Thread: CV after high-intensity workout?

Hey guys,

For the past 5 months I've been working out at my Uni gym with great success, I've been eating right and getting enough rest and the results speak for themselves in terms of musscle gains.

However now that summer in fast approaching (in some cases it's already here) I am planning to start CV training aswell in order to get rid of excess body fat and generally look more 'cut'.

I currently work out on a Monday, Wednesday and a Friday and was just wondering is it benificial to go for a run after an intense weight workout or do the CV on my rest days (Tuesday, Thursday etc) as to prevent muscle loss?

Any help would be very much appreciated.

Cheers, Orrin

Orrin,

It really depends on how busy you are. There are several things you will need to do in order to get as ‘Cut’ or ‘Lean’ as you want to in preparation for the summer.

The first is to realise that your moving from a muscle building phase to a cutting phase. In order to build muscle you need to be in calorie surplus, but to cut you need to be in a calorie deficit. The implied task here is that you need to have a look at your nutrition and make sure your in a calorie deficit. Likewise, you also want to make sure your meals are small and evenly spread – the continual drip feeding of small meals will help prevent any muscle cannibalism.

Exemplar Diets spoken about frequently on the diet include the Dave Palumbo Diet, as well as the Anafit Diet;

http://fitforum.co.uk/showthread.php...it-Diet-Method

http://fitforum.co.uk/showthread.php...hlight=palumbo

THE MYTH IS THAT TO BURN FAT YOU NEED TO DO CV – YOU DON’T NEED TO DO ANY CV AT ALL IF YOUR NUTRITIONAL PLAN IS SPOT ON. The need to introduce CV should only be to break a plateau.

Secondly, the trick to loosing the fat, and keeping it off is to do it slow and steadily – aim for a calorie deficit of about 500kcal/ day (3500 per week = 1lb Fat). Much more than this will cause your body to think it is being starved and it won’t want to burn any fat. Eventually your body will become more efficient and used to the lowered calorific intake, and your BMR will reduce. To combat this, you can then look at further lowering you daily intake, or, upping your CV.

Hiit Training (Interval training) is proven to be a great way to shed unwanted poundage – the perks of HiiT training are that it requires very little time 20-30 minutes before you feel suitably savaged.

Alternatively, there is the more traditional approach of steady state CV at about 60-70% of your maximum heart rate. At this heart rate your body is optimally burning Fat. A large majority of people also undertake CV on an empty stomach (first thing in the morning) – although I am not advocating that, this legionnaire style approach works.

Thirdly – with the change in bulking to cutting you may also want to change your rep range in the gym. Move from the 6-8 rep range to 10-12, focus on good technique, and decrease your rest time between sets to 30-45 seconds. This will change your workout to much more of a circuit session. Don’t be worried about lowering your weights to compensate for this though. If your focussing on 4 second reps then your body will be doing a lot more work in your gym sessions than before – as such, you’ll burn more calories.

My advice …..(I’m not saying this is the right thing to do)

1. Check your nutritional plan is what it should be, use whey powder to supplement your diet but use it as a supplement not a replacement.
2. Make sure your protein levels are high enough to prevent muscle cannibalism – and make sure you never have much more than 40-50g of protein in one sitting.
3. Spread your meals evenly throughout the day – every 2 to 3 hours, and don’t forget to include your pre and post work out drinks in your nutritional intake
4. Instead of introducing CV after a weights session, do 2 at most 3 gentle sessions in the morning before breakfast. Your motivation levels will drop quickly if your in the gym for hours at a time
5. Don’t introduce more CV until you stop loosing weight. If you start of with 4 CV sets a week and 3 weights sessions a week, how are you going to push through a plateau when you get to one.
6. Move towards a rep range of 10-12 reps, with 30-45 secs between exercises. Take a towel, be prepared to sweat, and focus on technique.
7. Reward yourself along the way, and set discrete goals for you to meet to measure your progress – if you want to lose 5kg of fat, break it down into 5 1kg loses.. it’ll be more achievable
8. Don’t Focus on weight – focus on % fat. Get a pair of callipers (Mon Supps sell them cheaply).
9. Finally, listen to your body.

Personally I do my CV after every workout so Monday through to Friday (5 days a week) but that is because I dont get chance to do it at any other time!

I would definitely say that CV exercise has been pivotal to my weight loss over the three months of the cut and by adjusting the amount of cardio I do, has adjusted the amount I lose, and as my weight loss began to plateu I had to increase the cardio to keep shifting that fat!!!!!

I would say do what feels best for you. If you feel like a rest is needed completely then group it together with weights. However, if you feel that is all too much then do it on the Tuesday and Thursday that you are not weight training. The key is to do whatever you can to make strides forward without knackering yourself out because you have to enjoy what your doing or you wont sustain it!

Good luck mate.

as above i have always done slow intensity cardio (i mean power walking) after weights when looking to cut and it works for me (along with with proper diet)

i do c.v after my hardcore workouts. This is because my glycogen stores will be depleted from the weights and the body should resort to burning fat after this stage. well thats the idea anyway. and so far i can say its worked for me.
Keep it simple!

"as above i have always done slow intensity cardio (i mean power walking) after weights when looking to cut and it works for me (along with with proper diet)"
for about how long would your CV session be?
Thanks

i started at 20 mins built it up when i felt necessary went as high as 50 but this was the upper limit if im honest

If like me you have loads of free time at uni, instead of doing cardio straight after as doing weights, do it as soon as you wake up, before you eat.

Not only will you be using more fat as a fuel source to power through your cardio instead of carbs youve eaten throughout the day but it will also reallhy get your metabolism going for the rest of the day

During my cut, the cardio was built up from 10 minutes up to 40 minutes, just increasing it steadily each week!

The other perk to doing Cv at a seperate time to your weights session is that 2 exercise sets in one day (cv in morning, Weights inevening or vice versa) means your metabolism will be increased twice in one day, over all bruning more calories.