Does Cardio Help to Improve Muscle Mass?

I promised myself I was going to try to post at least once or twice a week from now on and not neglect this blog. Even if no one else ever reads it, it's important for me to have a record of my journey, so I need to make a commitment to keep it active.

Someone on a fitness board I post on asked if cardio would help to improve muscle mass. I thought my response to him was worthy of being reproduced here:

Yes, cardio will help to improve your muscle mass. More on that in a minute. You know I've mentioned I follow Tom Venuto, who is an amazing natural bodybuilder and one of the most respected in his field, so this is what I've learned from him.

If you don't overdo your cardio, you don't need to worry about losing muscle. True, muscle proteins break down and are used for energy when you do cardio ... BUT ... your body is constantly doing that anyway. It's called “protein turnover” and it happens all day long. On average, extreme amounts of high-intensity, high-impact cardio can cause you to lose muscle; however, you are much more likely to lose muscle from inadequate protein consumption, dieting without weight training, or inadequate calorie intake than you are from too much cardio.

A lot of that will depend on your body type as well. If you have an ectomorphic body type and are naturally lean, “too much cardio” will probably be a much lower threshold than for someone who is a mesomorph (all of whom should all be banished to the deepest levels of Dante's hell, but that's another conversation ). The key is to find your balance and stay anabolic so you maintain muscle, while taking advantage of the benefits of cardio to burn fat.

Using high-intensity interval training (HIIT) as your cardio routine can help to improve your muscle mass. Basically, HIIT alternates a 2-3 minute high-intensity work interval with a 2-3 minute lower-intensity recovery interval. Not only do you burn a lot of calories by doing cardio this way, your metabolic rate will stay elevated longer after your workout is over. But, most importantly, those intervals of push-relax-push-relax-push-relax are pushing and resting your muscles in a cyclical pattern, which is giving you a similar, though much smaller, benefit as weight training. Result ... improved muscle mass It's important to remember to give those muscles a rest just as you do when you weight train as well ... follow your HIIT cardio with a weight training routine that focuses on a different muscle group.

When it comes down to it, there are three parts to good fitness: cardio, weight training, and nutrition. None of us will be able to achieve our optimal fitness peak unless we pay attention to all three equally.