How Can I Build Muscle Fastest When Doing Cardio And Weights?
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 up conflicts with the fact that they do a lot of cardio-vascular work. How can someone like this doing a muscle building routine build muscle fastest whilst still doing cardio, indeed is it even possible?
Quite often it is suggested that in order to build muscles fastest you have to keep cardio training down to as limited an amount as possible. 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. These two things both add weight to the problem of consuming enough calories. This takes us to the question of exactly what amount of calories should I therefore be taking on?
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. If you want to add muscle mass on top of this then you have to add an extra 500 calories every day.
Can I work this number out?
Yes, one way to do this is using the Katch-McArdle formula (BMR based on lean body weight). Here it is:
Men: BMR = 66 + (13.7 X wt in kg) + (5 X ht 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 (light exercise/sports 1-3 days/wk)
Mod. active = BMR X 1.55 (sports 3-5 days/wk/moderate exercise)
Very active = 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, should you be 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 total then needs to changed according to your specific goals. Assuming your goal is muscle building a further 500 calories each day need to be added to this amount.
So, if the number you reach is for example 3000 calories then that would equate to 6 meals a day of 500 calories. the constituents of every meal would therefore be protein: 37 grams, carbohydrate 62 grams and 11 grams would come from fat. This is due to the fact that a gram of protein or carbohydrate equals 4 calories where as a gram of fat equals 9 calories.
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!
