how much cardio does it take to burn muscle on gear?

[PolfaJelfa]

The good thing about having that much time is that you can make changes that are pretty much imperceptible to your diet and you can lose fat very slowly which will greatly help with muscle retention. You could probably drop cals by as little as 250 a day and see results. They won't be dramatic, but that is what you want. Obviously as you get closer to the end and as you get more sliced you will have to be more restrictive, I am a big fan of carb cycling myself.

I havent even goten to the dieting yet......im making a comeback to regain and go over my muscle mass of before. However....i am carying some bf from back when i took a leave from bbing. So now im doing a "swap". My weight is going up very very very slightly and sometimes none......while substituting lbs of muscle for fat.

After being off and malnurished ..not training for a suficient period of time..and then beign shut down and training with body wacked out.....once you put it back together....IM EXPLODING!

(system was out of wack.....unrecovered...etc....stress.. problems in life)
A while back before i came back here...i was training eating big and LOOSING MUSCLE and gaining fat. System was stressed out with cortisol from stress in life, system was shut down and never recovered because of circumstances, etc. a bad time altogether. Yet i eventually bounced back and was lifting again....it was very depressing though...after a good training day..i went home and watched the muscles get soft and actually bruise up and SHRINK..Yet i continued...(i trained each bodypart 1 per 2 weeks due to the HORIBLE recovery rate)

Now my body is on track proper suplements, testosteroen levels, life straightened out= Nuclear Explosion of LBM

Watch out you mofos PJ is back! Give me 4-6 more months i will rebuild the structure! Give me 12 and i will build a temple!

 

[maldorf]

cardio is NOT the answer...this game is 80% diet bro.......re-evaluate your caloric intake and your bmr rate........

I have to agree here. Most of the competitive bodybuilders I know do not do any cardio at all, all diet and gear. To me an hour every day is too much, but everyone is different. I can go on a 45 minute slow paced walk each day and see great results. I think it would be important for you to keep the intensity of the cardio down, this burns more fat anyhow. So want to keep your heart rate in the target area of about 70% max.

 

[Meat_head]

Okay I got my bodyfat checked at the doctors today with the calipers. I don't know if this method is the accurate one I've never done this before...he measured folds in 4 or 5 places. It was 10.8%. I weighed 218 lbs today so I have put on 3lbs since the start of my cycle a little over 4 weeks ago. I feel much more lean though. I wish I had just got the BF checked in the begining so I could have kept track. Well I will from here on out. Hes a friend also that I talk to about gear and he told me if I keep cardio where I'm at I shouldn't run into a problem with muscle loss. I am in many activities in college and have alot of endurance so its not like I'm dying everyday on the treadmill, it sort of comes easy thats why I felt like I needed more in the first place. He also told me I'm not eating enough complex carbs. Thanks for the help everyone!

 

[Joe Stenson]

The body always uses a little of each for energy, but you will be burning mostly fat the 1st 45-60min, provided your heart rate stays in the right zone. Because you will start to burn more carbs than fat after around the 1hr mark, I dont see the point of doing cardio for more than 1hr at a time.

Unless of course you just want to burn extra calories. But when I do cardio I dont want to burn extra cals, I want to burn only fat.

The time when you are burning the highest % of fat calories to total calories is when you are sedentary. It follows then that the further you move from this state (walking slowly to walking briskly to jogging to running to sprinting) the lower this % becomes and the more carbs and protein start being used as fuel.

So why do cardio at all? Because you are simply not burning enough calories by sitting around. Fat is lost from being in a caloric deficit. The larger the deficit, the more weight lost. Assuming you remain in a positive nitrogen balance throughout, the majority of that weight loss should be from fat.

My point is this: cardio is done to burn calories. The type of calories burned is basically irrelevant. Now you don't want to run hard for 2 hours/day because it is simply too catabolic, but it is also not necessary to worry so much about staying in "the fat burning zone". That's the kind of $#@% that you read in muscle mags and has no logical basis behind it.

To further my point, let me use a short example. Take a guy with a maintenance calorie level of 3000 calories. Now let's say he does his 1 hour of cardio in the fat burning zone and burns 600 calories, 500 of which are from fat (numbers are made up). Now this guy also consumes 3600 calories for the day. He continues this regime for a period of a few weeks. Is he going to lose much fat? No. Why? Because he's not in a CALORIC deficit. The fact that he's burning fat calories doesn't mean much if he's avoiding the simple laws of thermodynamics.

Note: In the above example, it IS possible that the guy is making body composition changes, ie. losing fat and gaining muscle. However, this depends tremendously on diet...and drugs help too. Your average joe is not going to be doing this and from a strictly fat loss point of view, he's just spinning his wheels.

 

[Outtlaw]

The time when you are burning the highest % of fat calories to total calories is when you are sedentary. It follows then that the further you move from this state (walking slowly to walking briskly to jogging to running to sprinting) the lower this % becomes and the more carbs and protein start being used as fuel.

So why do cardio at all? Because you are simply not burning enough calories by sitting around. Fat is lost from being in a caloric deficit. The larger the deficit, the more weight lost. Assuming you remain in a positive nitrogen balance throughout, the majority of that weight loss should be from fat.

My point is this: cardio is done to burn calories. The type of calories burned is basically irrelevant. Now you don't want to run hard for 2 hours/day because it is simply too catabolic, but it is also not necessary to worry so much about staying in "the fat burning zone". That's the kind of $#@% that you read in muscle mags and has no logical basis behind it.

To further my point, let me use a short example. Take a guy with a maintenance calorie level of 3000 calories. Now let's say he does his 1 hour of cardio in the fat burning zone and burns 600 calories, 500 of which are from fat (numbers are made up). Now this guy also consumes 3600 calories for the day. He continues this regime for a period of a few weeks. Is he going to lose much fat? No. Why? Because he's not in a CALORIC deficit. The fact that he's burning fat calories doesn't mean much if he's avoiding the simple laws of thermodynamics.

Note: In the above example, it IS possible that the guy is making body composition changes, ie. losing fat and gaining muscle. However, this depends tremendously on diet...and drugs help too. Your average joe is not going to be doing this and from a strictly fat loss point of view, he's just spinning his wheels.

Cardio is not an excuse or exception for diet. We all know that. You've said nothing new that we didnt already know. The fact is that the body needs oxygen to burn fat. So when you create an oxygen deficite by running for example.. Yes, you will perhaps burn more calories, but those calories will consist mostly of carbs. If your diet is on point, you shouldnt want or need to burn carbs. At least I know I wouldnt, not when bodybuilding, because if your body takes enerygy from your other sources, it's gonna come out of your muscle ie: glycogen stores and protein. The last thing you want when trying to build muscle is to take nutrients and energy away from it.

 

[silverbackn]

I havent even goten to the dieting yet......im making a comeback to regain and go over my muscle mass of before. However....i am carying some bf from back when i took a leave from bbing. So now im doing a "swap". My weight is going up very very very slightly and sometimes none......while substituting lbs of muscle for fat.

After being off and malnurished ..not training for a suficient period of time..and then beign shut down and training with body wacked out.....once you put it back together....IM EXPLODING!

(system was out of wack.....unrecovered...etc....stress.. problems in life)
A while back before i came back here...i was training eating big and LOOSING MUSCLE and gaining fat. System was stressed out with cortisol from stress in life, system was shut down and never recovered because of circumstances, etc. a bad time altogether. Yet i eventually bounced back and was lifting again....it was very depressing though...after a good training day..i went home and watched the muscles get soft and actually bruise up and SHRINK..Yet i continued...(i trained each bodypart 1 per 2 weeks due to the HORIBLE recovery rate)

Now my body is on track proper suplements, testosteroen levels, life straightened out= Nuclear Explosion of LBM

Watch out you mofos PJ is back! Give me 4-6 more months i will rebuild the structure! Give me 12 and i will build a temple!

Glad to hear you are back on track bro! Stress will definitely kill you in the gym and all other endeavors of life. Keep us posted on your progress, if you build the temple they will come!

 

[silverbackn]

I personally am a fan of higher intensity cardio, it will stimulate your muscle mass much more than walking on a treadmill for 45 minutes. Due to EPOC your body will burn calories all day trying to get back to a normal respiration rate, this is the same reason that weight training stokes your metabolism much more than low intensity cardio. When you do high intensity you only need 15-25 minutes instead of 45-60. To me there is no comparison, we are all different though.

 

[Joe Stenson]

The fact is that the body needs oxygen to burn fat. So when you create an oxygen deficite by running for example.. Yes, you will perhaps burn more calories, but those calories will consist mostly of carbs.

Take my above example again and this time have him decrease the duration of the cardio a bit (to avoid catabolism), but increase the pace. Now he burns 800 total calories, but only 300 fat calories. He still eats 3600 calories and his maintenance is 3000 calories. Now he has created a caloric deficit of 200 calories/day or 1400 calories/week. In which situation did this person lose more fat? The answer, of course, is in this most recent one because he's now in a caloric deficit. Note he actually burned LESS calories from fat, but he burned more total calories: that is the key.

 

[Joe Stenson]

I personally am a fan of higher intensity cardio, it will stimulate your muscle mass much more than walking on a treadmill for 45 minutes. Due to EPOC your body will burn calories all day trying to get back to a normal respiration rate, this is the same reason that weight training stokes your metabolism much more than low intensity cardio. When you do high intensity you only need 15-25 minutes instead of 45-60. To me there is no comparison, we are all different though.

I'm with you, but you've got to remember that high-intensity cardio requires more recovery time. I could probably walk on the treadmill for an hour every day with no ill effects, but if I did high-intensity cardio 7 days/week I'd definitely be overtrained.

 

[silverbackn]

All this BS about what calories you're burning is ridiculous. There is no such thing as your body only burning fat calories or only burning stored glycogen based on your relative intensity. Work hard and you will get leaner, it's really very simple. By the way, I am do have a degree in exercise science and am a CSCS through the NSCA. I am well versed in physiology and this is one area that is way overstressed. This is the last thing I will say, look at a sprinters build (high intensity, anaerobic in nature) and look at a distance runners build (slow, repetitive, aerobic). Obviously there are other factors that influence how they look, but it is a glaring example.