Cardio and weight lifting are two of the main components of a balanced work out regimen. If you can, you should plan your work outs so that your cardio sessions are on days when you aren't performing any weight lifting at all. One of the main goals when planning your regimen and considering including cardio sessions should be to keep it at a light to moderate intensity. This way, the cardio will be a good addition to your training week instead of a hindrance.
If it is not possible to have your cardio solely on your off days, due to scheduling problems or you find you simply just require those off days to be completely off days, then you can do cardio and weight lifting on the same day. Be sure to note that your cardio should always be performed after lifting or in another session entirely. Also, if you can break the two workouts up by about four hours or more then you should.
Again, you should keep the cardio to moderate intensity maximally for best results. High intensity cardio training and a heavy weight lifting program is usually an unwise choice if you are looking to build muscle effectively. The high intensity cardio will really eat into your ability to recover and can confuse the body on what you're really trying to train for.
Another tip to allow you to successfully incorporate cardio and weight lifting into your workout regimens is to avoid interval training on the same day that you are planning on working on your legs. If you try to do high intensity interval training on the same day as you are focusing on your legs, you will find that you will quickly burn out. You will probably even be weaker and unable to perform.
Another helpful way to try to schedule your cardio and weight lifting is to make sure to get at least two solid meals in you before the second session. You should have gotten a relatively good start on your recovery after a few hours and be able to handle this fairly well. Make sure that your meal is high in protein and carbs in order to reestablish your creatine and phosphagen stores.
You will need to ensure that you are getting both muscular rest as well as central nervous system rest when doing this intense type of cardio and weight lifting combo. These two aspects of exercising are very important to your overall health and ability to perform and should not be overlooked. Muscular rest is basically the rest that the muscles themselves require in order to build and repair the tissues. The most common practice is to allow at least 48 hours of rest for this repair to take place. By giving your body 48 hours, you can help ensure that your muscles are fully rebuilt so you aren't just digging yourself further into an exhaustion hole by working it too frequently. The next type of recovery for fatigue is central nervous system recovery. This is the actual amount of time it takes the entire central nervous system to heal itself from the stress of weight lifting in general. If your central nervous system is not recovered but you still try to work out, you will find that you aren't as quick to react (slower reaction times are usually a very strong signal of poor central nervous system recovery), you may feel slightly off balanced, and you will also find that your strength is low or you are fatiguing earlier than normal even if you haven't worked that particular muscle group for the 48 hour time period.
To sum things up, you should use careful planning in order to accomplish a successful incorporation of the two very different work out styles mentioned above. When attempting to do both cardio and weight lifting you need to make sure that you are focusing on doing cardio after you do your weight lifting, leave a large gap between your regular weight training and your cardio session, eat two meals high in protein and carbs, avoid doing leg workouts on the same day as interval training, and also allowing your body sufficient time to rest because this intense workout will be very taxing.
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