Want to do more cardio but don't want to overtrain?

[Anonymous19900]

I am currently following a lifting plan where I go to the gym every other day for a full-body workout.

I want to introduce more cardio to increase my cardiovascular system, but I'm also concious of over-training or over-working my body.

Could I do cardio on my current rest days or would this be a bad idea? I would effectively have 0 rest days a week.

Or should I just do cardio on my weight-lifting days? This would allow me to maintain my usual rest days but I'm also concious this would lead to over-training on these days?

Looking for some advice.

Thanks

[rdferguson]

Depends on how you approach cardio.

Light cardio eg going for a walk, or hopping on a bike/cross-trainer and going at a steady pace (~60% MHR) gives your body almost nothing to recover from, so you can do that on your off-days and be fine. But once you start increasing the intensity and using more of the anaerobic pathways (typically around 80% MHR and above, but this is a spectrum rather than an absolute), you put a lot more stress on your muscles. Such training will fit best on your lifting days, given the current schedule.

If you train 3 non-consecutive days per week (thus giving yourself two days off once a week), then you could also fit anaerobic cardio in on the first of those two consecutive off-days.

Running also has a relatively high recovery demand regardless of intensity, because your skeleton takes ~2 times your weight in impact forces with every single stride. It's not so hard on your muscles (unless, again, you get into the anaerobic zone), but your body is a whole system, and connective tissue matters.

Lastly, though, if you're asking this question, you're almost definitely not at risk of legitimately overtraining, even though the chance of instantaneous overloading (ie doing more than you can handle in the moment) is always there. Human bodies don't like to overtrain, and it's actually very difficult for anyone to motivate themselves to train enough to achieve it. That's not a bad thing, by the way -- your body, out of self-interest, will just tell you to go **** yourself long before it reaches actual overtraining. The amount of motivation needed to train productively is generally much lower than the amount needed to overtrain.