Building Muscle! How Much Cardio Should I do?

For the person trying to build muscle mass, should I do cardio? And how much cardio is too much when trying build muscle mass?

Yes you can still do cardio.

Have you ever heard about burning off hard earned muscle if doing too much cardio? Here's the truth. Yes your body very well could start using its own muscle tissue as an energy source causing you to lose muscle mass. But do you realize how small and frail you would have to be before that took place?

In other words, if you had hardly any body fat to your frame, and you trained at high intensity several days a week, then you might have a problem. This would be the person who should set cardio to a minimum.

In order for you to lose muscle from doing too much cardio, your body would have to be at such a low body fat percentage that the body had no other energy sources to choose from.

How much cardio is too much?

For mass building, 30 minutes of cardio done everyday or every other day will be fine.

You are here to build muscle and keep it, right? Train with weights every other day. On some of those off days, add cardio if you would like. That's it. Let's make this easy on ourselves.

Train hard WITH WEIGHTS for no longer than an hour every other day. Eat and eat often. Give those muscles a reason to grow.

You will know if cardio is a bad idea when mass building if you...

1. Have a hard time gaining weight.

2. Don't have much of an appetite, thus having too much of a calorie deficit.

We highly recommend Cardio and Weight lifting Common Questions for more information on how much cardio to do.

--------------------------------------------------

Cardio will not make you lose muscle mass unless you are at such a low body fat level, that your body begins to break down muscle tissue as an energy source. Most people won't have this problem.

It is very unlikely that would happen unless you barely ate anything and ran for hours a day. This is unlikely to happen and frankly just not worth thinking about. But it had to be addressed.

Find this page useful? Make sure to bookmark this site for easy access to all of the loads of muscle building information!

From: How Much Cardio. Back To: Muscle Building Articles

Muscle Building Home Page