I'm currently doing 1 hour of cardio every day (mostly just running on the treadmill for one hour) before I start hitting the weights (which also lasts around an hour).

My goal is to lose fat doing cardio while gaining muscle weight lifting.

My questions are:

Is there a limit as to how much running/cardio you should do in a day? Should I do my running/cardio before or after I hit the weights? The more cardio I do, the more I'll lose fat and gain muscle?

Thanks for the help.

The more cardio, the more calories you will burn, the more fat you will burn, the more muscle you wil burn.

LOL, I'm a total n00b. So I'm guessing that I'm doing it all wrong if I'm doing cardio and weightlifting at the same time?

Yes, you CAN do cardio and weight training as "part" of your routine.

If its the same day, then do it AFTER weight training (IMO), or you could just simply have it on a day you do not weight train.


Absolutely nothing wrong with cardio and weight training in a "plan".

If you want both......then fire up the "plan", baby!

Best regards,


Chillen

Think of this: Your body should be in a caloric deficit to lose weight. Your body should be in a caloric surplus to gain muscle. How are you going to acheive both?

People do both, but it's always a trade off. You can do much better if you are tryng to either lose weight or gain weight, than trying to acheive both. For beginners, losing wgt and gaining muscle is possible. Once you are past the beginner stage, it gets harder and harder.

So just keep that in mind. As far as cardio, keep it only 2-3 days. Focus more on weight training.

There's always a bit of a tradeoff when doing cardio and weightlifting together. Cardio will minimize fat losses from your calorie surplus, but might also limit the amount of calories which can go to build muscle.

Also, that is pretty impressive that you can do an entire hour of running! lol.

I can do two hours if I really pushed myself. Get some good music playing on my Ipod and I'm unstoppable. haha.

In all seriousness, I'm a big n00b when it comes to working out. By concentrating on losing weight, is that referred as "cutting" and is weightlifting and trying to gain muscle referred to as "bulking"?

Imagine how much more time efficient your cardio workout would be if you use the one hour of running to do something useful, like run to work, run home from work, run to the gym (so you can lift weights), run home from the gym...

becareful, makesure your diet is good and that your eating enough with running everyday your probably gonna have to eat quite abit especially if your doin it for an hour. i used to run everyday too and i lost alot of muscle probably cuz i wasnt eating enough. I know everyones different but it just seems like to me when i ran everyday i developed a runners body which if thats your goal than thats great but since im actually tryin to develop some muscle it didnt workout that well. The thing I learned the hard way but actually kind of funny is if I spend the same amt of time doin stairstepper or elliptical or something else besides running burning the same amt of cals i hold on to alot more muscle. I have a lot more muscle now than i did before and i still do cardio everyday just not running. Just something to think about I hope it helps.

I never thought of that until now. I'll start running to and from the gym from now on. It's about 30 min. away from my house running so that actually work quite well.

I can save some bus ticket money.

Not so much...

While it's true that if you perform cardio at too high an intensity for too long a period of time your body will utilize proteins derived from muscle, most cardio programs are not this extreme. If you are working at "fat-burning" levels, your body will rarely dip into protein reserves. And even HI-IT won't truly access protein reserves unless you are doing it for prolonged periods of time.

If you are trying to lose weight, 3 days of cardio is a minimum, and 6 days is ideal. You should give yourself at least one recovery day so that your body has a better opportunity for full recovery, and less chance of injury. And as it was already stated, if you are committed to building muscular strength on top of your fat loss, you should do your resistance training first, so that your body is fresh for the high intensity of resistance training, whereas "fat-burning" and even cardio-focused aerobic training is normally less muscular-intensive and not as strongly impacted by any fatigue that may be caused by weight training first.

There is nothing wrong with cardio and weights but you have to be careful you don't overdo the cardio and end up losing muscle. This guy is a good example but IMO he should have retained a bit of muscle.

To gain or lose the following are vital :-

* DIET (To lose eat at a deficit and to gain eat a surplus)
* Training (Weights and Cardio better than Cardio alone or Weights alone)

When you say not eating enough what would you recomend someone to eat to keep healthy for cardio everyday? I visit the gym 4 times a week and I do alot of weights but im quite fat to so im thinking of cutting then building.

It is possible to cut and still build strength at the same time, especially at the start of a training program.

As you consider your weight to be a bigger priority, I would worry more about reducing your caloric intake, coupled with your normal training program with cardio every day that you work out.

I'd utilize an online metabolic calculator (just Google it) to find your caloric baseline and set for an intake around 400-500 calories less than that.

First-off.....do your weights first, and then your cardio. Weight-training is very demanding, largely happens anaerobically and you want your full-juice to get the most out of your routine.

Having worked weights for an hour, your blood-sugar will be down and your body will more so be burning fat in an attempt to re-energize and put glucose into your blood: this is the time to do your cardio and tap into that fat-burn for weight-loss. I'm not sure I'd do more then 30-45 minutes of light to medium cardio....anything longer or more demanding could be catabolic and detrimental to your goals for weight-training.

I've easily gained a lot of muscle while also losing fat....the notion that you can't do both at the same time is wrong, at least for some people.

If your goal is to lose fat, then you want to do lots of cardio, watch your diet and in order to MAINTAIN your lean muscle mass, you want to keep a 2-3x per week weight-training routine. The idea being that you place a toll/load on your muscles so that your body, in coping with the calorie deficit, doesn't seek to shed some of that muscular burden (lighten the load per se). In this case you're not lifting very heavy....just keeping the muscles going with med/high reps and a medium load.

If your goal is to build muscle & get big, you'll want to keep your cardio to 30 minutes or less so as to avoid catabolism and you'll want to hit the weights heavy & hard. I know body-builders who outright refuse to do any cardio.

I was recently told by solid source that an hour of exercise only burns about one ounce of fat, whereas eating 500 less calories per day can burn 2 ounces of fat. Point is, it's easier to lose fat by diet then by exercise. I'm not sure I entirely subscribe to that notion, but the key thought is that diet is where it's really at...what goes in your mouth is the key. Ever heard the saying "Abs are made in the kitchen"?

Everybody's body is different...I've had no trouble getting large while also losing weight, but that may not be the case for many people. Some guys just can't stack-on muscle no matter how hard they try.

Question is, WHAT ARE YOUR GOALS? What kind of body to you want to have? Where are you at now and what's your priorities?