Dr. Clay Hyght: Do Your Damn Cardio

"How do I get rid of this?" the person asks as he grabs the excess fat around his midsection. It's by far the most common question I get.

Unfortunately, the answer to that question also happens to be the most ignored advice I've ever offered: "Do more cardio."

Nothing aggravates me more than a person asking for my advice, but not following it. It makes me want to quote Gunnery Sergeant Hartman in Full Metal Jacket: "Were you born a fat, slimy, scumbag, puke piece o' shit, Private Pyle, or did you have to work on it?"

If your diet is in check and your training program is squared away, then how in the hell else do you think you can burn more fat? Is the Fat Fairy going to wave her lipolysis wand and make you lean?

I know what some of you are about to say: "Won't I burn muscle?" To paraphrase Sgt. Hartman: "That's right. Don't make any ****ing effort. If God wanted you to be lean he would have miracled that fat off your ass, wouldn't he?"

The fact is, most people don't have what it takes to diet so hard and do so much cardio that they burn any muscle tissue at all, much less a measurable, noticeable amount. Let's review some basic exercise physiology:

The primary fuel for low-intensity exercise — aka steady-state cardio — is fat. The primary fuel for high-intensity exercise — weight training, intervals, and start-stop sports like basketball or hockey — is carbohydrate. Following high-intensity exercise, your body burns more fat than it otherwise would, thanks to EPOC — excess post-exercise oxygen consumption, more commonly referred to as the afterburn.

In neither circumstance is the protein stored in your muscles a significant fuel source.

Only under extreme deprivation does your body try to burn muscle to meet energy demands. And even then, there's an easy and painless way to give your body supplemental protein to use as energy: branched-chained amino acids. Tasty as it is, your body will gladly bypass your muscle tissue if there's an easier way to get what it needs.

But let's forget what I just said, and assume you're training so hard and dieting so seriously that your body has no choice but to burn some of your muscle for fuel. If I said you could get to 5% body fat, but at the cost of three ounces of muscle, wouldn't you take that tradeoff?

If not, then your problem may not be physiological, if you get my drift.

Two more excuses I hear more often than I'd like:

"But I already do cardio." Unless you're Dexter Jackson, you won't get ripped with 30 minutes of treadmill walking three times a week.

"Can't I just take fat burners?" Sure ... if you're already doing three hours a week of steady-state cardio, along with an hour of high-intensity intervals. Fat-burning supplements are not replacements for cardio.

My advice: If you're doing as much as you can with your diet and your strength training, and you still aren't as lean as you want to be, you need to stop looking for excuses and just do your damned cardio.


TC: Screw Overtraining

In all my years in the business, overtraining remains one of the main reasons...er, excuses, given as to why Johnny won't grow.

Sure, Johnny's an overachiever. He's so dedicated to building a big bad-ass body, so singularly minded in his goal, that his body hasn't grown a pound in 5 years. Oh yeah, it's overtraining.

To quote Senator Clay Davis from The Wire, "Sheeeeeeeeee-it."

I'm going to tell you two truths; two truths for the price of one:

1. I ain't never made love to an Aborigine woman.
2. I ain't never seen anyone overtrain on squats or deadlifts.

There's nothing to say about the first truth, but the second one? It may need some elucidatin'.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll admit it's easy to overtrain on curls, or triceps extensions, or anterior shoulder raises, etc. It's easy to beat the shit out of small muscles and it happens often because, frankly, it doesn't take much to work those muscles. A lot of guys can even carry on a conversation while doing them; maybe even complete Soduko puzzles at the same time.

But squats and deadlifts be different animals, Willis. They work the entire body. They hurt. They make the Tostitos you had for lunch want to see daylight again.

That's why people don't like them, that's why people don't do them. That's why virtually no one works hard enough. That's why nobody ever overtrains on squats and deadlifts. It's certainly possible, but it never happens.

I know what people a lot smarter than me say about the nervous system and not working to failure and heavens, put yer galooshes on before you go out in the rain, you silly boy, but the truth is, you gotta' hug the floor once in a while after a set.

You must tax the body to grow. If you do that every time you train, yeah, you may be overtraining. Otherwise, you're just jerking off, and half-heartedly at that.


The part about not being able to overtraining squats/deads I get. Wondering everyone else's thoughts cardio not canabalizing any muscle...