cardio without loosing muscle

[chaz650]

if i run for more then hour will i loose muscle... should i eat in middle if i do 90 min of cardio or take bcaa before?? dont wann aburn muscle

[Appetite]

make sure you eat well before and after the run and you should be fine. Increase your calories to make up for those you burn while running.

If youre that anxious to not loose muscle why are you doing so much running anyway?

[uflcook]

Running is not going to cause muscle loss. Done.

And as for increasing calories, you should probably only do that if you're already at an extreme caloric deficit (talking 750-1000), but if you're using running or cardio to increase your deficit then there's no reason to eat more.

And 90 minutes? why for that long?

[camaro93zzz]

I kinda want to know the answer to this as well. There is probably a couple of people on here the same as me: a SLIGHT beer belly, but over not exactly fat. Now I start working out to gain mass, and so I am trying to eat a LOT of food to gain weight, and doing weights. And even with me doing abs twice a week, it seems that the abs are lagging behind everything else on my body. Im at 6 weeks in for my workout plan.

So I was wondering about this as well, cause I have read that Cardio cleans out your system so to speak (bad stuff as WELL as good) and can decrease the benefit of a weight workout you did.

Hopefully that made sense, Im tired. lol

[aRollingStone]

Chaz, why are you running and what are your goals?

I kinda want to know the answer to this as well. There is probably a couple of people on here the same as me: a SLIGHT beer belly, but over not exactly fat. Now I start working out to gain mass, and so I am trying to eat a LOT of food to gain weight, and doing weights. And even with me doing abs twice a week, it seems that the abs are lagging behind everything else on my body. Im at 6 weeks in for my workout plan.

So I was wondering about this as well, cause I have read that Cardio cleans out your system so to speak (bad stuff as WELL as good) and can decrease the benefit of a weight workout you did.

Hopefully that made sense, Im tired. lol

To gain muscle mass you may not need to eat a LOT of food. There is a physiological limit to how quickly the body can lay down muscle tissue. You need enough of an excess to maximize protein synthesis, but once maximized, anything over will be likely stored as fat.

Doing abs work (especially weighted ab work) is good to build your abs, which will make them more easily visible IF your body fat is low enough. Ab work alone will not give you great 6 pack abs, it's all about the low bodyfat.

Cardio is not a bad thing. You may want to look into high intensity cardio (HIT) Just get your nutrition right and fit them together to help you accomplish your goals. It's all integrated.

[adam_williams_1]

BCAA's will reduce muscle breakdown...

Eating mid-session when you're running won't be very helpful - your body's vascular shunt mechanism reduces blood flow to the gut during exercise (especially at higher intensities), so this food won't digest properly until post-exercise anyway.

A glucose based energy drink may help.

[jdjprimer19]

BCAA's will reduce muscle breakdown...

Eating mid-session when you're running won't be very helpful - your body's vascular shunt mechanism reduces blood flow to the gut during exercise (especially at higher intensities), so this food won't digest properly until post-exercise anyway.

A glucose based energy drink may help.

BCAA's are useless...

A proper pre-workout meal should be all that he needs.

[robbondo]

When I was overweight I started running, eating at a caloric deficit and doing a full body lifting routine simultaneously.

Doing this I lost about 40 lbs but when I started doing the BF% math, I realized that the only way I could have lost that much weight was if I lost about 5lbs of muscle along the way. Since my upper body had gained in size I'm assuming much of that muscle was lost in my legs.

So from my experience it's definitely possible to lose muscle in your legs if your diet isn't on point and you run frequently.

[adam_williams_1]

BCAA's are useless...

A proper pre-workout meal should be all that he needs.

A proper meal before working out would be pretty interesting - doubt you'd get much done on a full stomach. It wouldn't digest anyway, it'd just sit until you finish training.

A proper meal 1-2 hours PRIOR to training would be better, with BCAA's 30 mins before training.

If BCAAs are useless, every elite level athlete is going about training in the wrong way (doubt it), and this website link is completely wrong too;

http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/bcaa2.htm