The Smart Way To Mix Strength, Cardio, And Goals

Fit, Healthy & Happy Podcast
Welcome to the Fit, Healthy and Happy Podcast hosted by Josh and Kyle from Colossus...

Listen on: Apple Podcasts   Spotify

Transcript

[Ad] Fit, Healthy & Happy Podcast

(Cont.) The Smart Way To Mix Strength, Cardio, And Goals

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to There is a Method to the Madness. My name is Rob Maxwell, and I'm an exercise physiologist and personal trainer. I am the owner of Maxwell's Fitness Program and have been in business since 1994. The purpose of this podcast is to get to the real deal of what really worked and most importantly why things work. Hence the name, there is a method to the magnet. Before I get started today, let me thank Jonathan and Lynn Gildan of the Gilding Group Realty Pros. They are committed to providing the highest level of customer service in home sales. Why don't you give them a shout and figure out what your home is worth? 386-451-2412. Good morning, everybody. Good afternoon, good evening, whatever time you are listening. I'm recording this on a Sunday, the day of the Daytona 500 here in Daytona. That's what's going on locally here. We uh attended the race yesterday, the um Saturday race. You know, I forget what they call it now. They change sponsors quite often, but um, it was enjoyable, it was fun. Our area is gonna be buzzing with a lot of people today. Um, hopefully they get it in. They often have a lot of rain on the day of the 500. Um, that's what's going on with me. Had more of an active recovery day today on Sundays. I tend not to push the intensity too much and kind of like uh just do more uh fun things, although working out and exercise is fun for me, but I try to give myself a good active rest day. Got on my new bike, pedal it around a little bit, did the lawn, and now here I am. So, question arose regarding the intensities and what we call concurrent training. Concurrent training is when somebody is really interested in both strength training and cardiorespiratory training. Nowadays, there's always somebody out there trying to sell something. So nowadays, some people are calling that a hybrid athlete, and there's literally like hybrid workout programs, but uh you know, in the industry, we just always called it concurrent training. Because for some athletes, one is going to be more important than the other. For example, runners and endurance athletes are gonna spend the majority of their time doing aerobic activity, doing endurance training because that's what they do. But if they don't strength train, there could be problems like injury and uh some efficiency stuff. So they know they need to do some strength training, whereas strength and power athletes or bodybuilders have to spend more of their at least focus on strength training. And then the subject comes up as to whether they should do some aerobic training or cardiovascular training or endurance training as well. Now, for the average person out there, just trying to be fit and healthy, which is a great goal and much needed, and it's not any less than any of the you know, quote, serious goals where people are training for specific sports, then the uh fact remains that doing a nice balance of strength training and cardiovascular training, and I would say flexibility and mobility training should all be done in balance. Meaning, I don't think personally, well, not only personally, I don't think professionally that any of it should be neglected because we want a healthy heart, we want a healthy body, we want healthy muscles, so we really should try to do all of it. But the question comes up sometimes with concurrent training as to like the difference in intensities for cardiovascular training. And it's important, and there's always been like a big debate over it. All right. So let me give you a little backstory and then hopefully you can understand a little more what I'm talking about and where this is going. For years and years, bodybuilders are physique athletes who are training for a competition. So, you know, for them, no matter if they're uh bikini for women or bodybuilder for men or bodybuilder for women and men's physique for men, the objective is pretty much the same for the most part. They want to show the most muscularity, not necessarily in the case of bikini, but the bikini models also want to show a great level of definition, which means muscularity, but they want to be able to show a high level of muscularity when they're on the stage and a low percentage of body fat. Okay, especially the bodybuilders, they want to show that balance. They're essentially judged on symmetry, balance, muscularity, definition. Like they're judged on all of those things. So, for example, if a bodybuilder, say, doesn't drop enough body fat for the contest and they show up on stage and they have a ton of muscle, but they're not as lean as they should be for their physique, that is going to most likely count against them. So it's not like they can just get as big and ginormous as possible and get up on stage and do well. That's not the case. And then the polar opposite of that is let's say a bodybuilder spends a lot of time, or just genetics is the way it is, and they are super lean, super ripped, low percentage of body fat is what that means. But they don't have a very high level of muscularity. So they will look really lean, they'll look really ripped, but the judges will look at them and say, yeah, but they're too small. So there's a balance in bodybuilding that elite bodybuilders and physique athletes need to reach. It's not just one, it's not just the other. They need to have a nice balance. And typically, you know, there's there's favoritism in all contests with what judges are looking for. I mean, that's going to happen at the biggest level and at the smaller levels. That's just going to happen. But for the most part, the athlete that has the greatest balance of those two things combined is going to come out on top with the trophy. So the one that has the highest level of muscularity for the lowest level of body fat is most likely going to win. With also a level of symmetry, which is um, you know, very genetic, meaning that the athlete, the athlete may go into it with blockier hips, like they just have bigger hip bones. There's not a lot they can do about that. So their symmetry might might not look ideal because they tend to have more of a blockier waist in comparison to their upper back and chest girth. So they might be super lean, super ripped, and highly muscular, but because they don't have the most favorable bone patterns, it will count against them. So I do have to make sure I add that in that symmetry matters to a lot of the judges as well. So it's an aesthetics contest. I mean, it's all about how the person looks. All right. So, with that being said, then there was always debate over how this person should train to reach this ideal level of physique to be contest ready. Actually, there wasn't much debate for a while. Like it was pretty cut and dry what they needed to do. So they would go into an off-season and they would build as much muscle as possible, and they would have their showtime picked out as to when they were going to compete. And usually within, say, about three months of competition, they would say, All right, so now I need to strip body fat. And they would do so by pretty much keeping their strength workouts almost the same. They wouldn't hit muscular failure because they wouldn't want to overtrain the muscles as they go into a level of a caloric deficit. So the first part was the strength training wouldn't change that much. It would just be a level of intensity was taken off. There would definitely come a caloric deficit. I mean, we're not going to lose body fat without cutting calories. So calories would be cut would be cut no matter how they did it. You know, really there's bigger debates nowadays that are silly over low carb, high carbon, all that crap. Bodybuilders, in all honesty, have always been pretty smart about that. Like they didn't get involved in that. They know that, you know, eating pure junk food just made no sense because they're already in a caloric deficit and they already want to supply enough energy to the muscles. So they're not going to just sit there and eat donuts and really bad food when they're already cutting. They're going to want to make sure that they have their fiber and complex carbs and protein. So, like it really wasn't this huge issue over carbs and non-carbs so much. It was like we need to cut a deficit of what we eat. So that would happen. But then here is where this whole podcast comes in. What I'm talking about cardio. What would they do for cardio? So for the longest time, and it's still kind of the way, bodybuilders would do very low intensity cardio. They wouldn't be out there running the beach or running on a treadmill or doing a steep incline treadmill, walking, or really, you know, pushing themselves on the bikes or swimming hard. Like that was not the level of cardio. You would see them do very low intensity cardio, whether that meant walking their neighborhoods or getting on an exercise bike at a low intensity and spinning, so to say, like that is what they would do. And the reason is is because you know, a calorie burned is a calorie burn. So we we have to understand that the idea for them is to create a caloric deficit. Just like all of us when we're trying to lose weight, we need to create a caloric deficit. But the thing is, they also had to keep their muscularity high. So they just couldn't say, I'm gonna burn calories indiscriminately, or they're gonna be that guy on stage who lost too much muscle, or what the judges would call fell flat, like their muscles were flat. So they don't want that. So they just couldn't do it indiscriminately. Like they had to be smart about how they were going to lose their body fat. So a if you run a single mile, or if you walk a single mile, you are essentially burning the same amount of calories within 10%. So studies have shown that it's gonna be within 10%. Like for me, I've literally looked at it before when I had a VO2 max machine. I burned, I burn, I mean, I don't think it's probably changed that much, but I burned 130 calories a mile if I was ambulatory. So whether I was walking or running one mile, and it still is when I look at my Garmin, which I think is pretty accurate, 130 calories. Now, if I run a mile and I'm running my mile as hard as I can, for me, you know, in a 5k or whatever, that's gonna be a little bit over a nine-minute mile. So I cover that mile in nine minutes. Now, if I walk that mile, it's gonna take me 16 or 15, depending on how fast I'm pushing it. But the amount of calories are gonna be the same, but obviously walking it takes longer. So that's a rule of physiology that we've known, you know, forever, so to say, and everybody should understand. So we're gonna burn the same amount of calories, whether we walk a mile or run a mile. But when we run the mile, majority of the calories are going to be burned from our glycogen stores, which is carbohydrates. If we walk the mile, the majority of what we burn is going to come from fat. So the exact statistics look like this. If you're at 60% of your VO2 max, which is somewhere around 65 to 70% of your maximum heart rate, that's considered still pretty low intensity. You're going to burn 50 to 65% of your energy from fat. That's a pretty good percentage. So that's subcutaneous adipose tissue. Fat on your body, you're going to burn that much from that. If, and then regarding carbohydrates, you're going to burn between 30 to 50% carbs. So it's more fat than carbs at that intensity. Now, if we went even lower, like 50% of your VO2 max, the percentage from fat is going to be even higher. The percentage from carbs is going to be even lower. I just pick 60 to 85% as a discussion point. Now, if we go up to 85% of our VO2 max, which is roughly 90% of your max heart rate, which is pretty much like your zone four-fives on your Garmin watches or your Apple Watches, it totally shifts. Only 10 to 25% of the substrate burned comes from fat. 75 to 90% comes from carbohydrates. So you're really getting into your glycogen and your carbs at that point. So, you know, the old adage of, well, you can burn, you can go for 20 minutes hard, hard meaning 85% or so and up. Again, it's a little bit relative, but just think 20% 20 minutes hard versus 60 minutes easy, and let's just use 85% and 60% for those reference points. You're going to burn roughly the same amount of calories. Because when you are going hard, you are burning more calories per minute. But the substrate is different. Now you're burning less fat and more carb. If you're going easy, you're going to burn less calories per minute, but the substrate is going to be greater from fat, less from carbs. Like that's just the way it works. Like, don't argue with me. That's this is just science. So the thought process has always been so both work if you're trying to lose weight. You can go 20 minutes hard. You're going to burn roughly the same amount of calories, but you're going to burn more from carbs. If you're not dieting or not worried about it, you know, who cares? Because you're going to put it back. Or you can go long and easy. You're going to burn about the same amount of calories because at lower intensity, you burn less calories, but more of the substrate is going to come from fat. And let's face it, when people are trying to lose weight, they're really trying to lose fat. They're not trying to lose muscle. So that's a physiological truth. So you would say, all right, so why did the bodybuilders care? Because as I said, the bodybuilders were doing mostly low intensity. Because they wanted to spare as much muscle as they could. Because remember, the idea of the bodybuilder was to get up on stage and aesthetically look good. They needed to have the greatest level of muscularity, the lowest level of body fat, and then hopefully they had some nice symmetry to go with it. They didn't want to lose muscle. So they didn't want to do, say, that 20 minutes hard on a caloric deficit and take the risk of burning their muscle tissue. Because your body will find a way to burn tissue if there are not any, if there's not enough readily of carbs available. If you have burned through your glycogen, it's going to start to burn your muscles to get the needed substrates to repair, replenish your ATP, because that's what your body is trying to do. So the bodybuilders knew that and they wouldn't do that. So they would rather go and take longer, go for their 60-minute walks or 60-minute level one or twos on the life cycle. They're going to burn about the same amount of calories, but they're going to burn mostly from fat. They're not going to have to worry about burning into their muscle tissue. Now, I say it became debatable because years later, people started to argue that a little bit. And they were using right exercise science, like they were correct in their methodology. They're saying, yeah, but you're going to burn the same amount of calories if they did 15 or 20 minutes on a treadmill on an incline and ran, but they're not going to be as bored or they're going to, you know, they're have more time. It's like that's true. But the problem again is if they're on a caloric deficit, then that potentially, they'd potentially run the risk of cutting into their muscle. And they didn't want to do that, or they don't want to do that. So the other risk is if that's not you, like let's say, well, I don't care. I mean, I'm just going to lose some muscle as I lose weight. I get that, and I'm okay with that. I just want to get down to a certain point. So, but if you if you go the route of the bodybuilder and just say, I'm only going to do this low intensity, you do run the risk as a fitness enthusiast of not working your cardiorespiratory system hard enough to get more benefits, to get adaptations. So if you're training at, say, 60% of your VO2 max, I mean, that's exercise and you're burning calories. But are you doing enough to improve your cardiorespiratory system? I mean, most studies say essentially no, that the way to raise our VO2 max is to spend more time closer to our VO2 max. So to really work our cardiorespiratory system, it's very similar to strength training. We really need to work at higher intensities and get that heart rate up if we want the adaptations to have a more fit aerobic system. Now, the reason why a lot of the bodybuilders don't mind that or don't worry about that is number one, it's short term. So they're thinking stage ready, three months, maybe later I'll work on my cardio. So it's short term. And the second thing is some of them just don't care. I mean, it's like they're not thinking about overall health and longevity at that time. They're thinking muscularity. And there is a huge argument, and I get the argument that like one of the most important things we can do is keep muscle on the body. So they're not entirely wrong. It's just that probably most people aren't in that situation where they have to be so specific, like that they have to worry so much about concurrent training. But I think we should all understand this because if we're trying to lose weight and we're trying to, I have a client now, he he battles this a lot. Like he does want to gain muscle, but he doesn't want to like lose that cardiorespiratory edge. Plus, he likes it. Like, plus, you know, there's a there's a he loves to sweat, he loves to burn, he loves, he loves the aerobic high he's going to get from doing the cardio. And and research does show that that comes more around 80, 85% of the VO2 max that we start getting into that, you know, the endorphin buzz and all that. So I I just always tell him, I said, well, you just have to weigh the pros and cons. I mean, I think if you're aware of it, then you can manage it. You can go, well, I think I'm getting a little carried away on all the cardio. I think I'm losing a little too much muscle. And then you need to maybe just cut back a little bit. Or, you know, it could be the other way around. It could be you're doing nothing but low intensity. And then you feel like, oh man, I'm, you know, huffing and puffing a little more in my local 5K when I go, you know? So I don't think for most people they have to worry about it too much. And I think we can all do concurrent training and figure out what is the right level for us. And I don't think we have to obsess over it a whole lot. But I do think we need to understand number one, what is our most important goal? Like for really, I mean, let me back up. Some people come from very distinct backgrounds of one or the other. And I think in that case, then people need to refigure what they're doing. Like I know many people that come from an endurance standpoint and they've done nothing but run or do cardio or those types of activities their whole life, and then they're coming on to strength training. I think in that case, they definitely need to make room for strength training in their life and probably cut back on the cardio a little bit so their joints and everything else can catch up. I mean, not that cardio is bad on the joints, but in these cases, there are people that have been typically pretty extreme through the years and haven't really taken breaks and just don't like cardio or strength training because I think they falsely believe it's going to slow them down or something like that, which, you know, isn't the case. And then there's the other opposite, and it tends to happen more with men, but growing up in gyms where they do nothing but say strength train and work on nothing but strength and power their whole lives, and it's like, okay, they haven't done any cardio. And I think for those types, they can absolutely find some room for some good cardio in their life, and it probably would help them pretty greatly. So, you know, other than that, I mean, other than finding the balance, I think we just really need to figure out what is most important to us and understand what the body is doing it when we're doing it, because ultimately, I believe we all need to be exercising. And I've said forever, you can run long or you can run hard, but you probably don't need to run long and hard. So we need to think about like, what is it that best suits us? And that's the other thing we need to really consider. Like, let's say you want to do nothing but get into your fat burning zone when you do exercise. Okay, but just keep in mind that's going to be long. Like, you can't go for a 15-minute walk and expect to get out of that what you got in a 15-minute run. I mean, it just does not work that way. You're not going to burn nearly the same amount of calories. So it doesn't work. You know, so if you want to keep your intensity down, you are going to have to go longer. If you want to keep your intensity up, you'd probably be smart to go shorter so you don't over-train. But that's the beauty of it. You can make that decision once you start to understand the science. All right. So I hope this helps somebody out there. I always encourage you to ask questions. This came from a conversation I was having. Person was a little confused on uh, you know, the amount of type of cardio they should be doing. So uh I thought, you know, a lot of people have these questions. All right, keep them coming. Have a great day. Get out there and do something. You'll be happy you did. Thanks everybody for listening to today's show. I want to ask you to please hit automatic download from wherever you get your podcast from. It really helps me and it really helps the show. Now I'd like to take a second to thank our sponsors. Without them, we would not be able to have the podcast. First overhead door of Daytona Beach. They are the area's premier garage door company. They have the best product and the best service. I personally vouch for Jeff and Zach Hawk. They are great people. If you have any garage door needs, please give them a call. 386-222-3165. Now I'm very, very happy and excited to announce we have a new sponsor, Procharge Liquid Protein Enhancer. Each container has 40 grams of protein. And what's really cool about this is it's very portable. You can throw the tiny little containers into a suitcase, take it wherever you go. Now you don't have to worry about spilling. And you know what? It tastes really, really good. Just open up the cap, suck down the protein. It's that easy. If you want to try it out, you can check it out at my website, fit to themax.net, and click on Procharge Liquid Protein Enhancer, or you can go directly to their website at www.prochargeprotein.com.