Why Cardio Is Killing Your Gains

When most people decide they want to get in shape, the very first thing they do is start running but what if hammering out massive amounts of cardio is actually the worst thing you can do for your body and your goals?

In this episode of the It's Supposed to be Heavy podcast, strength coach Jermiah Blount explains why relying solely on cardio is an overrated and potentially harmful approach to weight loss and overall health. 

Instead of pounding your joints into oblivion for a "runner's body," Jermiah breaks down how building lean muscle mass acts as a protective armor for your organs, revamps your metabolism, and completely transforms your body composition for the long haul. 

Tune in to understand the only form of cardio you actually need, why the scale is lying to you, and how combining consistent strength training with a simple 10,000-step daily goal is the ultimate recipe for longevity.

0:08 - Why Cardio is Overrated
0:36 - The Only Good Cardio
1:04 - The Runner's Body
1:44 - Muscle as Armor
2:06 - Transforming Metabolism
3:18 - Building Lasting Strength
7:09 - Cardio vs. Calorie Burn
10:01 - The 3,500 Calorie Rule

"The more muscle mass you have... you're protecting things in your body. You gotta think of it as our turtle shell, yeah. It's protecting our soft insides."

"When you do cardio and you're hammering out cardio, right? The moment you stop cardio, you're done, right? You're not really burning calories anymore."

"Right now there's nothing on the market that's just absolutely gonna lengthen your life more than just lifting weights, watching your nutrition, getting your water and recovery. And it is super cheap... [it] is not gonna be as expensive as the medical bills you will eventually pay from not doing it."

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About Jermiah Blount: Jermiah has harbored a deep passion for health, fitness, and strength ever since his tenure in the Air Force. He finds fulfillment in assisting individuals in enhancing their lives by promoting strength, well-being, and proper nutrition through the utilization of Heavyish principles.

Check us out at:
https://www.instagram.com/heavyishgym/
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#strengthtraining #cardiodebate #bodycomposition

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

We want to take that time and build good quality muscle, right? People generally don't get overweight or out of shape in a week or a month or sometimes even a year. It is a process and it takes significant time, right? You should think that it should take significant time to get in good quality shape. Because if you do these crash diets and you do these crazy things that people talk about all the time, then essentially it's not gonna last, or you're gonna deplete yourself of vitamins and nutritions that you absolutely need.

SPEAKER_00 0:31

Welcome to It's Supposed to Be Heavy with Jeremiah Blount, a show about strength, longevity, and building a body that carries you well for decades. Because resistance creates adaptation. And some things are supposed to be heavy. Let's get to work.

SPEAKER_02 0:48

Hi, my name is Jeremiah Blunt. I am a strength coach out of Franklin, Tennessee. This is It's Supposed to Be Heavy Podcast, and today's topic is why cardio is overrated.

SPEAKER_01 0:58

So that's a real unpopular opinion because people, when they get heavy or they want to get in shape, the very first thing they do is go out and go for a run, start doing massive amounts of cardio, try to sweat for hours and cut their calories down. And so what's wrong with that premise?

SPEAKER_02 1:12

So essentially what's wrong with it is you're hurting your body, right? When we do cardio and things like that, it depends on what your heart range is, and then overall you're affecting your body. If we look at cardio as in going on a stroll, getting your 10,000 steps, which I absolutely recommend, that is a good central cardio. And then pairing that with weight training, if anybody's lifted heavy, they know their heart rate's getting up, right? Your heart's beating, you're sweaty, you're out of breath. That isn't no different than you going out here and doing this, except you're benefiting yourself by lifting weights. When you're just on the machine and you're pounding and you're pounding and you're pounding and your joints are hurting and aching, yeah, you may lose weight, but everybody's heard of the runner's body, right? But if you learned how to compare good strength training and then utilizing things like the 10,000 steps or utilizing very limited hip training, then you're looking at a whole different physique, a whole different body. You're looking at a whole different aspect of your life you never thought you were going to reach.

SPEAKER_01 2:12

Most cardio, you just lose weight and you also lose muscles. Yes. What's the advantage of building muscle mass and focusing that on a goal of being just stronger with more leaf?

SPEAKER_02 2:22

You know, well, the more muscle mass you have, and we're not talking about big, bulky muscles like bodybuilder. We're just talking about muscle in the human body. And the stronger you are and the more muscle you have, you're protecting things in your body. If you have a wreck and you have muscle, you're protecting your internal organs. If you trip and fall and you have muscle to protect these bones, it's less likely for you to break something, right? You gotta think of it as our turtle shell, it's protecting our soft insides.

SPEAKER_01 2:49

And but it's more than that. When you have lean muscle mass and you begin to build up more muscle, your body, your metabolism changes. Oh, absolutely. It deals with sugar differently, you can eat differently, your body recomposes itself.

SPEAKER_02 3:00

You're changing your overall body composition, right? Because the more muscle we have and the bigger the muscles, the more calories you burn. The more calories we burn, and you're managing your nutrition, the more fat you're gonna burn, right? And of course, if we burn fat and we have bigger muscles, we're gonna look different, right? Because there's a huge difference in body composition and then focusing on the scale, right? People focus on the scale too much and not body composition, and then it's not moving fast enough, is unmotivating, right? Everybody stepped on a scale and they've been dieting and dieting, and then the numbers didn't change, and they're like, Man, but I really don't prefer people to look at the scale. I'd rather you take pictures of yourself every two weeks or so and then look at them. And then over time you're gonna be able to look like, hey, my scale says I lost 10 pounds, but I'm a different human being. And that's what I want you to focus on because body composition is way more important. We've all seen someone that's weighed 120 pounds, and you're like, eh, but yet seen someone that's 180 pounds, which weighs significantly more, and they're like, Man, I want to look like that person, and that can go for females and males.

SPEAKER_01 4:02

And building strength versus cardio, what are the long-term benefits? People who build strength and train for a year tend to keep the weight off.

SPEAKER_02 4:10

Absolutely. Uh, we want to look at it as a marathon and not a sprint, right? We want to take that time and build good quality muscle, right? People generally don't get overweight or out of shape in a week or a month or sometimes even a year. It is a process and it takes significant time, right? You should think that it should take significant time to get in good quality shape because if you do these crash diets and you do these crazy things that people talk about all the time, then essentially it's not gonna last, or you're gonna deplete yourself of vitamins and nutritions that you absolutely need.

SPEAKER_01 4:46

And pet cardio, especially from the medical community, gets all the credit for heart health. What's that all about?

SPEAKER_02 4:51

Oh, it's just in that cardiovascular range where your heart's bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. You know, hearts and muscle too. It's working out. There is a little bit of difference when you're talking about something along those lines and lifting, but both of them are stimulating. If you're lifting heavy ass weights, especially when it comes to the deadlift and you're pushing, you can talk to most of my clients. Their heart rates are pounding, right? And sometimes we have to take a little minute to let it come back down. But the only difference is the length of time that heart is under stress versus the lift, but you're both stimulating, right? It's just with cardio versus muscle building, you're getting a little bit more benefit out of it.

SPEAKER_01 5:29

Your clients, I've heard you talk about this, but you get clients in the first week or two when they get started with you, and you actually tell them, like, don't worry about your diet, don't worry about cardio, like they they don't believe you. Tell me what you tell people.

SPEAKER_02 5:40

Essentially, what I tell people is I have this strong philosophy that people get very intimidated or people try to do too much at one time. For some people, that's very effective. For the majority of people, it is not. So essentially, what we do is when I come to somebody and I talk to them, I tell them right off the bat, look, it's like I'm not getting you abs, I'm not doing some of these things that other trainers are talking about. But what I am gonna do is I'm gonna get you strong, right? So by saying that statement right there, and as we get stronger, as long as they're eating and not trying to go on a crazy diet and they are getting their sleep and they're staying hydrated, they're gonna see their numbers improve, right? And as you see numbers improve, you feel more confident. When you feel more confident, you want to do more, you want to push yourself, right? So if I can get that client to switch that switch in their brain themselves versus me just, hey, you got to do this, you got to do this, and then potentially this is too hard for me, I can't do it, or have that self-doubt. They're able to do it themselves and it makes such a bigger impact on their life all around when they want to do it, when they want to reach out, right? Because they already took the first step by I need to do something, right? Just by doing that, now it's slowly turning, right? You don't want it to turn the opposite direction by obliterating them, or you don't want to work them out so hard as like I can't move, I'm so sore, I hate this, or it's like I don't want to diet because my friends are doing this and this. So if you allow them to do it themselves and allow to take time and show them if they just start here, then what are they gonna do when they finally flip that switch and they don't want to do it in themselves?

SPEAKER_01 7:18

And you explain sometimes that the what you try to accomplish in strength training and what your clients do with you. So you're trying to get your brain to signal to your body that it needs to build muscle. And to do that is a very different set of circumstances than what somebody who does cardio does. Explain how that works, like why what people don't understand the connection of how muscle gets built and strength trains. We're stimulating your muscle growth, right?

SPEAKER_02 7:39

By overloading it, right? And when we do, we create these micro tears, and then essentially your body repairs it as it repairs it, it builds a muscle, and that's essentially what muscle is for the most part. Yeah. When we look at strength training versus cardio, so when you do cardio and you're hammering out cardio, right? The moment you stop cardio, you're done, right? You're not really burning calories anymore, you're not doing anything, depending on how hard and fast he ran. You could be stressing your body to the point where it is hurting itself, right? Because if you run so much you don't have the equivalent of calories, your body's going to want to eat itself when you run, right? Versus strength training, where we slow everything down, right? When we slow everything down and we're stimulating the muscles, stimulating the body, you have that rest period in between, right? So that way we're not forcing the body to the point where it feels like it needs to eat itself. And then once you've torn the fibers from strength training, getting that proper sleep is super important because that's when we're gonna recover, right? You have to rest, you have to recover, and that's why when I strength train, I'm also emphasize on taking one day a week. And unless you're wanting to go walk, do nothing, shut off your brain, right? Do something to the point where you are mindless if you play video games, do something where you can just completely shut off your brain and escape from the world and let everything balance back out.

SPEAKER_01 9:01

Because the goal is longevity, not just to burn calories and lose weight.

SPEAKER_02 9:05

Absolutely, right? So longevity is what I focus on, right? Better quality of life. Right now, there's nothing on the market that's just absolutely gonna lengthen your life more than just lifting weights, watching your nutrition, getting your water and recovery. And it is super cheap, right? For the most part, right? Depending on if you get really into it and you want to progress into a different style of training or maybe competitive training in some sort of manner. But for the most part, people can build a home gym, people can get personal trainers, and then essentially that is not going to be as expensive as the medical bills you will eventually pay from not doing it.

SPEAKER_01 9:43

Well, so it's also not true that we need strength training. You do need to do some cardio and get some heart health, but you always tell people to do what? What's your preferred method of cardio?

SPEAKER_02 9:51

My preferred method of cardio is absolutely getting your steps in and walking on an incline on a treadmill, but walking outside. If the weather's nice and you have a wonderful trail, it's just good for the soul, right? We got to look at everything, not just our muscles. You gotta look at your mind, you gotta look at how you feel as a person, right? And sometimes, just like the weights, life can be super heavy. Finding those little outlets that you can pair what you love and being able to work on your body is absolutely one of the best medicines I could prescribe. So the ideal kind of recipe for somebody to start might be two days of strength training with a coat and 10,000 steps a day or 10,000 steps a day, absolutely, especially when you're looking at somebody that isn't necessarily focusing on dieting, but they are wanting to reduce their calories, right? If they haven't really reduced their calories, they can do a minimum reduction and then get their 10,000 steps a day. And then that way you're looking at an overall reduction because as we all know, it takes 3,500 calories to lose a pound of fat. If you walk 250 or 10,000 steps, that's 250 calories. When you pair that over seven days, that's 3,500 calories. Bam, that's a pound of fat.

SPEAKER_01 10:59

That's a just simple tension. That's easy. Anybody could do that.

SPEAKER_02 11:02

Anybody can do it. But you the thing of it is you have to want to do it because people will find excuses not to, and it happens all the time. If you don't focus on cardio as a health tool, if it benefits you mentally, then absolutely do anything that's gonna benefit you mentally. But don't think that, oh, I can just do cardio and skip weight training and I'm gonna be perfect and I don't need this, right? If you can find a way to pair the two, then you're gonna have a completely different experience all the way around.

SPEAKER_00 11:32

Thanks for listening to It's Supposed to Be Heavy with Jeremiah Blount. Train hard, recover well, stay capable, and remember aging is mandatory. Weakness is optional. See you next time.