not using that energy system while you're weight training, you do actually get better recovery by being able to have that cardio fitness, because between sets, even because you're not using that oxygen, you starve your body of it and you need to recover that between your sets. So, if you're not cardiovascular-ly fit, you can see people actually gassing out in between their weight training sets, which obviously affects how effectively you can train, and how well you can train.
Christine Envall:
And so that's a whole other thing, but if we're talking specifically about cutting up for a show, a lot of people won't do cardio in the off season. And again, I always did, because of that reason of wanting to stay fit. And I felt that I had much better weights workouts because of that fitness, but I obviously dropped it back to a maintenance level, which is about 30 minutes a day of just walking outside. And the whole time that I competed and cut up for shows, I actually never did electronic equipment. And by that, I mean, stairs, treadmills, cross trainers, or anything like that, I actually walked, physically, outside for 99% of all of my cardio sessions when I was getting ready for comps.
Christine Envall:
Now, some of that I believe was because I was younger-
Ash Horton:
Even back in Melbourne?
Christine Envall:
Even back in Melbourne.
Ash Horton:
Four seasons in one day.
Christine Envall:
Four seasons. I lived in Richmond, they had a lot of verandas. Most of the shops had verandas and I had a Japara and big waterproof boots. And on it would go, and my Japara would come down to my knees, and I would just walk under the undercover, and you'd only have to walk across the road and get that little bit wet. And if it was really, really bad, they had some great shopping centers. Like Chadstone, you can just do laps around every level of Chadstone. And I did used to do that, seriously, for some comps.
Ash Horton:
Did you buy anything, or just use?
Christine Envall:
Maybe a black coffee or something, but-
Ash Horton:
Good on you.
Christine Envall:
Yeah, no, I was walking that fast, no time to stop and look in the shops. But yeah, so cutting up for a comp, obviously the goal is to burn calories. That's why you're doing cardio when you're getting ready for a comp. So always when I would start out prepping, it'd be a combination of cutting back calories and introducing more cardio. So, I would never change the two at once. For example, I would, if I got to a sticking point, I wouldn't cut my calories and increase my cardio, I would do one thing or the other, and that would always allow me to keep it moving.
Christine Envall:
So that obviously meant that, some comps I would get up to doing maybe two 40 minute cardio sessions, one in the night, one in the morning, and the most activity would be another 30 minutes during the day, because I had the luxury of being able to do that. So, all in all, what was that about? We'd be looking 40, 80, 110, not quite two hours of cardio, which is actually, when you think about it, two hour weight session and then two hours of cardio, is a big chunk of your day, but that is comp prep.
Christine Envall:
So with cardio, there's not many people, I don't think, that are just doing that outdoor walking, because as you say, it's either too hot, it's too cold, it's too something, and a lot of people do like to go on the treadmill. Now, I guess the cool thing about the treadmill is that you can gauge the speed. So the thing with outdoor walking, anyone who knows me, and has ever walked with me, knows that I walk very fast, and people who saw me would say, "You look like you're on a mission," but not everybody does that.
Christine Envall:
So, the thing is with the treadmill, I guess, is that it sets your pace, and you know what you're working towards. So again, if you're having a tired day, if you know you're supposed to be doing six kilometers an hour, you set it and you make sure that you do that. Because I think the thing, obviously, with cardio is it either has to be distance based or time-based. Distance for me, if you're doing it outdoors, if you do it for a time and you're tired, you're going to cover less distance. So you have to always sort of set a benchmark and if it takes you a little longer, I would always rationalise it, even though it's taken me longer, I still covered the same distance, so ultimately I'm going to burn the same amount of calories. So, that was how I would fix that. So obviously, on something like a treadmill, same deal, you can either set it by distance or speed. And if you always do that speed for time, or whatever, then you're always going to be burning that same amount of calories. So-
Ash Horton:
You haven't taken into account that it might be windy.
Christine Envall:
No, no.
Ash Horton:
I'm just trying to get it clear, but yeah.
Christine Envall:
Yeah, no.
Ash Horton:
So, when you are walking around outside, what kind of heart rate are you looking for?
Christine Envall:
Okay. There's two different ways of looking at cardio, as well. So, when I'm doing outdoor walking, I'm looking at the talk test. So, what that means is you should still be able to carry on a conversation if you're with somebody. So, you're actually working at only, probably, about a 60% of your max. So, if you obviously remember the 220 minus your age, and whatever percentage that is to get your heart rate, that's where you should be working. So that's your optimal, direct fat burning. So, with cardio and when you're at rest, particularly when you're at rest, you are actually burning fat as an energy source. The more intense the workout that you do, the less percentage of fat you burn and the more percentage of carbohydrate that you start to burn, until you're working up in your anaerobic zone, where you're not burning any fat, because you need oxygen to burn fat and you're purely working off your glycolytic systems and carbohydrate as an energy source.
Christine Envall:
So, when you're directly wanting to burn your fat stores, I guess the theory always was that the actual lower intensity cardio was a good way to just directly burn fat. And that was also a good way to feel like you were preserving muscle, as well, because we all feared that walking was going to burn all the muscle out of our legs. And that was, I guess, a myth of bodybuilding back in the days. So, what I actually found was that doing that walking actually brought texture into my legs. So obviously the cardio side of it also increases your vascularity, the capillarisation of your body, because you're obviously trying to get more oxygen around your whole body to fuel everything. So with the changes that I found, and the results that I got, was that I actually got a really good, thin-skinned, vascular, lean look through my legs from doing all of that walking, all of those years at that low intensity, and didn't risk losing any size.
Christine Envall:
So, with cardio, a lot of people, what I see a lot of places is that people love to do the stairs, as a source of cardio, because they believe that it was burning calories at a very high rate. They also think that it cuts the glutes up, which I was probably known for having striated glutes, and I never did a stair. I actually only ever did the stairs once I retired, never did it for a comp.
Christine Envall:
And I guess my experience of the stairs is that, to me, it's more like a sprint. Doing it for a very short period of time, I could understand where that would fit in, and that's where I'll segue a little later into doc talking about HIT training and HIT cardio, and where, retrospectively, I probably would have introduced some of that if I had been aware of it. I roughly knew about it, but I didn't really understand where it fit, or how I would do it, or how I would introduce it into my routine. And it didn't really fit into my routine, but just coming back to the stairs, traditionally, a lot of people will just grind out an hour on the stairs and they think because they sweat a lot, and they burn a lot of calories on the little dial on the thing, that they're actually doing a lot for their system.
Christine Envall:
But I found when I was doing the stairs, that once I got up to about the nine to 10 minute mark, that is when I felt like I was noticing like a drop in the muscle mass in my legs. So, I was conscious that if you're going to be doing that for an hour, you are probably running the risk of overworking that particular muscle group. And as I say, with bodybuilding, it's all about retaining muscle and burning fat. So, when you're looking at anything that you do, particularly on electronic equipment, I like to do a little bit of everything. So 10 minutes on this, maybe you might do 20 minutes on the treadmill, 10 minutes on a cross trainer and then switch up your style, so that you're not overworking that particular muscle group, because you can use it a lot more intensely than if you're doing an outdoor walk.
Christine Envall:
Because obviously that's purely body weight, unless you add those weights that you've been talking about, Ash, the arm weights and everything, but yeah, essentially walking is probably one of the gentlest forms. Obviously, you still can get shin splints, particularly when you're training very heavily, and all of those things, but as far as an impact, it's relatively low.
Christine Envall:
But as I say, the stairs, I don't believe that they are the most effective or the most efficient way for doing long amounts of cardio. If you need to do that much in terms of work and jet for an hour on the stairs, you're either doing it at too low an intensity, in which case you might as well just do the treadmill, or you're doing it so long that you're actually risking burning out muscle mass. And if you're having to do that, you need to look at why your diet, maybe you're actually just wanting to eat more calories than what you should be.
Christine Envall:
So that's just talking about that side of it. But as I said, looking back now and having been introduced to HIT type cardio, I think that if I had been able to do that twice a week, I would have probably never gone over about two half hour sessions of cardio on the other days, because the difference, and this is where the other way of how you burn fat when you do cardio is, if you're working at such a high intensity that you're burning the carbohydrate more so than what you're burning body fat, when you do eat the carbohydrate, your body will replace the glycogen that you've burnt first. So, if you're still in a calorie deficit, those carbs will get put back into the glycogen stores.
Christine Envall:
Then, you don't have calories available to utilise for energy for immediate energy burning, because the glycogen gets stored in your body, until you exercise again, you actually don't use it. It's not like you're sitting at rest. Remember, at rest, you're burning body fat. So, you've got back to a state where you're now got no, your blood sugar is at a point where you don't have excess sugar floating around in your blood, because it's all been stored as glycogen. So, it's essentially now you're in a calorie deficit because it's like you're back-filling what you've burnt from the higher intensity exercise. So, that's that difference between what people would think was direct fat burning and why they would do lower intensity. But obviously the thing with the HIT type training is the potential to burn far more calories in that same timeframe.
Christine Envall:
So, if time is an issue, which it often is when you're getting ready for a show, and you only have so much time to dedicate to a particular activity, the HIT is a great combination of not just burning your body out. Because, obviously, you could do a style of HIT on the stairs, potentially, but to just grind out continuous steady state on the stairs versus doing a variety of different exercises, so you're not taxing the one body part continually, and you're using a whole bunch of different muscles, to me, that'd be a way more effective, like a 45 minute of HIT would be your cardio for the day, done and dusted, no two half hour sessions. And then the on burning effect of that, because you've raised your metabolism a lot more from doing a high intensity work than what you have done from doing a lower intensity type of cardio session. So, the on-flow effect of that would be a lot greater.
Christine Envall:
So if anyone isn't doing it, I suggest that they actually do try to do like a couple of HIT sessions a week out of their cardio, judge their fitness, because once you are getting close to a show, you might find that it's too much to do 45 minutes, and you might want to only do a certain time length, you might want to shorten that back a bit. So again, because I never actually did it under extreme diet conditions, I don't actually know how, how I would have fared in that, and I think trying to do it every day would probably push you into a state of over-training. But again, everybody is different, depending on what their weight sessions were like.
Christine Envall:
But another, I guess, advantage of that type of training was the way that it does use your upper body. And I think that one thing I used to always say when I was competing was, "Damn, I wish I could walk on my arms, because of the effect that I got through my legs of the continual high repetitions, I guess, of walking. I know some of the cross trainers have the moving upper body parts, but it just isn't quite the same thing. I think things like the rowers, I know there's now some SkiErgs and those kinds of pieces of equipment, which do incorporate upper body, and the climber ones, if your gym happens to have one of those. So those are all really, really cool pieces of equipment to bring in and utilise different body parts, so that you're not doing a long session on the one thing.
Christine Envall:
But as I said, the HIT, as a day on its own to do a HIT type of session would be a great addition. But then if you are doing your other cardio sessions, try to make it up as five to 10 minutes of a lot of different things, to bring in that half hour session, if that's the timeframe that you're working on. But you can still also incorporate some of those HIT type of scenarios in there, like on the spin bike, for example, you can do 30 seconds full pelt, and then back it off for 30 seconds, and then do that type of a cycle for 10 minutes and try those type of moves. Some of the other really cool things with cardio is doing some type of plyo movements, and again, it's all about conditioning, because at the end of the day-
Ash Horton:
What's a plyo movement?
Christine Envall:
A plyo movement is dynamic. So, you might be lunging, so you're actually jumping but lunging. So a plyo lunges, instead of just stepping back with your foot, you're actually using the explosiveness to jump back up again, and again, those types of movements, I think in the end, the explosiveness links back into your weight training, and it helps improve your strength, because you've got that explosiveness out of the bottom, even though weight training itself isn't explosive. But having that power at the start of the movement definitely helps to contribute to the strength that you have throughout the movement when you're actually weight training.
Christine Envall:
Some of the other really good things is, it tends to work a lot of the stabiliser muscles, because weight training is very linear, in terms of you work in a certain line of motion, so your muscles get strong in that particular line of motion, but a lot of the other muscles around aren't necessarily primed for work outside of that. And again, having all the muscles strong and that's through the explosiveness and the strength that you get, because you get more of an explosive strength out of the HIT type of work, and that all adds together to give you a better weights workout.
Christine Envall:
So, for me, weights is always the golden thing, because that was what kept your muscle mass, and everything else was auxiliary to that. And I think that, as I said, if I would go back now, I would definitely try to do some of that other type of cardio just to limit the amount of time that I had to spend actually prepping because that's probably the biggest detracting factor, is how much time getting ready for comp can take away, particularly if people have kids and jobs and everything like that, you are very limited. There's still only 24 hours in the day, no matter how much we want it to be different. So, the more efficient that you can be to get that good result, then that's what I would be looking at with that type of thing.
Christine Envall:
So again, there's so much more equipment around, and when I started there literally was only treadmills. So, your options were walking, or treadmill at the gym, and then now there's such core pieces of equipment. There's all kind of different slack treadmills, where you're actually creating the movement. It's like what they put the dogs on to, I think it's not electronic. It's electronic, but your step speed is driving the thing. You're the motor, basically. I don't know if you've seen those at all.
Ash Horton:
No.
Christine Envall:
Okay. So that's some of the newer equipment that's coming out. So, the faster you go, the faster it goes, and you can sometimes get a little bit tangled up, but there's just so much more variety, I think, than what there used to be. And that's why I'm always a big believer in really mixing it up, so that you're not taxing one part of your body. Because the way that I look at, again, cardio, whilst you are going to be using your muscle to a degree, you don't want to use it with a lot of resistance, but you can use it just with a small amount of resistance. And again, the hand weights, or things like battle ropes or stuff like that, where you're doing a minute or 40 seconds, or just a short burst of time, not enough to really degrade the muscle or overtrain it, but enough to give it some work, but at a lower intensity.
Christine Envall:
So any weights that you use with a cardio type session, you don't try to emulate your weight session because you're doing it in a totally different breathing, totally different speed, cadence, rep speed and all that. You're doing a lot faster, so you want a weight that's very, very controllable, but it's all adding to that calorie burn because you're putting extra load on. So, cardio is something where it's opportunity to explore.
Ash Horton:
Yeah, so you'd keep your cardio and your weights, of course, totally separate.
Christine Envall:
Yes.
Ash Horton:
You wouldn't mix them together at all.
Christine Envall:
Well, the closest they would come would be, for time reasons, obviously straight after a weight session, often cardio needed to be done. I would, say, train and then drive home, and then do my cardio. So that would give me a half hour break to rest, have a recovery meal and then go in and do the cardio.
Christine Envall:
But as far as trying to make my weights and my cardio, not for weight training, if you're trying to do some other general type of fitness, and again, this is the F45 concept is that they have the cardio days, which are the HIT cardio, and then they have the weights days where they actually try to, I guess, get people to lift heavier. The sets are more of a length which is compatible with weight training, but the biggest thing, why it can never be weight training, is that the, the rest period between each set is far too short. 10 seconds, so you're loading up maybe three or four sets with only a ten second break. For weight training, it's not how it's going to be the most effective, because you need that, at least, minute to minute and a half between each set to recover, and recover the ATP, and go back in and lift your ultimate.
Christine Envall:
So that way, you're stressing your muscle in a different way. You're giving it a different type of fitness, but it's not necessarily going to be the type that's going to grow. It's going to grow some muscle, if that's all that you do, and you've never done anything, but if you're trying to body build and you're specifically trying to grow the most amount of muscle that you possibly can, then that's not going to give you what you want.
Christine Envall:
So that's why I say, with those kinds of days to me, I just drop the weight and still keep form, but go more for speed. And it's actually, I need to do a little bit more reading, but it's actually coming to the fore as a new and separate style of training. So, we have cardio, we have weights, and now there is this weighted cardio that's becoming-
Ash Horton:
Yeah, and the lighter you go, the better. So, with those wearable weights that I was talking about, they load the forearms, and forearms only, but they only go up to 750 grams, because what that does is that starts targeting your core. The minute you start going above that weight, it starts using different muscles in different ways and defeats the purpose, but that's what they're designed for. And they also don't put any wearable weights on the legs, because it leads to a lot of injuries. So, just putting them on the forearms as you're swinging, swinging your arms, so that walking down the river, wherever it is, that does a huge amount of core work.
Christine Envall:
Yeah. So that adds enough to make you have to create stability through your core, to balance that out. It potentially would bring a little bit into your delt as well-
Ash Horton:
You know more than me.
Christine Envall:
Just from the sheer positioning of it. Anything that you have on your arm is obviously going to impact the weight that you're moving and the resistance across your delt. So, it it's inevitable that it will. Yeah. But cardio is one of those things where, we've come through the era of aerobics, step, treadmills, there's all different things where people, I think, are always trying to make it more interesting. And it's one of those things where, even bike riding. I would never use a recumbent bike, which is the seated bike, because to me, that's just a nothing exercise.
Ash Horton:
It's a lazy way of life.
Christine Envall:
Yeah, it's good if people, I guess, don't have mobility-
Ash Horton:
It's good if you're going for six hours, perhaps.
Christine Envall:
But as a cardio, to be an effective cardio for a fit, healthy person without any joint issues then yeah. It's the lazy man's cardio, or something like that. And again, I would choose a spin bike over a regular electronic bike, mostly because electronic bike doesn't feel natural. It doesn't feel like the natural movement- [crosstalk 00:22:16]
Ash Horton:
Just like a treadmill doesn't feel that natural, does it?
Christine Envall:
Yeah. Which is why the slack treadmills are actually pretty good. But no, it's something that I might do on a treadmill, because I have a totally different routine, obviously, now compared to when I was competing. And when I travel to LA, because of the timing, I have a totally different morning cardio routine. And one of the things that I like to do with the treadmill is, I will do, I have to remember what I actually do.
Christine Envall:
I think I do two minutes where I will have an extreme elevation, and a slightly slower speed. So, I'm forcing my body to walk in that manner. And then I will drop the elevation, but increase the speed and go really, really fast for a minute. And then I'll keep doing those little sets, where I'll go two minutes very elevated and slower, and then really fast on a flat incline, and I'll do 12 minutes like that. So, I'll do four of these three minutes sets. So, I'll do something like that, and then I will mix it up with the spin bike, or I might do 30 seconds really, really fast, and then 30 seconds back it off, and then do some walking lunges or plyo lunges, just to do 10 of those, and then that creates a set like that. They have a really cool, almost like a ski movement, so it's working your inner thigh, and you can do wide, medium and narrow stance, and just do some steady state like that, or five minutes of rowing.
Christine Envall:
I think, things with the upper body, five minutes of steady state is probably pretty good going. So if you're using a SkiErg or a rower, five minutes full on, but any of those things, you can mix it up, and do a higher intensity and a lower intensity and do different sequences, whether it be 40 seconds, and 20 seconds at lower intensity, or 30 and 30, and just try different things and just see how your body feels. It also stops the monotony, and again, that's another thing why walking outside is, because there's always something to see, and I'm not really much for standing on a treadmill and watching TV, or not really going anywhere. So being out in the environment and taking in all the different stimuli that's coming was always... It's also relaxing and non-stressful, as well as doing your cardio, whereas the electronics always feels a little bit more stressful because you're not really going anywhere, but the-
Ash Horton:
Well, you're an achiever, right. If you're not going anywhere, it's going to drive you nuts.
Christine Envall:
That's what it is. Yeah. I'm not thinking, "Oh, this is burning fat." Yeah. The cardio, the variety of what's out there now is, see what works, see what's most efficient. See what suits you, if you've got certain areas that you really need to target. And again, for a lot of people that might be glutes, or like I say, for me, it was actually always upper body, where I wanted that same texture through my upper body as what I got through my legs. And the ability to do more upper body type cardio and bring in back, shoulders, arms is really, really, very beneficial.
Christine Envall:
But yeah, cutting up for show, you've got to think about what you're trying to achieve. Do you need to burn more calories now? And that's really why you're doing it at that point in time, because, like I say, you'll hit those plateaus, and you can't just keep on doing the same thing. You got to figure out ways either to do more, and if time is an issue, then maybe more intensity within that period of time will do that, do what you need to do.
Christine Envall:
Then, in the off season, it becomes more about keeping that fitness and obviously getting, because you don't want to stay in a state of doing as much cardio as what you were doing for your on-season, because then when your next on season comes, you're going to have to do more. Because your body definitely adapts, you get fitter and your body gets more efficient at burning its calories and conserving its calories. Because the idea is, that's part of the adaption, your body is always trying to conserve. So yeah, you don't want to get to that state and say, "Oh, I'm so fit now. I want to stay here." Remember, the goal for a show is that you've got to give yourself somewhere to go for the next time. So, you do have to back off a little bit, bring that body fat back on a little bit, and back off the fitness, because otherwise, you'll end up in-
Ash Horton:
It's always a cycle, isn't it?
Christine Envall:
Always a cycle, yeah. And-
Ash Horton:
I think that's one of the biggest mistakes people make.
Christine Envall:
With bodybuilding, trying to stay in a, yeah, because now, too, with Instagram and Facebook and everyone wants to show their pictures, and no-one wants to have a bad picture. In the old days, everyone disappeared into hibernation once the Olympia was over. They did all the photo shoots for the year, pretty much after the Olympia, and they just got to go and train and focus on improvement, rather than on focus on how they looked at that particular point in time, because you only needed to look good on stage. You only had to look good for that moment.
Christine Envall:
Obviously, fitness is another part of it, and health, and you don't want to be on the extreme of being so out of shape and unfit, and unhealthy, and eating crap food, because you don't want to be on that extreme either. You've got to remember why you're doing it is also to be healthy and to have longevity. So, you want to have that cardio for the fitness. So, you maybe don't need to do cardio, because your abs stay in all year round, but think of your heart, and that in the long run you're going to have better training sessions. And it's not just about the body fat levels, it is still about your internal fitness, which is your cardiovascular system, even just the recovery that comes from that, like we talked about, getting the nutrients around the body, and that's all helping. If you have a better blood supply, and you have better blood flow, then that's all going to help with the weight training, and the recovery after that as well.
Christine Envall:
So, with everything, it's looking at all aspects, so you don't want to just focus on the image, because you're going to maybe stunt your progress because you're focused on always having your abs in, but maybe you do need to relax off a little bit and allow your body that ability to grow, and have a little bit more fat and a few more calories. But at the same time, you don't want to go to the other extreme, where you're just eating whatever, and not even paying attention to health.
Ash Horton:
It's easy to unwind and spiral out of control. That's the danger, isn't it.
Christine Envall:
Yeah, but the longer that people do it, the less that that happens. Definitely in the early shows, your focus is all about the food and not having to do this, and not having to worry about my cardio, and being able to eat all of this really, really fun stuff. But then as you get along, you realise that you feel better when you're eating the better food, and you feel better when you're doing some degree of cardio all year round, and you're not... Because you do gas out in your weight sessions if you're carrying too much weight, and if you're not cardiovascular fit. A basic bench press can really take a lot out of you, particularly if you are pushing very heavy weights around, or a set of squats, lunges where you're actually doing 20 reps on lunges, because you're not doing 10 reps, you're doing 10 each side. And if you're not fit, you definitely come out of that gasping for air, and that's just not a good feeling.
Ash Horton:
All good. Hey, thank you very much for the advice. I'm sure many people have taken lots of value from that.
Christine Envall:
I hope so.
Ash Horton:
Is there anything else you want to add before we wrap it up?
Christine Envall:
I'm trying to think, but I don't think so. All I'm saying, I'm not anti-stairs. I just do see too many people who I think are probably wasting a lot of their time when they could be doing something way more efficient and getting better results, but mix it up and don't be scared of losing muscle from doing other types of activities. You'll know straightaway whether that's having a negative impact, and which things are having a positive impact.
Ash Horton:
One theme I'm hearing from you, through all these podcasts is that you want to work on muscle, and you want to hit it from multiple different angles. And I guess, with cardio, it's no different, is it? There might be different muscles that you're actually working, but you're still hitting it from different angles.
Christine Envall:
Yeah. Because you get a different look from a body which is trained just from weight training and dieting, to strip off fat, as opposed to something which is a functional body as well, because of all the, again, the different texture that you get to the muscle. So, it makes sense to me that you do want to work evenly. And it also, to me, minimises the risk of injury, if all the stabilisers are strong, you'll incorporate some type of flexibility and balance, potentially, into the other types of training that you might do. So, I think it's looking at it holistically, because old, traditional thing of, "Oh, bodybuilders, they can't do this, and they can't do that. All they can do is lift weights." And it's not necessarily true, because you can have a physique that looks a certain way, and be really, really strong in the gym and be a bodybuilder, but you can still have the other aspects of fitness. It shouldn't be two separate things. I always look at something like it's a more holistic approach at everything that you do.
Ash Horton:
Awesome. Thank you very much.
Christine Envall:
Thank you, Ash.
Ash Horton:
Words of wisdom. If you like what you've heard, recognise that these tips are free. So, show your support by becoming a loyal International Protein customer by jumping online, hunt our product down and hit that, "Buy now," button. So once again, like, share and subscribe to our podcast so we can continue to bring you these episodes from our one and only Aussie muscle guru, three times world champion, Christine Envall.