Weights/Cardio Combination

[Tim-C]

Hey Guys,

I'm an 18 year old guy from Australia who's been working out for about 6 months now. I'm 5'8" and weigh around 69kgs (~153 pounds).

My primary goal is to increase muscle while at the same time staying fit. Currently I am doing 3 full body workouts per week on Monday, Wednesday and Friday's, however, I am now wondering how much cardio I should be doing? Obviously if I do too much it will start eating into my muscle mass which is something I don't want to happen.

I was either considering doing x2 45min Cardio Sessions on Tuesday and Thursday, x3 30min Cardio Sessions on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday...or the one I was thinking would be the go is x2 40min workouts consisting of a 10min jog/run, 10min row, 10min cycle and 10min x-train... or would you guys suggest something else?

My diet at the moment...well...is pretty much non-existant although I am looking into starting one.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Kalrog]

The diet would probably be the best thing that you could do to get into better shape. So certainly do that!

For cardio - if you are worried about loosing muscle - try HIIT. High Intensity Interval Training is great for droping fat and keeping muscle, but you don't get all of the benefits of cardio (at least not as much). So I combine the two. For HIIT, I will take about 15 minutes total for warm up and cool down and about 5 or 10 to alternate all out sprints (15 seconds) with a jog (1 minute). If you can keep sprinting after those 15 seconds - you weren't pushing hard enough. Then for the regular cardio, I will jog for 3 miles or so. I am more worried about the typical cardio improvement so I do that most of the time, but you might want to do HIIT 2 or 3 times per week and jog 1 time.

 

[Timmay1018]

Hey, I'm worried about the same thing. I need to keep my heartrate up for at least a half an hour 2 to 3 times a week. But I dont kno how to do so. Running? Jogging? Sprinting?
What about a punching bag. I was consdiering getting one of those and going at it for a good 45 minutes 2 to 3 times a week. Would that work?