Those who aren’t very familiar with fitness will sometimes lump a bunch of exercises with very different purposes together and just call it “working out.” This is commonly seen with cardio being lumped together with weightlifting.
If you want to put on muscle mass and gain weight, then you really don’t need to be doing much cardio, because it could actually be doing you more harm than good in terms of your goals.
When you do cardio, your body uses up its energy pretty quickly before going to reserves. It’ll use fat, which is why it’s good for people who want to lose weight. However, those are people with excess fat.
If you’re underweight and don’t have much fat on you, it’ll actually start using up bits of muscle mass, because that provides energy for your body just the same. Instead, you need to focus more of your time on weightlifting, which will increase your muscle mass rather than reduce it.
You might’ve noticed that in things like sports, there are a lot of different body types depending on the athletes. Runners are almost always skinny and barely have any muscle mass on them, with the exception of definition in their legs.
Someone like a wrestler, on the other hand, will have a lot more fat, but also a lot more muscle. For most people, the ideal body is muscular, but not to the point where you look unnatural, and cut down enough so that your muscles are visible and you don’t have excess flab.
It almost seems counterintuitive that not working out in one way can help you get a better physique, but it’s true. Focusing on weightlifting alone also makes things less complicated for your schedule, so you don’t have to figure out a cardio day and a weightlifting day – just know when you’re going to go lift.
If you still want to keep your cardio in good shape, it’s recommended that you do high intensity, fast burst of cardio like sprints and circuits rather than doing something like long steady runs. This helps reduce the amount of energy that your body takes away, and can also help you develop some good leg muscles while keeping your heart healthy.
