That is the question.
Recently I read how cardio can make you skinny fat and cardio is counterproductive to building muscle. My personal aim is cardio. When I only do it 3x/week, it feels like a cop out. I like Insanity (despite how hard it is) because it feels like both cardio and working my muscles. I do like running too. I think the amount of cardio I'm doing is fine. My bf thinks I should do less cardio and do more weights. I'm getting somewhat bony and some muscle padding would help alleviate that. Today, I saw I was to do Cardio Recovery on the Insanity schedule which is muscle strengthening and zero cardio. I was tempted to do a cardio dvd but figured some anaerobic exercise would do me good. My legs were sore. I sweated. I suppose it was a productive workout.
Anyway, I still don't think I'm doing too much cardio. To me, too much is doing cardio for long periods of time every day. At 45 mins-ish 3-5x/week, I think I'm good.
I'm going to run on a track on Wednesday. I'm pretty stoked. It's been years since I ran on one and I like it because it gives me a good gauge of my distance. I don't have anything fancy that measures my distance for me. I'm going to aim for 5km and see how my time is.
I can't believe I just saw this entry! I usually see all the links that are backtracked to my blog but this was missed. :(
ReplyDeleteAnyway I think long periods of steady-state cardio is not very beneficial AND a waste of time but the trick is do to high intensity training that mixes both cardio and weights (eg. lift weights and skip or do burpees in between sets).