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 mass conflicts with the fact that they do a lot of cardio-vascular work. How can someone like this 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 workouts do two main things that work against muscle building, they are: 1) use up a lot of calories 2) increase the speed 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 maintain weight each day you must eat enough calories to cover the energy expenditures of your body as if it were at rest (this is known as the basal metabolic rate), then consume enough extra calories to cover the exercise that you will do. Each day you need to eat a further 500 calories if you wish to build muscle mass.
Can I work this number out?
Yes, there definitely is and one way of finding this total is by following the Katch-McArdle formula (BMR based on lean body weight). Here it is:
Men: BMR = 66 + (13.7 X wght in kg) + (5 X hght 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 equals BMR X 1.375 (1-3 days/wk sports/light exercise )
Mod. active equals 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, competition etc).
So, if you are doing cardio and weights frequently then you should multiply this by at least 1.725. Your daily energy needs will be safely covered by this amount. This amount then needs to be altered to suit your goals. Assuming your goal is muscle building a further 500 calories each day need to be added to this amount.
So, for arguments sake lets say the number you figure out is 3000 calories then that would mean 6 meals everyday which each contain 500 calories. Each meal would then be made up of 62 grams of carbohydrate, 37 grams of protein and 11 grams of fat. 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!
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