Programming Cardio for Strength Athletes

what would be overdoing cardio? Like, is there a point that you would say would be excessive for somebody who is lifting if they're not an ultra endurance athlete? I think a lot of it because everybody's so different. So whenever I look at clients, I start giving them protocols and I have to see their response. So the first thing is we look at some objective markers. If you, if we look at what the main thing you're doing is, which is weightlifting, then the cardio is a secondary thing. So you don't want the cardio to now ruin your weightlifting. So if somebody starts doing some conditioning, maybe they start with a low, low dose of it, like 20 minutes, seven days a week, super easy, just not walking, but not running. Maybe they're walking on an incline treadmill, or maybe they're rucking. That's the new thing. The new industry like trend is to go rucking. and there's pros and cons of that too but i would say if you start doing like i like cycling myself because and that's why i encourage you to do it you like to run but i encourage you to cycle and the reason is we're already training legs a couple of days a week we're hammering stuff the cycling is a really good cyclical concentrically concentrically cyclical man that's hard to say um activity that it doesn't there's no like there's no eccentric movement in it there's no like beating up your joints. So it's actually a good one that makes your legs look better while also saving them for your leg workouts, but depends on what modality you use. So like non-impact would be a good one if you're doing a lot of weight training, because you're already going to get kind of that impact or that heavy resistance while you're doing your weight training, right? So if you do a lot of running with that, then you have to really touch you with the volume and how fast you run, because it may affect your weightlifting. And the goal is to just get healthier, get better conditioning without it affecting the weight training. Also create a caloric funnel so you can eat more, right? Do a little more cardio, feed those calories back. Because what we're working on realistically in the initial stages is cardiovascular adaptations, not a caloric deficit. So use the conditioning as a tool to work the cardiovascular system at first. Then later when you're ready to get, maybe you're getting ready for a photo shoot or a holiday or even getting on stage, that's when we would use conditioning as a method of a caloric deficit to end up being able to eat a little bit more. Right. But I like to go on always like objective and subjective markers. So if I'm looking at somebody's programming and I see that they're starting to struggle with their weights, I now it's my job to look at that and go, okay, is there enough rest between workouts? Is there enough rest between exercises? Is the load now too much for the volume? So I have to look at the workout first and say, okay, have I increased the volume lately? Have I, have we put two leg workouts that are too close together to everybody where it goes too close together. So that's the first thing. The second thing I have to look at is what did we do with the conditioning? Oh, I added like another hour through the week of conditioning and they started to tank. Now I need to look at the nutrition. Did we adjust nutrition up to accommodate that extra conditioning? So you've got like all these dials and levers that you're switching around and turning to try to figure out what caused the decrease in performance so then it's like okay maybe i've now pushed the cardio too much let's back that off or let's lower the intensity right and so at different stages different intensities are going to make sense and at different those different stages different volumes are going to make sense