To Build Muscle Fastest Should I Avoid Cardio Workouts?
A typical dilemma for any active sportsmen who lifts weights and wants to gain muscle mass is that they know there goal to build muscle up conflicts with the fact that they do a lot of cardio-vascular work. How can someone like this doing a muscle building routine build muscle fastest whilst still doing cardio, indeed is it even possible?
Well often you will read that in order to build muscles fastest you should keep cardio workouts to a minimum. This is said because cardio training session do two major things that could possible restrict muscle building, namely: 1) burn heaps of calories 2) increase the rate of your metabolism. Not getting enough calories on board is the problem that is added too by both of these two things. This leads to the question of how many calories should I therefore be eating?
Well, to keep at the same weight every day you would be required to consume enough calories to cover the energy usage of your body as if it were resting (basal metabolic rate), then eat enough extra calories to provide energy for your workouts. If you want to add muscle mass on top of this then you have to add an extra 500 calories every day.
Can I work this number out?
Yes, there most definitely is and one way of figuring this out is by using the Katch-McArdle formula (BMR based on lean body weight). Here it is:
Men: BMR = 66 + (13.7 X wt in kg) + (5 X ht in cm) – (6.8 X age in years)
Women: BMR = 655 + (9.6 X wt in kg) + (1.8 X hght in cm) – (4.7 X age in years)
Once you have gotten this figure you should then multiply it by one of the following to allow for your daily activity levels:
Sedentary = BMR X 1.2 (desk job, little or no exercise)
Lightly active = BMR X 1.375 (sports/light exercise 1-3 days/wk)
Mod. active = BMR X 1.55 (moderate exercise/sports 3-5 days/wk)
Very active equals BMR X 1.725 (hard exercise/sports 6-7 days/wk)
Extr. active equals BMR X 1.{9 (hard daily exercise/sports & physical job or 2X day training, i}.e marathon, contest etc
So, should you be doing cardio and weights frequently then you should multiply this by at least 1.725. This amount will cover your daily energy needs. This amount then needs to be altered to suit your goals. Presuming it is muscle building, you would need to add at least a further 500 calories per day.
So, let’s say your final number is 3000 calories then you ought to be trying to eat 6 meals/day of 500 calories. To follow this strategy one snack or meal would be based around 11 gram coming from fat, 62 grams coming from carbohydrate and 37 grams coming from protein. This is calculated as so because one gram of fat equals 9 calories as opposed to one gram of protein or carbohydrate which is worth 4 grams.
Correct muscle building nutrition and working out your calorie needs like this is what is going to ensure you build muscles fastest, not any miracle new exercise!
