Cardio helps you bulk as long as you eat enough to compensate?

[BlenderManDan]

I recently watched a YouTube video in which Rich Piana claims that doing cardio is actually good for bulking, provided you eat enough calories to make up for what you're burning. His rationale is that cardio helps to rev up your metabolism even more than lifting weights does by itself, so ASSUMING you eat enough to make up for the cardio, you'll gain even more muscle by lifting and doing cardio than you would just by lifting. Basically, his goal is to do anything he can to make that furnace burn hotter.

What do you think of this? I cut my teeth on Anthony Ellis's Gaining Mass program, so you can imagine that what Rich is saying sounds a little like heresy to me.

[Rav Sandhu]

I believe Dante actually echoes a similar sentiment, reasoning that it helps people get more food down due to the metabolic increase.

[BlenderManDan]

Sweet deal. Getting huge requires doing a lot of things that aren't necessarily good for overall health, so the idea that I might actually improve my gains by doing cardio, which does benefit overall health, is cool.

[firedawg0108]

but, on the contrary, theres lots of scientific evidence supporting that cardio hinders muscle growth and adaptations to weight training. Also, if you are training intensely enough, and hitting enough muscle groups, you can get a cardio-like response (increased heart rate, breathing rate, EPOC, etc) it just wont make you any better at running marathons of course. Unless you are the type of person that absolutely has to do cardio for fatloss or for a specific reason such as your sport or career, theres evidence that traditional cardio should be kept as far away from bulking and attempting to grow as much as possible.

[Ken "Skip" Hill]

As with anything else, you really just need to see how it works for you and evaluate. I think some people it works great for and others I still think it can benefit but sometimes not as much.

Personally, I believe in doing cardio in the off season but I am aware that there are some people that struggle to gain muscle by eating enough and for those people with already ridiculously fast metabolisms, it probably isn't a great idea.

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[mentalflex]

There are so many factors one has to look at. What if someone has a family history of cardiovascular disease? What if they have poor CV health themselves? What is their training program? What kind of cardio? How fast is their metabolism? Etc...etc...

I feel cardio is very beneficial in the offseason as one is often eating a lot of good and adding mass and cardio improves overall cardiovascular health and circulation.

With gaining weight often comes a rise in blood pressure and cardio can help reduce that.

If one is expending too many calories doing cardio I don't think it is all that hard to add a few tablespoons of olive oil or coconut oil to a few meals.

Additionally, with improved circulation comes increased oxygen to the muscles, which can facilitate recovery.

However, if doing cardio just wears someone down, it is probably a bad idea. It can be great for one person and detrimental to another.

Cardio can be as much as an inclined walk or walking outside a few times per week, and if done separately from the time one trains with weights I really doubt the impact on muscle gain will be of anything significant

[trucelt]

Good post Kris

[chasebny]

Cardio on your off days can also be a great time to get in some stretching,foam rolling, ab/calf/grip work, showering, whatever is lacking in your general routine or gets skipped after an intense workout. Plus, cardio is good for you.

Like everybody else said, it probably depends on your goals. If you aren't competitive, do you need to be cutting and bulking to hit your goals? Or is it a smarter life habit to get and stay in shape with some cardio?

[BlenderManDan]

I'm aware (vaguely) that there's scientific evidence supporting the idea that cardio can hinder strength/mass gains; however, I wonder if anyone has done a proper scientific test to see what happens when you add cardio AND an extra truckload of food to a heavy lifting regimen.

I love hiking and have always considered it a bit of a guilty pleasure when I'm trying to put on muscle, so if Rich is right, that's wonderful. We'll see what happens.

[NotHuman]

I like to do cardio every day for health. I'll even do HIIT every 3 days for optimal endurance. I like to be a well oiled machined and functional to.

[Ken "Skip" Hill]

I do not believe that cardio eats up muscle gains or muscle while dieting if you have even a relatively logical plan in place. If you are trying to stay really lean and only eating 200 calories over maintenance and doing cardio and don't see gains, yeah, that might be an issue but trust me when I say that 200 calories above maintenance is likely more of an obstacle to your gains than doing some cardio.

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