Why You Still Need Cardio Even If You’re Very Active

By Dave Ruel

One question that may come up as you plan your fitness routine along with the right muscle building foods is if you should be doing cardio if you have a very active job.  This is often the case for those people who spend all day on their feet running around such as construction workers, farmers, electricians, and otherwise.  They think that since they’re up and active so much, why do they need to burn off any more calories?

Aren’t they getting enough activity as it is?

While it’s easy to fall into this trap, there are some important points that you must remember about why cardio is still vital to include for these people.

Let’s have a look at what you need to know.

Cardio Training Versus ‘Being Active’

The very first important thing that you need to remember is the difference between performing cardio training and just being generally very active.

While staying moving throughout the day is great for your total daily calorie burn, it’s not going to give you quite the same cardiovascular benefits as a good cardio session would.

When doing cardio training you’re going to elevate your heart rate and keep it there for an extended period of time, which is something that many of these people with active lifestyles just won’t do.

Therefore, while they may not need cardio to burn calories, they still need it for health promotion purposes.

In addition to that, when it comes to getting off stubborn body fat, in some cases higher intensity exercise is simply needed and your active lifestyle or even the healthiest muscle building foods just won’t provide this to the degree you want.

Fitting Cardio Training In Effectively

So now that you can see why you should be doing cardio, it’s time to look at how you should be fitting it in.

Ideally you want to do cardio before you head off to work in the morning.  If you leave it until afterwards, there’s a higher chance that fatigue will have set in and you just won’t have it in you to give a good effort.

When that occurs, you definitely will not see the benefits that you could be and it may just do more harm than good.

If it’s absolutely not possible to get in the cardio before you go off to work, then consider taking a short nap after work before getting it done.  Many people undervalue the benefits of a quick powernap and this is one time in the day when it really can help improve your results.

Take a 20-30 minute powernap and then proceed to get the cardio in.

Looking After Recovery

Finally, the last thing that you need to keep in mind is that you should always aim to separate your cardio training from your weight lifting days or if you must do them together, put it after the lifting is completed.

Again, this helps to reduce the build-up of fatigue in the most energy intensive exercise – weight lifting.

Proper performance here needs to always be prioritized so doing your cardio on an alternate day or after weight lifting is finished will help you accomplish that.

So there you have the key information to keep in mind if you have an active lifestyle.  While being active is excellent for weight control, it’s not your free pass to get out of cardio completely.  You still should keep some cardio in your program for absolute best results.

Question?- How much cardio do you do while trying to build lean mass and eating clean muscle building foods? How much would you like to be able to do (less or more)?