Foundation One--extra work

First off, I just got foundation one the other day and I cannot stress enough how pleased I am with this course! Yesterday I tried the mastery levels for all of the first level exercises, and was able to complete all but two of them, but WOW am I ever sore now. It was both a humbling and exciting experience, because now I realize how much improvement I will make with this course.

  That being said, I do have a couple of quick questions. I'm going to sound like a broken record now, because I know I've asked about cardio before (several times, even), but I feel that the question of adding cardio has become relevant again now that I am doing foundation one. Before now I was doing much more cardio than strength just because I was not making much progress strength-wise and had no idea how to remedy this. Now that I have foundation one, with all the work spelled out for me, I am once again wondering how often, and what type of cardio I should be doing.

  My number one goal is to get stronger. Period. However, I've found that cardio is important for most if not all martial arts, and I feel I need to continue doing it. I want to know how to implement cardio without causing too much disruption to my strength gains. I usually do HIIT with burpees or battling ropes and I was thinking about 300 meter sprints as well. I was wondering about the experiences that others have had with cardio. If I wanted to do the 4-day per week foundation schedule, how often should I be doing cardio? As always, any replies are appreciated, and I also promise this is the last time I will post a brand-new topic about cardio. Thanks guys

Erin said:

First off, I just got foundation one the other day and I cannot stress enough how pleased I am with this course! Yesterday I tried the mastery levels for all of the first level exercises, and was able to complete all but two of them, but WOW am I ever sore now. It was both a humbling and exciting experience, because now I realize how much improvement I will make with this course.

  That being said, I do have a couple of quick questions. I'm going to sound like a broken record now, because I know I've asked about cardio before (several times, even), but I feel that the question of adding cardio has become relevant again now that I am doing foundation one. Before now I was doing much more cardio than strength just because I was not making much progress strength-wise and had no idea how to remedy this. Now that I have foundation one, with all the work spelled out for me, I am once again wondering how often, and what type of cardio I should be doing.

  My number one goal is to get stronger. Period. However, I've found that cardio is important for most if not all martial arts, and I feel I need to continue doing it. I want to know how to implement cardio without causing too much disruption to my strength gains. I usually do HIIT with burpees or battling ropes and I was thinking about 300 meter sprints as well. I was wondering about the experiences that others have had with cardio. If I wanted to do the 4-day per week foundation schedule, how often should I be doing cardio? As always, any replies are appreciated, and I also promise this is the last time I will post a brand-new topic about cardio. Thanks guys

I'd do cardio after F1 on the two days you don't do SLS work. That should be enough to support good cardiovascular health, but no so much that it interferes with your recovery. 

You can do HIIT work after any foundation workout.  You could also do Low intensity on the days you have off.  If you can recover, then doing HIIT 4 days a week after foundation shouldn't be a problem.  If you find recovery is sluggish then do what Hari said and limit to two days.  You might find HIIT easier on one day or the other depending on what type you do.  Adjust it based on how you feel.

Thanks for the quick replies, you two! I'm going to try HIIT after each workout and see how that goes.

Erin said:

Thanks for the quick replies, you two! I'm going to try HIIT after each workout and see how that goes.

Quick question, how many times per week are you working out? 4?

If so I would start at 2 days and work from there. As you said, you just started the program, so I would recommend to ramp up slowly