Should I stop do cardio altogether?

[hellomycognomen]

Hello everyone, I'm sure most of you are familiar with cardio workouts and their effects on raising cortisol levels which in turn have been shown to facilitate the break down of muscle for glucose formation and also reducing androgen activity.

I typically do cardio workouts twice a day for one hour in addition to my strength training.

So, should I scrap the cardio routines altogether and instead replace them with a High Intensity Interval Training type session?

Look forward to reading your opinions.

Cheers.

PS The reason I do cardio is mostly to improve my cardiovascular conditioning and to burn up some calories. Yes I know that strength training burns more calories.

[Armykid93]

I'm guessing your goals are muscle gain and if so no you shouldn't scrap the cardio but you may want to decrease it. Twice a day at those amounts of time is a lot. Simply doing fasted cardio in the AM would be fine for you

[CMB]

Everyone should do cardio. It is essential for your body to stress your heart and lungs, for your health. If you keep the cardio relatively easy and just three times a week for 30 minutes this will do wonders for you.

[hellomycognomen]

Alright. Thanks.
I think I will substitute and do the HIIT workouts, with few limited cardio in between.
From what I was able to research it seems that the old steady state cardio routines are out and the HIIT type or plyo workouts are the way to go for better heart and lung conditioning and overall effectiveness.
I hope others can take something away from this.
Cheers fellow gym rats.

[Turkish Juicer]

Let's also not forget PWO cardio increases pace of recovery and allows for further growth.

[hellomycognomen]

PWO cardio, What would you recommend? Something like a 30min eliptical? Also wondering how it would help aid in recovery can you expand on the physiology behind it.

-Cheers

[Turkish Juicer]

PWO cardio, What would you recommend? Something like a 30min eliptical? Also wondering how it would help aid in recovery can you expand on the physiology behind it.

-Cheers

Frankly, any type of cardio PWO is beneficial for you.

I have done 30min elliptical PWO in the past and benefited from it, kept the bmp at about 140.

As for aid in recovery, well, your heart pumps a whole a lot of blood into the previously torn muscle fibers, which contains all the goodies including glucose, oxygen, RBC, amino acids and so forth that are necessary for the repairing of the tissue.