Cardio For Weight Training

Authored By Derek Beech

Last week my son brought some friends home after school
and while I was walking by his bedroom I overheard one of them
ask the group "What do you want to be when you get older"?

As I listened to their replies of – I want to be a politician, a
famous movie star, an athlete – I started to think about the
individuals whom I've met that have asked me how to
incorporate their calorie burning cardiovascular workouts in
with their weight training program.

Don't even ask me why I started to think about this, but the
one thing I realized just then was that there were a lot of
people whom probably wanted to know the same thing. So
I decided to write this article to help answer their questions.

First of all, if you are going to do cardio in order to warm up
for a weight training session, never, and I mean Never, Ever, do
more than 5 minutes prior to working out as it will tend to rob
your body of the precious (Muscle) energy which you are going
to need in order to force your muscles to work as hard as they
are capable of during your weight training session.

Second of all, you may want to know that a typical Cardiovascular
workout routine, coupled with weight training, generally consists
of about 20 minutes, 4X each week, conducted after your weight
training workout or on a different day altogether.

Third, you should never let your heart rate go over that of your
fat burning target heart rate zone ------ unless you are also
training for distance and/or endurance, in that case expect your
weight training progress to slow down. You just can't be a
serious bodybuilder/weightlifter as well as a long distance
runner. It won't work! You will eventually stop gaining
muscle mass because your body will become overworked

The Following formulas are a guide to your target heart rate zone

Fat Burning – your pulse per minute should be in the range of
(220 – age _____) X 65% (.65) = ___________

Cardiovascular conditioning – Your pulse per minute should
Be in the range of
(220 – age _____) X 85% (.85) = ___________

Fourth, remember that walking a mile will burn the same amount
of calories as running a mile. It's just that running it will
get it done faster.

So in closing, if your goal is fat loss as well as muscle gain,
it actually pays to slow down a little.

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