I Need To Know! (A Question About Cardio Types)

Ok, so I haven't posted in quite a while, but I've been training and not having great results as far as strength gains. I understand that it is a slow process in general, but I think some of my problem is the cardio I'm doing. I've just spent a little over an hour searching this site and other sites trying to learn more about HIIT cardio training. I've done it before, and I liked it, but lately I've taken to doing cardio straight through--not 30 minutes or anything like that, but Mon/Fri I end my strength workouts with 60 burpees in a row (my goal was to work up to 100 in a row), and on Tues/Thurs I've been doing 3 sets of battling ropes, 2 minutes per set (the goal was 3 sets of 5 minutes).

   What Ive been trying to find out is whether or not this is a good way to go about cardio, and I just need to know:

1. Which would cause the least loss of strength, HIIT or steady state cardio, and under which category does my current cardio fall?

2. Should cardio be done at the beginning or end of a strength workout (or on off days)? And if cardio is best done at the end of a workout, then what would be a good way to warm up? (Because I'm currently not doing anything to warm up and I'm starting to think it's kinda bad.)

My goals are more oriented around gaining strength, but I work as an MMA instructor and compete in grappling, so I do need some cardio work as well. I think HIIT would be good to do, but if it would cause slower strength gains, or decrease strength gains, I'm not sure if I should do it. Mostly I just want to know what kind of cardio training is best if you are also trying to gain/preserve strength.

Thanks for any replies! Like I said, I searched quite a bit on the internet and found a lot of conflicting info, so I wanted to get advice from a site I feel I can trust!

What body type are you?

Erin, I am not a gymnast, nor an MMA fighter and I have <10 posts here. So, I am the opposite of an expert.  But here is my response:

1. Your current cardio only takes a couple of minutes, so it should be fast and explosive like HIIT rather than steady state like marathon running. You can easier combine strength training with HIIT than with steady state cardio like marathon running. A good non-gymnast website discussing boxing/MMA and fitness is rosstraining.com.

2. There are different kinds of strength: max, speed, explosive, and endurance. I recommend against doing cardio before max strength training. You want to be fresh before you begin max strength training. No heavy training on off-days! F1 focuses on max strength for beginners. In general, I recommend that you buy F1, focus on F1, and then add additional fitness training (e.g, fast and explosive cardio, balance, flexibility) to F1 as you see fit. But if you want to compete in grappling or whatever, skill work should always come first.

I hope this helps.

alec_ar said:

What body type are you?

I have no idea. How many types are there? I know I'm not very lean, if that helps.

2

Erin said:

Ok, so I haven't posted in quite a while, but I've been training and not having great results as far as strength gains. I understand that it is a slow process in general, but I think some of my problem is the cardio I'm doing. I've just spent a little over an hour searching this site and other sites trying to learn more about HIIT cardio training. I've done it before, and I liked it, but lately I've taken to doing cardio straight through--not 30 minutes or anything like that, but Mon/Fri I end my strength workouts with 60 burpees in a row (my goal was to work up to 100 in a row), and on Tues/Thurs I've been doing 3 sets of battling ropes, 2 minutes per set (the goal was 3 sets of 5 minutes).

   What Ive been trying to find out is whether or not this is a good way to go about cardio, and I just need to know:

1. Which would cause the least loss of strength, HIIT or steady state cardio, and under which category does my current cardio fall?

 

2. Should cardio be done at the beginning or end of a strength workout (or on off days)? And if cardio is best done at the end of a workout, then what would be a good way to warm up? (Because I'm currently not doing anything to warm up and I'm starting to think it's kinda bad.)

 

My goals are more oriented around gaining strength, but I work as an MMA instructor and compete in grappling, so I do need some cardio work as well. I think HIIT would be good to do, but if it would cause slower strength gains, or decrease strength gains, I'm not sure if I should do it. Mostly I just want to know what kind of cardio training is best if you are also trying to gain/preserve strength.

 

Thanks for any replies! Like I said, I searched quite a bit on the internet and found a lot of conflicting info, so I wanted to get advice from a site I feel I can trust!

Ok, I do know grappling and like rolling (no-gi and not very skilled) and agree that having a cardio base helps. I think the burpees that you're doing are more of a steady state activity - but an intense one. And the ropes are more of an intermittent one, closer to HIIT. But I think both are helping your muscle endurance (a good thing) more than your cardio base.  Also, both are arms intensive (ropes more so) and recovery in time for GST may be an issue....  it's good that you are doing this after your GST workout though.

As far as which approach to use, steady state or HIIT, there is no reason to have an either-or mindset. It's useful to use both. Steady state should be 15-20 minutes of intense to 30-40 minutes of moderate exercise. For example, 15 minutes of skipping. 20 minutes of running (as fast as you can for 20 minutes 8 out of 10 difficulty). Or 40 minutes of bike riding @ 65-70% max.  It's ok to divide up into shorter 5-10 minute sections to recover a bit and continue. Done 3x week and gradually increasing the difficulty as you improve will build up your aerobic base.  

HIIT can also be used to build up your base, although it's typically to  a) ramp up quickly and B: add anaerobic conditioning. You could do something like double-unders or burpees as fast as you can for 30 seconds, then take a minute break. Make sureyour HR gets up to 90% of your maximum during the exercise (at least 9 out of 10 difficulty). If not, find a more challenging exercise.  Tabata used a bike I believe in his protocol (and also included 1x week steady state). Just set the resistance really high.  

So you might consider 

1) HIIT - 6 weeks to ramp up (30-60 second protocol)   3-4x week  (most effecitve for 6 weeks)

2) Steady state - 8 weeks to deepen base

3) HIIT - 3 weeks to top off with anaerobic conditioning( tabata protocol) 3x week + 1x week steady state  (anaerobic benefits accrue within 3 weeks)

4) Maintain 1-2x steady-state 1-2x HIIT per week  (2-3x week should be enough to maintain)

If you are able to recover, your strength shouldn't be affected. Make sure you are recovering though.

Note: Do be careful if you do HIIT on a treadmill.

Hey thanks for the answers guys! I think I will do what FutureisNow has suggested.

Just wanted to add that timing this can be tricky. 

I like Joel Jamieson's approach to timing the segments of training for MMA/boxing. So if you are planning to fight in a few months, you might just want emphasize conditioning for a few weeks, then focus more on skills and drills. If you're not competing anytime soon then you have the luxury of doing more conditioning and building a base, if you are lacking that.  Then just maintain it and emphaise strength, movement drills and skills. 

The bottom line is that the goal to have enough so that you're not gassing out in a 3 or 5 round fight.

You don't need a lot more aerobic conditioning than that, and too time on that concurrently may eventually get in the way of explosive strength especially. You'll have to adapt the general recommendation to your particular situation.

And if cardio is best done at the end of a workout, then what would be a good way to warm up? (Because I'm currently not doing anything to warm up and I'm starting to think it's kinda bad.)

 

Warming up will help you get more out of your workout and avoid injuries.  How much of what will depend on your fitness level and what you plan to do in your workout.  I wouldn't count it as cardio per se as the point isn't to really work the cardiovascular-respiratory system but rather to put your body into a good state to start the workout.  I'd say that there's 4 phases:

1) Organize yourself.  As in eat your pre-workout snack, set up all the equipment you'll need, put the right songs in the playlist, turn off the phone etc.  It makes no sense to pause your workout time and again to attend to these details in the middle.

2) Increase body temperature, increase HR.  The minimum would be about 5 minutes, but may be more like 20 depending on you and the day.  Skipping, rowing, jogging etc

3) Move through ROM.  Circles and swings of each joint. Try and do a survey of body to see how everything feels then go back over the tight/creaky spots and areas where you wantto improve

4) Mind Body- connections.  Fundamental strength positions, warm-up drills, review purpose of workout etc.

Dude! You're not exactly runnng a marathon.  I don't think you need to worry about losing your strength. If you're really concerned maybe try to keep your cardio after the strength session or even separated by a
few hours apart to make sure it doesn't interfere with your strength gains.  Make sure to keep hydrated and to eat healthy recovery food. Also consider doing leg-based like jogging or skipping or biking.

I seem to remember Coach commenting something about the Chinese weight-lifting team doing 20 minute recovery runs 3x/week.

Cardio, which is aerobic endurance training, is largely about what you eat. That is where a HUGE proportion of your improvements will come from.

You will not lose any strength at all if you simply eat as much extra food calories as you burn during cardio, and do your best to stay hydrated and well-fed around those times.

The higher the intensity, the more of those calories need to come from carbs.

You'll never want to get less than 50% of them from carbs, no matter what.

Erin said:

Ok, so I haven't posted in quite a while, but I've been training and not having great results as far as strength gains. I understand that it is a slow process in general, but I think some of my problem is the cardio I'm doing. I've just spent a little over an hour searching this site and other sites trying to learn more about HIIT cardio training. I've done it before, and I liked it, but lately I've taken to doing cardio straight through--not 30 minutes or anything like that, but Mon/Fri I end my strength workouts with 60 burpees in a row (my goal was to work up to 100 in a row), and on Tues/Thurs I've been doing 3 sets of battling ropes, 2 minutes per set (the goal was 3 sets of 5 minutes).

   What Ive been trying to find out is whether or not this is a good way to go about cardio, and I just need to know:

1. Which would cause the least loss of strength, HIIT or steady state cardio, and under which category does my current cardio fall?

 

2. Should cardio be done at the beginning or end of a strength workout (or on off days)? And if cardio is best done at the end of a workout, then what would be a good way to warm up? (Because I'm currently not doing anything to warm up and I'm starting to think it's kinda bad.)

 

My goals are more oriented around gaining strength, but I work as an MMA instructor and compete in grappling, so I do need some cardio work as well. I think HIIT would be good to do, but if it would cause slower strength gains, or decrease strength gains, I'm not sure if I should do it. Mostly I just want to know what kind of cardio training is best if you are also trying to gain/preserve strength.

 

Thanks for any replies! Like I said, I searched quite a bit on the internet and found a lot of conflicting info, so I wanted to get advice from a site I feel I can trust!

Hey, no matter how hard you push yourself you will not lose any strength from cardio. There was a study done of something like (not exact number) 12 (I know it was double digits though) marathons done back to back by the same group of people and they only lost muscle mass in their legs. This follows the accurate way we lose muscle mass by over training any body part. So you will not lose muscles in any part of your body as long as you take into consideration what you are doing. 

For instance don't do cardio such as running or sprinting on leg day, unless your leg workout is very limited to incorporate this. Don't do a full workout then cardio, as your muscles will already be tired.

Just my 2 cents. Cardio after a workout because you have tired muscles is just my opinion however the study I mentioned in the first paragraph can be accessed online by searching on google.

We typically focus on sprints and remove direct aerobic work. I believe you adapt to what you do so if you want to be an aerobic jogger than okay but if you are looking to be able to fight and push the pace of a long fight, we use a mixture of sprint or other HIT along with "chambers" sparring. This is where you will get another fighter for each minute and spar with them. Since they're fresh and you're not, you have to work a bit harder. During fight time it's easier. The other person is tired too. This approach has worked well. No one gasses out.

What Alex is talking about is very important for fight night, or game night, not only because you get prepared psychologically, but by focusing on the intervals you raise your lactate threshold. Lactate threshold is a much greater predictor of performance than VO2Max, because it represents the point at which you start to actually experience progressive aerobic fatigue.

The main advantage of steady-state work is that your heart contraction rate is slow enough, and peripheral resistance is low enough, to allow for full ventricular stretching. This allows your heart chamber volume to expand over time.

The advantage of this expansion is that, for any given level of fatigue or exertion, you will see a known increase or decrease in cardiac output over time. Cardiac output is stroke volume times heart rate, and represents how much blood actually moves through your body each minute.

If your chambers are larger, you require fewer heart beats per minute to move the same blood, which means your heart is getting more rest and is therefore not as close to its intrinsic metabolic limitations.

The interval training makes your heart stronger, so it can push the blood through muscles that are working harder, but the steady state stuff is what actually allows you to increase the amount of blood inside your heart during each heartbeat. It is extremely important to maintain a fairly steady heart rate, so formal exercise on something that has a very steady resistance is the best thing to do. I prefer a real bike on a magnetic trainer, but you can use anything that allows you to maintain a steady heart rate. You can do that on a real bike if you're good at gearing.

Does that make sense?

You don't have to work terribly hard to increase the volume, even 45 minutes @ ~130 BPM 4-5 days per week will give you something like a 10% increase in 8-12 weeks. That's huge, and it continues for a very, very long time before it plateaus out. Elite aerobic athletes have hearts that hold at least twice the blood volume, per beat, as anaerobic athletes, but that doesn't mean you can't have a very, very awesome blend of the two adaptations. They aren't mutually exclusive.

I would probably use non-impact aerobic work, like riding a bike, quite honestly, especially for heavy people like me, and save the impact work for the intervals. That way you don't over-work your leg tendons.

This requires a lot of time, 45 extra minutes per day, and a lot of extra food, so it's not for everyone, but if you're looking for true professional elitism then following what Alex has his clients do and adding in low- or no-impact steady state work (and the extra food to support it) will get you there.

That's not a knock on what Alex is doing, he's right on point. What he does is tried and true, and should be the primary basis for all interval sports, from football to MMA.

There is simply a way, for people who are interested in that extra edge, to add one more adaptation on top of this.

The ventricular dilation adaptation reverses quickly, reversal begins within 48 hours, so you need to do this at least every other day to maintain the majority of the adaptation. For making gains, 5-6 days per week with not more than 1 off day in a row is ideal.

Alex: I hear what you're saying but I think that becoming slow only is a big concern if someone exclusively trains slow.  And that's not how steady state is implemented. It typically precedes intervals, similar to the logic

of Foundation, it provides the conditioning for greater and more intense use of the muscles and joints in due time.

However, I know it isn't necessary or everyone. Smaller and lighter guys often don't

have as much need or concern . And of course if someone has been training a long time they can

sometimes pick up enough from just day in and day out training for hours and drills like you are doing. 

Josh: It makes sense. It's an adaptation that makes everything generally easier. I agree "lactate threshold" is an important indicator of performance. At the same time the more one can use their aerobic system, the more pyruvate can be made use of aerobically and the less lactate that will be generated. So developing both I agree is best.

Other adaptations from steady-steate on the o2 delivery side like greater blood volume is also worth mentioning.

Resting HR drops. Not to brag but mine has reset to about 48 bpm, and has been as low as 38 bpm - with just moderate training. Also there are even more benefits from increasing O2 uptake in the muscles, capillarization, enzymes, etc, so they last longer. I've seen both steady state and intervals claim that only they produce this effect, but by doing both one is sure to attain it. 

I am not familiar with loss of adaptations from detraining just a few days. I find that carry over occurs

with 3-5 days training. If I miss a few weeks, it's noticeable.  It's difficult to do as much to really gain

in all areas, ie strength, power , cardio endurance, muscle endurance at the same time, and I feel that's where periodization helps. But I haven't fully implemented this for myself either .... 

FiN, the loss BEGINS after a few days. Same goes for mitochondrial adapations (which interval training actually causes a faster adaptation in than submaximal aerobic work) to a more extreme degree: You lose a month's worth of adaptation in one week of inactivity. I do not know if ventricular reversal moves at the same rate, but probably not quite so quickly.

I think you are under-estimating just how important lactate threshold (LT) is, and interval training is the method of choice to maximize lactate threshold. LT is the single best predictor of aerobic performance, because it represents true submaximal limits, and essentially represents how well your body metabolizes lactate, the primary limiting byproduct in all submaximal aerobic performance.

You will not notice the day-to-day difference after 3-5 days, but it would show up on a max test.

As with everything else in the body, if you don't use it you lose it.

If a small guy who doesn't train intervals goes up against a small guy who does, the small guy who does the intervals will have a distinct advantage in a fight, "all other things being equal," but it is true that smaller bodies do seem to have less of an issue with this in practical settings. Nonetheless, in my opinion you are unfairly discounting the utility of what Alex does with his clients.

Yes intervals are an incredible conditioning tool. I'm not fully aware of what Alex is doing with clients. My personal

experience is that they can be a bit risky if not well prepared for them, so I have not been utilizing them

primarily. I am the reverse of you as I prefer the intervals on the bike/elliptical and steady state on the treadmill.

Aerobically intervals do give a bigger bump, but progress plateaus sooner than in steady state. For 

fight purposes that may be sufficient, especiallly with guys can't stand steady state. Generally

in terms of running, threshold runs (40 minutes @ lactate threshold level) is what I'm most familiar with. If intervals

can raise lactate concentration for long enough, I could see them working. The problem I can see is that they

oscillate it for a relatively short time, 15-20 minutes. 

There's a bit of a chicken and egg thing with lactate threshold. It's a better predictor of performance in aerobic events meaning at the top level, because most guys have similar vo2max's. Lactate threshold is expressed as a % of vo2max so it's one thing that seperates the top guys, and probably relates to much they can put into the last

mile of the race when the legs are really burning - their kick. (Or overall if it's a short event like a mile or 5K). MMA isn't running, or a completely aerobic event, but I agree LT is hugely important and especially in the arms.  

Also, lactate generation relates to how much O2 the muscles can use (venous vs arterial O2 concentration), not just deliver it (Vo2Max). If it's delivered but not used it's wasted, and more lactate will be generated. (HICT - high intensity continuous training - is one method that is quite different from either steady state or intervals, that Joel Jamieson recommends to fighters for this.  That said, most guys at the very top have pretty amazing everything. 

There was a great example of a guy with cardio and one that didn't on last night's Ultimate Fighter, Colin vs. Kevin.

It's impossible to know, without testing, what specifically Kevin Casey was missing - LT, VO2max (aerobic power) or aerobic capacity. The bottom line here  is that further testing if possible and further aerobic and LT training 

should be undertaken, if Kevin wants to succeed in the fight game.