If you're doing lots of cardio at 160 or
180 beats per minute for 60 minutes at a
time for muscularity, you're clearly
making a mistake. If you're noticing
that your cardio is giving you a lot of
fatigue, it's almost certainly going to
be limiting your muscle gains. It's your
call for how much leanness you want, how
much health you want at the expense of
how much muscle you're going to gain.
Getting really nasty with cardio right
up front is a bad idea. If you just
start running and you run like 30
minutes per session, six sessions a
week, you're going to get shin splints,
you might up your ankles a little bit,
you might burn out psychologically and
everything in between. How hard to go is
a technical question, not an emotional
question.
Hey folks, Dr. Mike here for RP
Strength. Let's talk about cardio
recommendations for everyone in 2026.
Should I do cardio? What kind of cardio
do I do?
How much cardio should I do? All of
these are super super common questions.
But these questions often get kind of
lazy answers from myself included. You
just do more steps or just, you know, do
some running. Don't overthink it. Now,
hold on a second. Here at Evidence-Based
Fitness, we overthink everything. How
dare you, darling. So, all jokes aside,
we're not going to overthink cardio, but
we are going to put together a logical
map of what kind of cardio to do and
when, no matter your goals. Let's get
started.
Two things to talk about. The biggest
question to ask for how to guide your
cardio and also the variables that
matter. The biggest question is your
goal.
If someone is trying to stay healthy
while competing in powerlifting at their
highest level, they're going to have
very different cardio recommendations
than someone who is trying to compete in
endurance sport, which is competing in
cardio, and everything in between. So,
in this video, we're going to split all
of the cardio recommendations into five
classes of goal. These are kind of a
little bit makebelieve by me, but I
think they make sense in the real world.
Class one is strength power. If you're a
weightlifter, you're a thrower, you are
someone who is doing powerlifting or
just training for as much strength as
possible, you're in that category. Next
is muscularity. You want to get as
jacked as humanly possible and also be
pretty lean, but really really jacked.
How much cardio should you do? The next
category is health. Like you lift, you
watch your diet, but like you're really
trying to optimize for health and you
know cardio is a big part of that. And
so how much cardio should you be doing
and of what type for health? We'll
answer that question as well. Second to
last is leanness. Especially if you
don't super care much about how big your
legs are, you want to be as lean as you
can. The amount of cardio and the types
you can do pretty high and pretty
permissive. And lastly, endurance. If
you want to train for endurance, your
cardio recommendations look very, very
different indeed.
When we look into each one of these, we
are going to be talking about which
modalities of cardio are best, the
intensities of cardio, the durations of
cardio, and how frequently you should be
doing them throughout the week. So, what
you'll have at the end of this video is
a pretty decent answer to a whole bunch
of questions about how much cardio
should I be doing, when should I be
doing it, no matter where you're coming
from on this issue. Let's get into it.
So cardio for strength power,
powerlifting, weightlifting, shotput,
that whole situation.
You can do
walking, you can do swimming, you can do
the elliptical. The types of machines
and modalities you can do is pretty
broad.
Intensity-wise,
in most cases, you should keep your
cardio under 140 beats per minute, which
really is pretty low intensity on the
cardio spectrum. You should not be
getting crazy out of breath. The
duration should be probably under about
30 minutes at a time when you're doing
your cardio sessions. And you can do
your cardio sessions up to 3 to six
times per week. But the real unlock here
is this. Just getting about 8,000 daily
steps is really good already. If you're
a strength power athlete,
anything north of this in difficulty and
frequency, so if you do 140 beats per
minute, exactly 30 minutes at a time on
the elliptical or something like that 6
days a week, it's going to cost you
potential gains in strength and
expressions and strength.
Even though that's the top end and it's
going to cost you very little, it'll
probably cost you something. So, as an
athlete, you have to determine where
between just 8,000 steps a day and 8,000
plus more cardio is something you're
comfortable with. None of them are going
to be the wrong answer, but you have to
find where your performance and health
and perception of how you feel is going
to be best.
Next, cardio for muscularity. Getting as
jacked as possible and being pretty lean
as well. You could do walking, swimming,
elliptical, all kinds of cardio.
Intensity also under 140 beats per
minute is really recommended to prevent
you from accumulating too much fatigue
that would interfere with your training
sessions. The duration should be under
60 minutes at a time. Notice it was
under 30 minutes time at a time for
strength power. So you are more
permissive in how much of a duration you
can have because muscle size retains
itself better in the face of cardio than
muscle strength and for sure than muscle
fiber type. So explosive uh super
athletic requirements for strength power
require less cardio, can tolerate less
cardio than sheer muscularity.
Frequency, you could do three to seven
times per week. So you could potentially
go on a 60-minute pretty fast walk seven
times a week and it'll probably just not
your affect your muscularity much. Here
again, there's a simple shortcut. 8 to
12,000 steps per day is really good. And
some tougher cardio is okay, but if
you're noticing that your cardio is
giving you a lot of fatigue, it's almost
certainly going to be limiting your
muscle gains. So here, between just 8 to
12,000 steps a day and up to 7 60 minute
sessions within reason and a relatively
low heart rate, it's your call for how
much leanness you want, how much health
you want at the expense of how much
muscle you're going to gain. None of
these cardio models are going to make
you lose muscle if you're eating enough
food, but they may impinge this the the
rate of gains to some extent.
Next, cardio for health. Well, sorry,
let me make another point really quick.
If you're doing lots of cardio at 160
180 beats per minute for 60 minutes at a
time for muscularity, you're clearly
making a mistake and you're probably not
going to get your best results. Cardio
for health.
Any modality is fine for cardio for
health, including sport and dance and
the whole situation. Intensity.
Every intensity from 120 beats per
minute all the way up to 200 beats per
minute is totally awesome for your
health. And you could be including a
little bit of each of those. Duration
wise, you can do 15 to 60 minutes of
cardio at a time. And you can do this 3
to six or even more days per week.
Here's the reality. The bottom end
adaptive window for getting health
effects from cardio probably starts at
about three sessions a week of about 15
minutes long at something just above 150
beats per minute. Something challenging
that makes you breathe heavy. That's
cardio for health. Now, a baseline of
steps is amazing and you should be
getting about 10,000 steps a day for
awesome health. But on top of that,
three sessions, 15 minutes each of 150
beats per minute plus to get nice and
out of breath is a really, really good
start. The top end for most people will
be six sessions a week, 60 minutes in
duration each at 150 beats per minute
plus, which is like really really
intense cardio. As long as you're
recovering and sleeping well and not
losing muscle, which is proxied by
strength. So if you're not losing
strength, there's just no wrong answers
in between. But walking alone is not
enough to optimize health. Got to have
some sessions in there of at least three
sessions, 15 minutes a week of 150 beats
per minute plus, which is where you
start not being able to talk super
comfortably anymore. You get a little
out of breath. That's what we want.
That's going to give you the beginnings
of your best health gains.
Next, cardio for leanness. Here, when I
say leanness, I mean wanting to get as
shredded as possible while maintaining
muscle in your upper body and like not
so much caring about your legs. A lot of
people are in this demographic. You
know, guy who just wants to get shredded
for the summer that lives in the city,
you know, he just like if he doesn't
have the biggest legs in the world, it's
just not his problem. But he does want
to get shredded and maybe in a short
amount of time. All the modalities and
all variations are totally fine for
cardio. You can get lean doing anything
you want. The intensity can be anywhere
between 120 and 200 beats per minute.
That's totally fine. The duration can be
anything from just getting your daily
steps in all the way to one hour of
daily dedicated cardio, potentially even
really hard cardio.
The frequency can be daily steps again
or up to six times a week of hard
cardio, which can be 150 beats per
minute plus for an hour at a time six
times a week. That's going to burn some
serious calories.
So long as you can recover doing up to
six sessions of 60 beats per minute or
sorry good doing up to six sessions of
60 minutes each at 150 beats per minute
plus which means like very tough cardio
will absolutely help you get leaner and
leaner assuming you can recover because
at some point the fatigue cost starts to
become so high that the sustainability
goes out the window. Especially if your
weight training strength stays stable,
you can be pretty sure you're not losing
muscle and then by definition, it's not
too much cardio. I would highly
recommend starting on the slower end and
increasing. And here's the real kicker.
You don't have to do any cardio other
than like 10,000 daily steps to get as
lean as you want. But if you want to get
leaner faster and you want the extra
health benefits and you want to really
ramp the metabolism and ramp the
throughput, you can absolutely do much
more cardio than that. And a combination
of 10 to 12,000 daily steps and 3 to six
sessions at 30 to 60 minutes at 150
beats per minute plus weekly will shred
that ass up. So with leanness and
cardio, the big thing is you don't need
to do any cardio other than 10,000 daily
steps to get as lean as you like. that
if you want to do in a short amount of
time and your fatigue is not excessive,
you can absolutely do it by adding some
decent amounts of cardio. Lastly, cardio
for endurance. All modalities and all
variations apply. It's going to be
specific to the sports that you're
training. In many cases, the intensity
for actual training goes between 150
beats per minute all the way up to short
bouts of 200 beats per minute in some
cases. The duration here can be 30
minutes for some cardio sessions, 60
minutes for others, and up to 120
minutes, if not more, for very long
swims, rides, or runs on specific days
of the week. We're not talking about 2
hours of cardio every day necessarily,
though some people actually do do that.
Frequency-wise, for good, solid
endurance improvements, at least 4 days
a week and up to seven days a week for
the most elite and advanced athletes.
Serious endurance training can start
technically at like 3 days a week if
you're just starting out and sessions of
30 minutes at a time at 150 beats per
minute plus something very uncomfortable
for you if you're just starting out.
Then you slowly work up in waves. Once
you get above five weekly sessions,
waving your intensity and duration
starts to pay major dividends. Which
means not every day is you just running
linearly at one speed as hard as
possible for an hour and then falling
over. Some days you might have 30
minutes at a very fast pace, faster than
race pace. Some days you'll have 60
minutes at a moderate pace. And other
days you might have 2 hours at a very
slow jog. And all of those accomplish a
reduction in injury probability, an
awesome degree of fatigue management, a
conservation and elevation of fitness
qualities. So really it gets not so
complicated but not so straightforward
that you do the same stuff all the time.
And it's a really good idea to switch
modalities often especially to uh
prevent yourself from overreaching on
something or from getting injured. So
that means sometimes you do lots of
running, sometimes you do some running
and some swimming, sometimes you do some
cycling and so on and so forth. It
doesn't have to be just one modality.
And often when you're giving your joints
a break from running, cycling or
swimming are real awesome replacements
that still get your system tons of
cardio, but leave the joints alone for a
bit so they can heal so that next week
you can start running again. If you're
really interested in endurance training,
I highly recommend you get a coach. Me
telling you things about endurance
training is like an endurance expert
being like, "Uh, oh, hypertrophy. Yeah,
like I don't know, like 8 to 12 reps or
something, a few sets, do good
technique." That's just about as much as
I know about endurance training. Get a
coach. It's a big deal. If you want to
take your endurance training to that
next level, our friends Alex and
Michelle Harrison are awesome. You can
find them on the internet. They're
amazing endurance coaches. They can help
you out. There's tons of other great
folks as well. So, TLDDR to sum it all
up for strength and power. Just sticking
to 8,000 or so daily steps and not much
else is a really good idea, especially
when you're in a serious training or
competing phase. For maximum muscle
gain, about 10kish or so daily steps is
awesome. Although three weekly sessions
of 15 minutes, maybe 30 minutes at a
time of 150 beats per minute of cardio
is totally fine. Get out of breath, get
your help up a little bit. You're
totally cool. Anything much more than
that is possible, but it's going to
start to reduce how much you can
potentially grow muscle if for nothing
else than just the sheer fatigue. For
health, the more cardio, the marrier. As
long as you're recovering well, you're
not losing strength and not losing
muscle, and you're sleeping well, three
weekly sessions, 15 minutes at a time at
150 beats per minute average, is really
the bottom end of health is your number
one priority. You should be starting
there and eventually doing more if you
want the best health. And some of the
best health results that we see in the
literature are from four to six weekly
sessions of 150 beats plus per minute,
which means a 150 all the way up to 200
if you're interested on some days. And
at about 30 to 45 minutes per cardio
bout is where that awesome trade-off
between not too much fatigue and amazing
health benefits really hits most people.
Benefits are falling out of the sky. You
can do more, but keep tabs on your
recovery, on your sleep, and on your
muscularity because those are all super
important to health as well. for
leanness. As long as you can recover and
not lose strength and as long as your
steps stay at a baseline minimum of
about 10k, the more cardio you do, the
better. Now, here's the thing. Steps are
counted when you do cardio. So, if
you're doing running, 10,000 steps isn't
on top of running. The running can
include the 10,000 steps. So long as you
can recover, not lose strength. That is
a big deal here. You can get just as
lean as you like with just 10,000 steps
a day. You don't need any more cardio,
but you can do more cardio for laws and
to get leaner faster so long as you're
recovering. Especially if you don't care
about leg size, man. You can do cardio
till you're blue in the face and that
will shred you up like crazy. Will cost
you either leg gains or it'll make you
lose a little bit of muscle and legs,
though usually even that last part
doesn't happen. Endurance wise, get a
coach or at least get an app. This is
serious territory. And my two cents here
are worth about well 2 cents. So, not
much. Really quick, let's talk about
some cardio dos and don'ts just so you
kind of have a better map of the world
here. Do find what's fun that you're
going to have. Cardio going to be
sustainable for you when you like it. If
you hate running and you just run all
the time, you hate it and you can't
stand it and you're like, "Ah, what
playlist do I pick?" You're probably not
going to be running for long. If you
love swimming and you can just get in
the pool multiple times a week and you
love part of it, yeah, swimming for
cardio seems like probably a better fit.
Next, finding what's sustainable for
your joints. If you're on the bike and
your knees are just getting shredded and
you go running and your knees feel
great, well, gee whiz, you know, maybe a
little less bike, a little more running
is a good idea. Another one is find you
what you can be consistent with. If you
love the pool, but you're not going to
drive to the pool 20 minutes away three
times a week, you got to pick another
cardio modality you can be consistent
with. A lot of times, whatever your gym
has available, equipment you might have
at home, uh people who like jogging and
running that the whole world is their
oyster. And if you have like a running
club or a jogging club that you're
associated with, man, that's a really,
really good way to be consistent.
Lastly, track your steps for cardio. You
want to know how much cardio you're
doing. You don't want to be like, "Oh,
yeah. I think I'm getting enough
cardio." And someone's like, "Oh, how
many daily steps do you get?" You're
like, "Uh, I'm not sure. I never
actually measured." You want to know
your daily steps because if anything,
when you're creating a calorie deficit
to get leaner, if you have the same
number of daily steps as always, you
know you're not burning too few calories
on the burn part. And if you're
consuming fewer on the intake part, then
you're going to almost certainly get
really robust fat loss. You don't have
to ask yourself giant questions of like,
h well, am I just like less physically
active? Because you'll know because
you're tracking your steps. Here's what
not to do in cardio.
Getting really nasty with cardio right
up front is a bad idea. You got to ease
in. If you just start running and you
run like 30 minutes per session, six
sessions a week, you're going to get
chin splints. You might up your ankles a
little bit. You might burn out
psychologically and everything in
between. So just just be easy. Start
with lower frequency. Fewer times a
week. Three times a week is totally
fine. Every other day, start with 15
minutes of cardio at a time. And start
with something that just barely gets you
out of breath. And you can always track
that and slowly increase it over time.
Cardio is not something you just get
into and like you guys see people who
first day at the gym, they're trying to
max out all the machines. That's exactly
what the you look like trying to do
cardio times thousand when you first
start. Another one. Do not assume that
one modality is categorically superior
and reject variation. Some people just
run and someone's like, "Hey, like you
know, if you did some elliptical and did
some cycling, you could take some stress
off the joints. You wouldn't have to be
taking all these days off." Sometimes
your knees hurt too much to run. You
could do the elliptical, but that
wouldn't hurt you at all. It would it
would increase your fitness even more,
make the transition back to running the
second day after that really smooth. You
just don't do it cuz you're like, "Well,
I'm a runner. I'm not an elliptical
person." Like don't be dense like me and
just be free to explore with different
modalities at least when one modality is
irritating you. These are really awesome
and they're great for variation.
Here's another thing not to do. Don't
freak out about cardio killing your
gains. In real life, only exotic muscle
and strength gains and goals will
intersect here. What will happen first
if you do too much cardio is your gains
continue but the gains are slower. Next,
what'll happen is you'll go into
maintenance mode and your gains will
stop. What'll happen after that is your
gains will start to recede slightly and
you'll get a little bit less jacked or a
little bit less strong. It's not like
you lose all of your muscle. That's
point number one. That's point number
four. You have to do a lot of cardio for
a long time to get there. If you notice
that you raised your cardio and now
you're basically like not getting any
stronger, any bigger, well, and now you
know to back off a little bit. But don't
you worry about like you did one week of
cardio and you lost all your muscle.
That shit is not a reality for almost
anybody. Next,
when you have an injury and it hurts to
run or it hurts to cycle or hurts to
swim or do something else, try another
modality. Especially swimming tends to
be really really awesome on the joints.
If you can continue doing cardio in a
way that doesn't hurt what whatever
you're you've got injured when you come
back from injury, you'll have have all
the best benefits for cardio for health
that entire time. Your systemic
qualities, your blood, your
cardiovascular system will still be
elevated. And then getting back into
running or however you hurt yourself is
going to be the easiest thing in the
world. So don't just think, "Oh man, I'm
hurt." That there are many ways to do
cardio, even if a part of your body is
hurt.
Here's another thing. Don't be super
inflexible. If you're dedicated cardio
athlete, that's cool. But if you're just
a person who's trying to get cardio for
health, it's totally fine to go on
vacation and just not do any cardio at
all and just lift or just do nothing but
eat croutons or some shit like that. Um,
it's totally cool. You have a week or
two vacation every few months. you're
you're just giving your body an awesome
break. So once you start cardio, don't
feel like you have to do cardio
constantly. If it makes you feel better
and you love doing it, you can run
anywhere in the world almost. Some
places are not sufficiently safe for you
to go running or the air quality is
really bad. In any case, don't be
psychotic about it necessarily because
really that just gets you a whole lot
out of nothing. Lastly, don't punish
yourself with cardio. How hard to go is
a technical question, not an emotional
question. It's a matter of need for your
body, not need for your mind. If you
want to punish yourself, just do better
next time. Learn a lesson instead. Don't
punish yourself with cardio. That's
really stupid. A lot of people do that
like, "Oh, up today. I got to run
harder." That's cool and all, but it
gives it really mixes your relationship
with cardio and fitness training so
much. It's not all great. What I like to
do is I like to keep lifting and cardio
and exercise pure. I do them because I
need to do them for my plan and I love
to do them for my soul. I don't get
punishment involved in there. It gets
weird. You know what isn't weird?
Downloading the RP hypertrophy and RP
diet coach apps to help you with your
goals. No matter what kind of cardio you
like. Anyway, hope this was informative.
If you want to hear more about this ad
nauseium on a much more technical level
in a way that can help you coach your
own clients, RPU is a totally separate
YouTube channel that we have tons of
videos for that going through a little
cardio renaissance right now. We're
talking about cardio on that channel.
Give it a click. Give it a look. uh look
at some videos backwards and and
forwards and I think you're going to
like what you see. Anyway, that's been
my spiel. See you guys next time.