WHoever says Cardio is useless must either be really skinny or really fat, but the page isn't quite loading for me.

Cardio's extremely important and if you don't agree, you must be new. It's especially important if you're training for aesthetics and more important if you're trianing for performance.

Sure, long slow distance burns fat and may break down muscle - but that's what sprints are for! Burn that fat, build that muscle. It's just too hard on your body to do it too often, so I mix it up. 2x a week Long, 2x a week Sprint, other stuff on other days.

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I got a little off topic in my post but everything I said was fact. Look it up.[/quote]

You should be giving us YOUR facts

The title made me lol hard - stupidest proposition ever.

ok i looked it up. i don't know where to start...
..okay! first of all, just over do anything and you'll use part of your body of course (construction guys have back problems. computer poeple having wrist problems. artist having fingers arthirt problem and it go on.) so of course runners don't escape that and they can harm themselves by doing sum over trainning in order to get to their performance goals. it happens its their choice.
overdoing stretching is dangerous you are right. o wait i said OVER stratching right... not doing stretching at all will first limit your natural range of muscle as you get older and it has been proven taht a good stratching plan is helping the apparence of the muscle soz the muscle acid/blood stream system.

i know people can harm themselves easly. i am at my job at the moment (shit ass long day, its rainy, anyways!) which is a gym. i look at people runing on the treadmill right now: 3 lady walking for the past 2 hours: no results and the one's running's running way too fast and not properly. ill go tell 'em but this is way common situation.

that's my point on that.

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Girls just plays groupies, so i gotta play rockstar.

-Some guy named Mystery

Do you HIIT cardio , people!!

Seriously haha. This could be the most idiotic debate I have ever read. Cardio has no benefits? Really? If that's what you think I'm not even going to argue because if you seriously think cardio is crap then you must be stubborn and won't believe anything any of us say so I won't bother. Anyone who argues against it probably has never really dedicated themselves to exercise and knows nothing.

And that's that.

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"The society that separates scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools." - Thucydides

Seize the day with love

Sometimes you succeed, and sometimes you learn.

second that.

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Girls just plays groupies, so i gotta play rockstar.

-Some guy named Mystery

Thirded.

Because it needs done

The Body by Science book is very interesting. There's a recurring theme in it: pre-selection. Most people seem to agree that cardio helps to raise metabolic rates, however this book suggests that it is in fact the other way around, that is, people with high metabolisms move a lot more.

I'm thoroughly perplexed by the argument. Based on RVAIS' testimonial, I'm inclined to think that there must be something to the theory.

In fact, the book speaks to how steady-state exercise can actually contribute to muscle loss. This theory also makes some sense to me, although I'm not entirely convinced just yet.

It does seem as though non-steady-state cardio may or may not help, but would not hurt. Is this a fair assessment?

I didn't read the full blog of this but I've gone through the same thing. I used to alternate between the cross trainer, biking, and running for one hour every day, 7 day's a week.
And I saw no results whatsoever.
You need to have a good diet, and by that I mean metabolism aswell. I've got a few friends with high metabolism and they eat all types of fast food every day and they are skinny as shiit and do no workouts at all (they are not muscular though).
I used to eat like 3 big meals a day, now I'm eating more meals a deal at a smaller portion because I read that is how higher metabolism can be achieved?

Anyways I'm not sure the whole point of that blog because I didn't read it all but I thought I'd put up my own thoughts/experience on the subject...

Isn't weight loss/fat loss all about creating a deficit between the calories you take in and the total calories you need to maintain your current weight? Cardio is one way to create the deficit, and dieting another. They work best in conjunction (I've lost about 30 lbs in under three months by cutting down on what I eat and running on the treadmill for 2-3 miles each day) but yeah, obviously if you gorge yourself on high calorie foods after your workout, it isn't going to do much for you.

I'm a third year medical student, and I'm quite active in sports and at a local gym.

As for as loosing weight goes, Cardio isn't great. It's not bad, and in most cases its better than nothing. The reason why it isn't as great as people think is as follows:

Cardio consumes energy (glucose, glycogen and fat) in order to move. It tries to do this as efficiently as possible. A result of lots of cardio excecise is a loss in muscle mass. Look at the marathon runners. How many bulky guys do you see? None.

The muscle loss is detrimental to loosing fat (notice I didn't say weight) however, because muscles increase metabolism. More muscles = higher resting energy consumption. I read somewhere that 1 pound of muscle consumes an extra 50 cals per day.

So weight lifting (which adds muscle) is much better than cardio because it
a) burns fat
b) GAINS muscle

compared to cardio which
a) burns fat
b) LOSES muscle.

I can go into more detail, but that is quite frankly irrelevant. Cardio is good for loosing weight, weights/HIT is (much) better.

Yours,

Nim

Nim,

Thanks so much for clearing that up.

Reading into what you're saying then, cardio does help to lose weight, but some of that weight will be muscle weight, and muscle helps you to lose fat. Cardio seems like a short-sided weight loss solution--or have I completely missed what you're saying?

Jpow