When you’re on a mission to get into the best shape of your life like I am, you might be asking, should I do cardio along with weight training, or not?
I’ve heard the common memo that cardio is hated in the bodybuilding community. Well guess what, cardio can really help you get the results you want if you do it on a consistent basis. And no, I don’t mean getting on a bike or a stair machine or a treadmill for half an hour. Trust me, you would get bored really quickly. There’s more things you can do for cardio than just the boring stuff.
We’re going to take a look at what I personally do for cardio, and some of the other activities I would recommend you try so you can meet your cardiovascular quota.
- What Cardio Can Do for You: Cardio can have many different kinds of benefits for your long term health. And they come in many different forms.
- What I Do for Cardio: Not everyone has the same intentions or interests when it comes to cardio. Some people prefer running on a treadmill for half an hour. Others like to jump rope or swim laps. Me? I have my own activities that I like to do for cardio.
- What I Recommend to You:
What Can Cardio Do for You?
Cardio helps boost your endurance, your agility, your stamina, and it will also help shred off any unwanted layers of fat you may have on top of your muscles. If you want the big guns and not the flab, cardio will help you accomplish that, especially during shredding season. That’s when the fat really starts coming off!
I would personally recommend you do at least 2 cardio sessions per week if you want to work it in to your weight training routine. Especially during bulking season, that’s when you’ll be eating more! If you want to get bigger with muscle and not fat, make sure you get in your cardio! 2 times a week is essential. But I wouldn’t recommend more than 4 cardio sessions in a week, that would be overkill.
Are you ready to get toned and cut? You’ll have to put in some extra effort!
What Do I Do For Cardio?
- Boxing: If you’ve been following my blog for a while, you probably know that I have a huge passion for boxing. I have learned so much about the sport in these past few months and I can’t wait to learn more about it.
- Tae Bo: I’ve been doing Tae Bo since I was in grade 6, I would take about half an hour to an hour out of my day to follow along with a Tae Bo workout on VHS back in the day. At this day in age, VHS and VCR is a fossil. So you’d be better off finding all different kinds of Tae Bo workouts all over YouTube. There’s some good ones out there, you might enjoy them!
- Basketball: Playing basketball has also been a favorite activity for me to do growing up. When I was a kid, I loved mimicking the moves of my favorite players. Now that I’m older, I understand the mechanics and fundamentals of the game better and I practice those a lot for cardiovascular purposes.
Boxing
If you ask me, boxing is the ultimate cardio experience. You may have heard me say this about the sport before, but it is by far, the most intense training I have ever done in my life. It’s not even close.
Now, when I go to my local boxing academy for a session, I have no interest in trying to become the next Mayweather. I’m only doing it for the sake of getting in shape. It is, in my opinion, the best kind of cardio you’ll get. I say that because you’ll be doing basic exercises like jogging, sprinting, jumping jacks, and some other abdominal exercises with added resistance. When we train, we’ll use light dumbbells to add resistance to our exercises and our punches.
Tae Bo
Tae Bo has been one of my all-time favorite things to do for cardio since I was in grade 6. I used to have the old school VHS tapes of the original Tae Bo workouts at the time. Now with the rise of tech, I go to YouTube to follow along with my favorite Tae Bo workouts.
Tae Bo is very physically demanding and if you’re new to it, it is going to take everything you’ve got! Especially if you’re embarking on the 1 hour advanced workout! The pace is pretty quick to start out, but it’ll get faster and faster as you go until you get a brief cool-down. And then it’s on to the next exercise in the workout. Now, not all Tae Bo workouts are created equal. Some of them are more challenging than others.
So, is Tae Bo still effective even though it’s been around for so long? I would say yes! To me, it doesn’t matter if an exercise program is recent or ancient. What matters is if you get a good workout out of it. That’s what they’re for, right? Because it has definitely worked for me. And Billy Blanks, the creator of the program, is an amazing guy and an inspiration to me.
Basketball
Basketball makes great cardio, especially if you’re doing drills instead of just shooting the ball. If you’re doing drills like sprints or running plays, or practicing dribbling, that will really get your blood pumping. I certainly felt an adrenaline rush while doing basketball drills. Like I mentioned earlier, I used to love to mimic the moves of my favorite players growing up, like Michael Jordan or Kobe. Now I’m more focused on the fundamentals and trying to become a better player.
Now when I practice basketball drills, I have high hopes to play on a team in a rec league in the foreseeable future. If that becomes a reality, I’ll keep you posted.
On top of that, there will be some posts about what I know and what I learned about basketball coming down the pike. Stay tuned for them!
Lap Swimming
While I usually swim for leisure, I see a lot of people swimming laps in a lap pool. I have no intention of becoming the second coming to Michael Phelps. However, if you’re looking for a good cardio workout to boost your endurance and stamina, consider swimming laps in a lap pool.
Personally, I’m not keen on swimming laps in a lap pool, but I have done it before. From my experience, you would get about as good of a full body/cardio workout as you would if you did 1 hour of boxing. If you swim enough laps in a lap pool, you’ll really start to feel the burn in your arms and legs.
What Do I Recommend to You?
All of these activities are great exercise for you, when it comes to cardio. As for which one I would recommend? I would say it depends on what will work best for you, based on what your goals are and what you enjoy the most. So it’s really up to you. If you ask me, you can’t go wrong with any one of them. If you’re someone who prefers to unleash your strength on a punching bag, or if you’re more of a hoops guy, to each their own.
Personally, I’m big on the boxing, Tae Bo and basketball. Basketball has been my favorite team sport since I was a teenager, I’ve been doing Tae Bo since grade 6, and I’ve wanted to do boxing since I was a teenager. Now as an adult, I’m passionate about doing all 3 forms of cardio.
What Other Cardiovascular Activities Can You Do?
There are lots of other activities you can do to get in your cardio. Some of them can be more physically demanding than others, but they can all be beneficial to your cardiovascular health.
- BIKE RIDING: Riding a bike is a very popular choice for cardio. I’ve seen some people ride bikes for leisure, and others who ride bikes to boost their stamina and their endurance. A really good all-around activity to do for cardio. Personally, I’m “retired” from riding bikes, but I still use the bike machine at the gym on occasion.
- RUNNING AND JOGGING: Classic cardio. There’s so many different ways you can do this. You could run laps around a track, or you could time yourself while running from point A to point B using a stopwatch.
- JUMPING ROPE: You might have done this at some point when you were a kid. I know I did. What might just look like a fun little activity for kids actually makes great cardio. I’ve seen guys in the gym jumping rope. It helps improve your agility as well as your stamina. There’s different variations you can do, like forward, backward, crisscross, and skipping rope.
- JUMPING JACKS: One of the most classic forms of cardio. A really great way to get yourself warm and loose.
- HIIT TRAINING: High Intensity Interval Training, or HIIT, is exactly as it sounds. It can be applied to just about every cardio workout imaginable. Take just about everything you do for cardio, only at a much higher intensity. You’re probably going to be melting like a popsicle on a hot summer day. In other words, you will be drenched in sweat from working your tail off.
- DANCE: Different forms of dance can make great cardio, like ballet, tap dancing, and hula hoops.
- OTHER ORGANIZED SPORTS: If basketball, like I mentioned above, isn’t your sport, you might consider other organized sports like baseball, football, soccer, rugby, or tennis.
Important Things to Remember
- Control Your Breathing: While doing any kind of cardio exercise, it is critically important that you control your breathing at all times. If you control your breathing, you’ll be able to do the exercise for longer periods of time. Meaning, it will help improve your stamina. The worst thing that could happen is if you drop like a fly gasping for air just 5 minutes into your workout because your breathing wasn’t controlled. So you have to control your breathing. I used to struggle with that when I was a kid. I’m getting better at it as I’m getting older, but I’m still a work in progress.
- Engage Your Core: You’ve probably heard this phrase at some point in your life. If you’re enduring any kind of physical activity, it would almost sound like a cliché. But it is indeed very important In my experience, keeping the core engaged helps accomplish 2 things. Firstly, a strong core helps to keep you more stable and more in control. Secondly, having a strong core and abs will also help support your lower back and improve your posture. If you have a weak core, your back will overcompensate which will lead to back pain. In the long term, you could risk getting a hernia. My dad had one once and I believe he had to get surgery. Not good.
It takes practice, and trial and error. But if I can do it, so can you!
Closing Words
I hope you learned some helpful tips on how you can incorporate cardio into your bodybuilding routine! Tell me, what do you do for cardio? Do you have any recommendations for me? Tell me in the comments below!
So the answer to whether or not you should do cardio simultaneously with your bodybuilding is, it varies from person to person. What might work for one person might not work for another. Everyone is different. We have different body types, different goals, as well as different advantages and challenges too. So depending on what you want to accomplish in your fitness journey, there is no right or wrong way to go. It’s simply doing what works best for you. As long as you do everything with proper form, you will be very satisfied with the reward that lies ahead.
Good luck with your exercise, and GO INTO BATTLE!