Build Muscle – How Much Cardio is Enough When Trying to Build Muscle

When your main goal is to build muscle, the workout program you choose to adopt needs to be altered so you can maximize this process.

In order to build muscle, you are going to have to spend a little more time doing muscle building activities such as weight training or kettleball training, thus this will decrease the amount of time you have left to do other activities that are more cardiovascular related.

But, what is the minimum amount of cardio that you can get away with while still maintaining good shape?

This is a concern that many of those in bodybuilding start to face.

Why You Need To Be Concerned With Cardio

While it may be tempted to avoid cardio altogether and just focus on strength activities, this is a big mistake. The issue here is that having a good cardiovascular system does have positive benefits such as enhanced blood flow (which then helps muscle tissues recover faster), a better capacity to tolerate longer sessions in the gym, and an increase in the fat burning enzymes in the body that help keep you lean.

If you hope to build muscle as quickly as possible but do not want to see a very large fat gain with this, I’d strongly advise keeping some cardio in there.

Cardio To Maintain Shape

That said, to maintain enough cardiovascular shape that you are not winded after climbing a set of stairs, you should aim to complete two to three twenty to thirty minute sessions each week. This is all it really takes to maintain some cardiovascular shape, as far as the heart is concerned.

Obviously if you are involved in athletic activities and are looking to make an improvement in your performance ability, you will need to perform more. BUT, this is assuming you just want to keep your heart healthy, help increase blood flow to the muscles, and make it so that when you do get back to doing more cardio (after you finish building muscle), you don’t have to start from scratch.

The intensity of this cardio does not need to be overly high either. A fast paced walk (say around four miles per hour) or peddling on the bike that gets the heart rate up is definitely enough.

Some people will choose to perform interval or sprint training as their means of cardio but this is definitely a more intense form and it could start to hinder your ability to build muscle.

So, take these points into consideration when coming up with your workout program to build muscle.

While you don’t need hours dedicated to cardio, getting on that bike or treadmill for a small amount of time will serve you very well on your road to gaining muscular weight.

Source by Shannon Clark

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