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High-intensity cardio after weights can suppress protein synthesis and spike cortisol, potentially hurting muscle growth. Low-to-moderate intensity cardio doesn't cause these problems, so you can do both without sacrificing gains.
High-intensity cardio after weights can suppress protein synthesis and spike cortisol, potentially hurting muscle growth. Low-to-moderate intensity cardio doesn't cause these problems, so you can do both without sacrificing gains.
Doing cardio after your workout kills your gains. You've probably heard some butt sniffer on the internet tell you that before, but is it actually true? Let me explain. There are 3 ways that cardio would kill your gains. The first way is when your body gets done lifting weights, it starts to try to recover from your workout and do something called muscle protein synthesis. When you do cardio right after your workout, it is believed to stop muscle protein synthesis. The second reason, your muscles' main source of energy is something called glycogen, and it's believed that doing cardio after your workout would deplete your glycogen, which means your muscles won't have energy to recover. And number 3 is because of everybody's favorite word right now, cortisol. Doing cardio after your workout is believed to increase your cortisol, which would make it harder for you to build muscle. But here's what no one ever tells you, all of this might be true, but it's only when you're doing high-intensity intensity cardio, which is just any kind of cardio that gets your heart rate very elevated, versus if you do low to moderate intensity cardio where your heart rate doesn't get that high, you will have none of those negative side effects that we talked about, and you'll still be able to make all of the gains you want to.
