Thread: hard lifting and cardio - same day

do HIIT on non-weight training days for optimum results...

Hopefully one of the veterans here will weight in on this for you. In the interim I’ll give you my personal experiences. Since I am on a high fat reduction phase still, I personally do HIIT after every workout and on my “cardio” days (that’s 6 day’s per week for me) . I am losing fat rapidly and seem to be preserving lean mass (and gaining actually). Though I will admit to getting very fatigued late in the week and need every bit of Sunday to rest or just sit around reading. Apparent muscle size can change drastically just because you are not quite “topped off” with full glycogen stores if you are below sustainment levels on carbs. Unless you are seeing multiple strength drop off’s in your weight lifting routines (or fat calipers and scale suggest otherwise) I would attribute it to something like this (or even hydration levels) before I jumped to the conclusion I was losing lean body “tissue”. Let’s not forget that tissue is a part of the muscle but one of the bigger parts is are fluids (blood, water, glycogen) and how volumetrically efficient our tissues are.

Anyone else care to weigh in?

I see no problem with doing cardio on the same day as strength training but if you do cardio first thing in the morning make sure you train later in the day to avoid being fatigued.

If you're doing w8s and cardio together do cardio AFTER your w8s.

I can relate to what you're saying about your chest...my chest flattens when I start doing a fair amount of carido but you should realixe it's not muscle loss...what it is is decrease cell volumization from lower levels of hydration.

As long as you carb load or refeed regularly and take a break from cardio....also don't overdue the cardio /9max 5 days per week)...you should be fine.

As was mentionned if your strength starts declining rapidly then it's a good indicator of problems...either losing LBM, overtraining, too much cardio, dehydration, less than optimal nutrition, etc.

For now...if what you're doing is working...stick to it

thanks so much for the info - ill stick with it and work even harder!!!

im not sure if i understand...so does this mean as long as you drink more water then u did before u started doing cardio you wont start to get smaller? i understand the reason why u would get smaller..because the level of water in your muslces is smaller but will drinking more water preserve the water reserves in your muscles? or am i completly off haha.......see i play football and summer practice starts soon so i have to start doing more cardio...but i dont want to loose any mass (even though my primary goal by lifting weights is to get stronger not bigger...i still dont want to loose any mass i have gained)