Ep 137 – Cardio, When And How Much?

TRANSCRIPT:

Dani

Hello, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of Vegan Proteins Muscles by Brussels Radio. My name is Dani. And I’m Giacomo, and this is episode 137. All right, so when you guys are listening to this podcast, we should be in London, having a grand old time walking around London. I am so excited to have high tea in London. I’ve never had high tea in my life, and I’m very, very excited to do that. So just imagine us folks, if you will, while you are listening to this podcast that

Giacomo and I are sitting in a place called Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Or maybe it’s called Charlie’s Chocolate Factory. I don’t know. Sitting around eating delicious little desserts and tiny little sandwiches. And you can picture us in funny hats as well. I don’t know if that’s part of it, but that’s what I imagine when I picture high tea. Maybe it’s because I always think of Alice in Wonderland.

Giacomo

I like this. This sounds like a good idea, Danny. It’s kind of nice. When we booked the trip to London, when you booked it, you took the initiative on that one. I remember we made. We had some. I think I did it at noon at home. We just took. Took our fancy china, whipped it out some teacups and some. But it’s not gonna be the same, not as this. This place sounds outrageous.

Dani

Well, I hope it’s not gonna be. It looks like it’s like, $80 a person or something. So I. I hope it. I hope it’s different, but I’m really excited and just to see a lot of stuff, and hopefully we’re gonna zip on over to Dublin real quick, spend a day or two in Dublin. I’m very excited about it, and I just recently found out that I am, like, mostly Irish. Like, I. My whole life, I was told that I was all of these things.

As it turns out, I am pretty much none of those things, but I am very, very Irish. And now we know. And that’s, like, a uniquely American thing. Did you know that? To even, like, give a crap what ethnicity you are, that’s an American thing? I think we’re very weird for it. Like, oh, I’m 57% Scandinavian. It’s like, what?

Giacomo

Anyway, are you telling me that those kits don’t really sell well to test your whatever?

Dani

I don’t know. Actually.

Giacomo

That would affect the pool of people and the data set if we’re the only ones taking it.

Dani

That is true. That’s true. But Giacomo Marchese is actually almost 100% Italian. 98 was it 98%?

Giacomo

As it. No, as it turns out, my sister actually pulled more Italian jeans from the family gene pool when she was born than I. But we’re kind of neck and neck. I think I’m like 80%, I want to say. The rest is just a mix of. No, East. I forget what they said. East, Asian and North Africa, but like all southern Italian and a little below. Anyways, what are we talking about today? Dang.

Dani

Everybody’s favorite topic, everybody’s favorite thing. Cardio. We are talking cardio about cardio, you know, types of car. Should you even do cardio? What types of cardio? When should you do cardio? How much cardio should you do? These are all really important questions. And I know, I joke, I joke, I joke about like hating cardio.

And that’s just because I don’t personally enjoy most forms of cardio. Like, I don’t enjoy it while I’m doing it. That said, I do think cardio is really important and it is something that everybody should do. But how much when, et cetera. That’s what I want us to talk about.

Giacomo

Well, we definitely. What’s the word I’m looking for? Ripped on cardio for quite some time in our earlier years when we got really into, I don’t want to say the bro culture, but the bro culture.

Dani

No, not the bro culture. Yikes. The evidence based bodybuilding community culture. That is the opposite of bro culture. Yikes.

Giacomo

Okay, so bodybuilding culture then.

Dani

Evidence based bodybuilding culture. Yeah.

Giacomo

Okay, we’ll get real specific with it. Evidence based bodybuilding culture. Yeah, but that whole community, as serious as they were and continue getting more serious about what’s optimal. There was definitely a little bit of mocking and joking when it came to cardio. As in like, no, don’t do it. I think we all had our fun with that.

Dani

To this day, I will still joke about it, but I think it’s important to understand why, like, why was there that huge push back against cardio at that time period? Those.

Giacomo

The gains?

Dani

No, it was just, it was being abused. Like cardio is a tool and just like any other tool, it can be abused. And especially in that particular time period, it was not unusual to hear about bodybuilding competitors doing up upwards of three hours of cardio a day, which, I mean, that’s just a terrible idea on so many fronts. So, you know, evidence, the science based community started doing some research into that sort of thing and found out that, you know, you don’t need that much

cardio even getting ready for a Bodybuilding show. It’s like anything else. There’s pushbacks to every extreme. Right. So then there was the whole team. No cardiovascular. And that was the coolest thing in 2014, was if you could step on stage doing like the least cardio of everybody, you were like winning prep. You might not win the show, but you were winning. Um, and again, like most things, the answer is something, I think for most people, the answer is somewhere in between,

without liars on either side. There are some people that are gonna get away with doing virtually no cardio. There are some people that are gonna have to do a lot. Most people are going to have to do something, though. First of all, what is a lot in a little. What is a lot of cardio and what is a little cardio? Am I getting cardio?

Giacomo

I don’t have a plan. This sounds right.

Dani

That tracks.

Giacomo

We’re all over the place here. There’s so much to talk about. What is a little, what is a lot in the context of bodybuilding?

Dani

Just cardio and physique change. I feel like because there was such a pushback against doing tons of cardio and there was like team, no cardio, right now I feel like people don’t actually know what like a moderate, reasonable amount of cardio even is. And sometimes when you suggest someone does cardio, they’re like, wait, what, what? I didn’t think I was going to have to do cardio.

And it’s like, no, you’re, you’re probably going to have to do some cardio, buddy, if we want to get to where you’re going. But again, it’s a tool that you don’t want to neglect nor abuse. So let’s talk about the roles of cardio. That’s the top thing you have on your list here. What are the roles of cardio, heart.

Giacomo

Health, cardiovascular endurance, Bottom line across the board as carryover into your sport. No matter what your sport is, if you’re a powerlifter and you get in 30 minutes of cardio a week, two 15 minute sessions for as an example, you’re going to have, you’re gonna your singles, doubles and triples, which is fancy way of saying one rep at a time, two reps

at a time, three reps at a time, they’re going to be better because of your cardiovascular endurance. It actually helps you lift, believe it or not. Same thing with hyper.

Dani

Yep, I agree. So that, that reason right there, heart health, is why everybody should be doing some cardio. Everybody, everybody in their in season, everybody in their off season should be doing something that counts as cardio. Now, it doesn’t have to look like running or walking on an incline or using an

elliptical or anything. It could be a lot of different things. But cardio is really important for your overall heart health. So that is role number one and the most important role.

Giacomo

I treat it like an antidepressant. It gets my endorphins going, which actually helps me feel better.

Dani

Well, good. I still think the runner’s high is a myth. I don’t think it exists. I have tried very, very hard to find it. I’m just like, no, no, any minute now, any minute I’m not going to hate this. Nope, that has not happened for me. But the next role, and the role that is probably most often used in what we do is using cardio as a form of burning calories to help create a caloric deficit for somebody whose goal is fat loss.

Giacomo

Well, this is where it starts to get tricky because people like to look at ideal scenarios when they’re like, I’ll do whatever it takes and if you tell me that I should be walking more, I’ll just walk more. So why do cardio?

Dani

Well, I think walking is cardio for some people.

Giacomo

Is it?

Dani

Yeah, I think so. I mean, if you’re walking fast enough, it’s cardio. Is it like, you know, zone three, zone four? No, it’s not like hard cardio. It’s not hit or anything, but it’s definitely good for you. And I think, I mean, when my last prep, most of my cardio was walking. I mean, I was hoofing it. I was really walking and I was walking a lot. And I think at the end I had to add 20 minute sessions of cardio, like formal on the elliptical type of cardio a few days a week.

But that was at the very, very end. Regardless, the tool is to create, help you create or increase a caloric deficit. Right, right. Okay. So some people think that they’re going to be able to use cardio as the only tool to create a caloric deficit, I. E. Keep your food exactly the same, your intake exactly the same, and just add cardio in order to lose significant amounts of body fat.

And I wish that that was possible. Like, I mean, it’s possible to a small degree, certainly if you’re not doing any movement at all. And then you start doing like cardio sessions. Yes, you are probably going to drop a little bit of weight, assuming your food doesn’t accidentally go up on its own, which does tend to happen when someone does a lot of Cardio.

But to lose a significant amount of body fat, I do think diet has to be, has to be at least half of the equation in creating a caloric deficit because it is so much easier to, for example, shave 100 calories off of your caloric intake than it is to burn 100 calories during cardio.

Giacomo

Yes, and it comes at a cost too. Cardio is fatiguing. And when you’re dieting and you only have so much energy and you need to recover, doing cardio might be the difference between you being able to keep pushing and not. And even if you can keep pushing, what kind of cost does it come at in terms of what your body’s going to do to hold on to muscle and to train hard and how you’re going to feel and how much time it takes to do it.

So there’s a lot of reasons to consider how much cardio to do and whether or not to do it and what type of cardio to do. Like you said, there’s walking, there’s also hit, there’s also lists, and that’s high intensity interval training, sprinting or less low intensity steady state cardio, which is like the target, like more of a jog maybe, maybe like a little bit of a slow to fast job,

depending. But yeah, there’s all sorts of things to think about. And depending on what you’re doing, what your goal is and what your life looks like, how much time do you have for it?

Dani

Right. So, okay, the third role, I guess, of cardio would be what Giacomo already sort of alluded to, which is like mental health benefits. There are tremendous mental health benefits from doing cardio. So for all of the jokes that we make about cardio and hating it, we actually don’t hate it. It’s very beneficial and everybody should be doing some cardio.

Let’s get into like, you just started talking about there different types of cardio, Giacomo. So we’ve mentioned walking, which I would say is like kind of the lowest intensity form of cardio that there is sometimes called lifts, low intensity, steady state cardio. And usually this is for a long duration, you know, which I wouldn’t necessarily consider a 10 minute walk, cardiovascular.

Right. But you know, an hour long walk, that adds up, you know, so lists are things like walking, treadmill, elliptical. Yeah, those can be done. So anything, treadmill, elliptical, a bike, a rower, any of those things can be done in sort of medium intensity or high intensity. I mean, I guess you could do like a treadmill on low intensity, but the intensity of a machine is usually going to be what you bring to it and what settings you have it on.

So a medium intensity cardio, generally speaking, you’re still going to be able to have a conversation while you’re doing it. You might occasionally have to like catch a breath in the middle of your sentence or something, but you could still carry a conversation. When you are doing higher intensity cardio, you’re not having a conversation.

You might be able to like puff out a word or two at a time and that is high intensity, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s hit, which everybody talks about. Hiit, high intensity interval training. And I

will tell you that most people are doing it wrong.

Giacomo

Meaning they’re not going hard enough. Is that what you’re saying?

Dani

Yeah, I was waiting for you to jump in there, but that’s okay, I got it.

Giacomo

I’m here.

Dani

So most people, when they think of doing interval training or high intensity interval training, people will say, oh, I’m doing hit. And they’re doing like one minute, that’s hard. One minute, that’s easy. One minute, that’s hard. One minute, that’s easy. Or sometimes they’re doing something like a, like Tabata, where it’s like 40 seconds hard 20 second recovery. 40 seconds hard 20 second recovery. Now that is interval training, but it’s not, it’s not what the research is

talking about when it talks about hit, high intensity interval training. High intensity interval training should be you going as hard as your body possibly humanly can for like 20 to 30 seconds. Like gun to your head, you could not keep going. That’s how hard it should be. And then you should need like a couple minutes really to recover from that in order to do it again. And most people are not doing that.

Giacomo

Are we missing any of the cardio modalities here?

Dani

There’s lots of other cardio modalities here, but I wanted to bring up HIIT specifically because a lot of people talk about the benefits of HIIT training being this afterburn. There’s an afterburn to pretty much all training. That afterburn being epoch, excessive post oxygen consumption. This is the fact that your body is basically in an oxygen debt by the time you’re done and you need to breathe more for the rest of the day to kind of catch up on that.

But with hiit, it’s even more extended. So there are some benefits to doing hiit the way I just described it, there’s benefits to doing the easier hit too. It’s just, it’s just not what the research is talking about

when they talk about high intensity interval training. The downside to high intensity interval training is it is incredibly fatiguing. You are basically like sprinting to failure a half a dozen times.

Sprinting to failure. It doesn’t just have to be sprinting. It could be on a bike, it could be. It could be a lot of different things. But anything that requires like 20 seconds of a break that is not high intensity interval training. You should still be like bent over, hands on knees, gasping for air 20 seconds after you’re done. Not ready to go again.

Speaker 3

Hey listeners, we hope you’ve been enjoying this episode and we appreciate your love of all things vegan fitness. For those of you who want even more support on your vegan fitness journey, check out our Muscles by Brussels community and become a member by joining the team. You are one of our exclusive VIPs. As a member you’ll find over 200 macro friendly high protein recipes that can meet any of your meal planning needs.

You’ll also receive training programs that update monthly. This training has progressive overload built into it so you can be sure if you’re following the program you are making progress. All of this and more is located inside our Vegan Proteins Members Only app. As a Muscles by Brussels member, you’ll unlock bonus courses, challenges and more every month.

You’ll also be invited to our live Zoom video calls which happen two times a month and are absolute gold to those who show up. And if you can’t make the calls, don’t worry, you have the opportunity to email us whenever you want. You’ll receive a video response to all of your questions from one of the coaches here at Vegan Proteins every time you message us. Members also receive 40% off many of our other services and of course our private community of like minded individuals is like no

other. Best of all, you can try this membership out for a full month at no cost to you with this special offer for our listeners only because we appreciate and want to fully support you. Use the link in our show notes to sign up for your free trial today. We hope to see you on our next live coaching call.

Giacomo

I think anyone can safely get in upwards of a full hour’s worth of cardio a week. Some combination of cardio in my opinion, without it being considered a lot of cardio or detrimental to their goals.

Dani

Well, I’ll tell you, the American heart association recommends 150 minutes of cardio per week just for everybody. So that is five 30 minute sessions. But those sessions could be walks, right? Those sessions would be walks I think they recommend one hour, so 60 minutes of higher cardio per week. So either or any combination of is for gen pop.

Giacomo

If you’re already exercising, although it’s not a quote unquote cardio session, you are getting your heart rate up by training. So this is where I feel like it’s open to interpretation as opposed to that’s the general rule of thumb for the average person who’s otherwise sedentary. Right. So in my opinion, in the world of athletes, I think you could safely or those pursuing their athletic endeavors, a hundred minutes, I think 100 minutes is fair. The other thing that I feel like.

Dani

Is important, 100 minutes or an hour? Because you said an hour before I.

Giacomo

Did, actually, I guess I meant an hour, but maybe upwards of 100 minutes tops, something like that. I don’t know. I feel like an hour is fair, put it that way. I think an hour’s fair is pretty safe in most scenarios. The other thing I think is important to mention, Danny, is the individual. If you already have the adaptation, meaning like if you’re already used to doing cardio, whether you’re an ultra marathoner, whether you’re a tennis player, whether you just run, whether you’re

a climber, what hiker, whatever it is, if you already do it and then you start strength training. What I have found in my experience working with others is that they are already so adapted to it that in my opinion, it doesn’t make as much of an impact on their ability to train because it’s not going to fatigue them as much. I’m not saying it’s not going to take away if they don’t pull back a little bit, but one, if they’re already enjoying what they’re doing and two, if they already

adapted to it, I think it’s. I don’t think it makes as big of a difference as someone who’s baking it into what they’re doing while they’re training, you know, and they, and they aren’t already doing said cardio. But I also feel like it has to do with one’s personal wants. You know, some people have the need or the desire to train for heart health, right. Or for cardiovascular endurance. That’s just a personal preference. And although it makes the most sense on paper in terms of like,

I don’t know, an optimal way to prescribe for somebody, it. It doesn’t make sense when you apply it to, to the individual. So the old, you know, it goes back to what you say so often. The answer is it depends. It really depends. On the person we have the things that we’ve repeated over and over again. But I, but I always like to set the precedent, at least especially these days where it’s like, yes, this is information, but do not take it as gospel.

Dani

Right?

Giacomo

This information is open to interpretation, depends on you, as opposed to what’s the answer, what’s the, what’s the formula? Formulas are good, but they’re not the end all, be all. Just like when you would program for somebody, you know, as an aside with macros, for example, you’d be like, okay, yeah, here’s, here’s a formula, a mathematical

equation that works. Yes, but does it take the individual into account? You got to consider your own circumstances and your own goals and your own environment and needs.

Dani

So when you talk about first, I think you kind of skipped over the heading of whatever it was you were just talking about. So I think what you’re saying is an athlete could do safely do an hour to a hundred minutes of cardio without it impacting their goals negatively. What do you mean by that? Are you specifically talking about muscle gains?

Giacomo

Any goal with regards to strength training, physique training? I don’t, I don’t feel like that, like any type of strength or physique training goal will be hampered as long as you can recover from what you do. If doing cardio is the difference on top of your training is the difference between you recovering or not. Because you can’t prioritize recovery, you’re not eating well, you’re not sleeping well, you’re not staying hydrated, not managing your stress levels well, and the

cardio puts you over, but it makes you feel good in the moment, then I think it’s, then I think you got to be a little more judicious. But if you’re going to do the cardio and you’re going to prioritize recovery and taking care of yourself, then yes, whether it’s a physique based goal, a strength based goal, or a blend of the two, I do not feel like an hour’s worth of cardio is going to get in the way. And furthermore, I think an hour of.

Dani

Cardio per week, right, Just so we’re.

Giacomo

Being total and not necessarily an hour at once. I don’t think it’s, I don’t think it’s optimal to do one straight hour. I don’t think. I feel like it makes a little more sense to break it up. But, but again, this depends on the person. You know, it depends on what you want, depends on your, your timeline, you Know how you budget time throughout the week, what you want to do when you’re doing cardio, how you want to do it, all kinds of things.

Dani

So I’m going to talk specifically about muscle gains, because I would draw a slightly harder line, I think, than that. If somebody is trying to build muscle and they are having a really hard time doing so, they are not getting the results that they want. Two things generally need to happen. One, they need to probably eat more. That’s probably a large part of it.

But two, I would often also pull back on the cardio. I do absolutely think that you can do so much cardio that it inhibits muscle gains and more, so it can actually waste muscle away if you are doing too much and not eating sufficiently. So there are absolutely cases, and this is like what you were talking about, like, doesn’t take the individual into account. There are absolutely cases where I know somebody loves cardio. I know they’re really, really enjoying it, and that’s fine.

But if the amount of cardio that they’re doing is opposing their goal of building muscle, well, we got to make a decision here. Which one do you want more? Do you want to do cardio more, or do you want to build muscle? There’s no right or wrong answer. But if the answer is no, I really, really want to build muscle, it’s like, okay, well, then we’re probably going to have to dial the cardio back. And that can be really hard for some people, so especially if you’re doing.

Giacomo

A lot of cardio.

Dani

But that can really be the difference between somebody building muscle or not. I see that. So here’s the classic scenario that I see all the time. This is. This is women that this happens to. Primarily, I will have a woman who comes to me, and they have a very particular look that they want to achieve in mind. It’s a very. It’s. It’s muscular, but not super muscular, but lean, but not super shredded.

It’s what most people would call toned. That’s the look that they want. It’s shapely, it’s sculpted. They’re dieting to try to get there, and they’re also hammering themselves with cardio, and they need muscle to achieve that look. Muscle is actually like, step one to achieve that look, and you’re not going to achieve it by eating very little and also doing a ton of cardio. It’s just not going to happen.

The body needs energy to create new tissues. So if you’re not eating enough and burning it all away on an elliptical, you’re not going to build the muscle. Even if you’re training your ass off in the gym, there’s no amount of strength training you can do that’s going to get ahead of the amount of cardio that you’re doing when you’re trying to build a particular shape.

Giacomo

Yeah, I won’t argue that at all. That makes perfect sense to me. Yeah, I. That’s like. That is definitely a trap that many people fall into without even realizing it until it’s too late. And it’s like four years down the line. They wonder why they don’t have the body looking for and they’re putting in so much work. That’s incredibly frustrating, especially when they come aware of it. They’re like, damn this. I mean, it’s

all along.

Dani

That’s tragic. Right? It’s tragic to think about how hard some people are working against themselves. They are working super hard, but literally right into their own way over and over, and it’s devastating. But also when you say, hey, I think we should pull this back, it’s scary because that’s all they know how to do, is just that. And that’s what they’ve always done.

But you know, there is that saying, do what you’ve always done, get what you always got. Like, if you want to achieve something new, you are going to have to do something you’ve never done before, and that’s going to be scary. So, okay, let’s talk about frequency and duration of cardio. So we kind of talked about duration and you kind of touched upon frequency a little bit here.

So you said an hour. I really do think it depends a lot. I would say for just like, for general health, just general health. On top of the strength training people are doing, I also usually recommend that they do like three sessions a week that are 20 to 30 minutes, low to moderate intensity, just for general health. Not to build muscle, not to lose fat, just to stay, like healthy. But when we go into a fat loss phase, deliberately and intentionally that can change.

So I do like to get people down when we’re not losing fat to what I just said, three sessions of 20 to 30 minutes. And I don’t. I mean, occasionally people can drop it below that. If they have a really active job, they don’t need to do any formal cardio at all because their whole life is cardio, kind of. But I usually like to walk the cardio up when I could put somebody into a fat loss phase. How about you?

Giacomo

When I put someone into a fat loss phase, I consider how much Cardio they’re already doing. And I do 10, I do focus on diet first.

Dani

Right.

Giacomo

I prefer to lead with diet. I don’t, I don’t prescribe cardio out the gate almost ever unless the goal is very aggressive. And I also know that they’re highly motivated to do cardio as well. And I feel like they can diet hard and do more cardio. Otherwise I will shy away from cardio in a prescriptive way for at least a solid month, usually more than two months.

Personally, that’s how I like to program for most interesting, you know. Yeah. Unless again, unless they’re like really into cardio, you know, and, and I, I like to see what their body does before that. I, I, I

don’t, I like to start a dieting a fat loss phase with putting a person in the starting position as well as their first couple miles. Let’s, let’s use the analogy of a, of a marathon being 26 marathon, 13.2 miles.

So the first like leg, the first what, three miles or so. I want their body to be in the best shape possible as I enter the phallus phase because that means they’re more likely to finish off and look the way they want to look because their body wasn’t too beat up out the gate, cardio is going to fatigue them. I want them to have a better shape at the end so they have a chance to build a little more muscle, hold on to said muscle so that by the time of dieting really sets in and stalls.

They can use cardio as a tool. And they’re also going to wind up having more muscle at the end because they, they front loaded their efforts by focusing more on muscle gain and muscle maintenance while also prioritizing fat loss as opposed to being like, nope, balance is the main priority. It’s just doing cardio. So I, you know, I, I don’t like to lead with it, but two months in, I’m not afraid to throw in anywhere from like two to upwards of five sessions a week.

You’re starting off with like a bare minimum of 20 minutes a session and working my way up to like upwards of 40 minutes to an hour. That’s, that’s kind of my thing. I think if I, if I were to, if I were, if I were to like write a formula for, for what I tend to lean toward in the middle of the line, it would probably be that.

Dani

Okay. I mean I think that that’s a fine way of doing it. Like, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that at all. I think that’s definitely one way to do it. I do it a little bit differently. I usually figure out how much of a deficit we need to create. The results we’re trying to create, let’s say a pound lost a week or something, that’s 3,500 calories that need to be in.

The deficit needs to be 3500 calories for the week. I will maybe make 2000 or 2500 of that come from the diet, and then the rest of it I will have come from cardio. So I usually do like three quarters of the deficit from diet and a quarter from cardio. But I like, I do like to get that process started because I find that at the beginning of a cut, somebody is usually pretty motivated.

So I like to get that habit started early because I know it’s only going to go up from there. I shouldn’t say always. There are occasionally instances where someone’s in a cut and we do pull back the cardio again for the reason I mentioned earlier, the muscle wasting. If I think we are even touching, getting into a place of burning muscle, I will pull the cardio back.

I actually have a client right now. His name is Alex. By the time this podcast come out, comes out, he will have done his first competition and he’ll be headed into a second competition with Mr. America, with plant build at Mr. America. But we reached a point about halfway through his first prep where all of the sudden he started dropping too fast, faster than I wanted him to drop on the scale.

And we pulled his cardio back to like, like half, basically, we walked it way, way back to slow down that rate of, of loss. So we did not risk burning through any of his precious, precious muscle. But again, everybody’s different. Every situation is different. Sometimes if we’re like pretty far in it, if we’re pretty far into a cut, I will ask when it’s time to make a change, when I realize we’ve hit a bit of a stall or a plateau, I will ask them.

I will say, hey, which one of these two options here sounds less painful to you? Would you like me to remove 75 calories from your daily plan, or would you like me to add 10 minutes to all of your cardio sessions? Because those are basically equal at that point, you know, and sometimes, sometimes I might think adding 10 minutes of cardio would be preferential, but their schedule will not allow it.

So that kind of makes the decision for us. Other people would way rather do more cardio than have their calories Cut. So, you know, there’s, there’s some wiggle room there. There’s some room for individuality in the amount of cardio that somebody is actually doing. One thing I will say is I very rarely, if ever, at this point, prescribe hit training during a prep because of the reasons I mentioned at the beginning.

True hit. First of all, when I do prescribe hit, it is true hit. It’s really, really hard. It is so hard to recover from. It is so fatiguing. And in a prep, you’re already fatigued to death. Like, can you imagine at the end of your last prep, Giacomo, if somebody was like, okay, I’m gonna need you to do eight sprints twice a week?

Giacomo

I can imagine what my legs would feel like after the fact and how I could literally feel my body aching from head to toe. But I would still do it because at that point, you’re gonna do anything you’re. You’re conditioned to. There’s. There’s no. It’s all fight, no flight at that point, there’s no stopping you.

But I can. But I can also think about what that would feel like. Outside of prep, though, I think hit is always open, is on the table for negotiation, depending on what the person wants, as long as they know what they’re getting into.

Dani

Well, I think you got to be really careful with hit specifically, especially when it comes to running. People forget that sprinting is a skill. Like, if you don’t know how to run properly and you try to sprint all out for 30 seconds, you’re going to get hurt. Like, running is already a high risk injury activity anyway. Turn that into sprinting, where you are pounding into the ground as hard and fast as humanly possible for 30 seconds till you almost fall down.

You’re going to get hurt. So when I battle, I was going to say bikes, because I really don’t think battle ropes. I don’t care how hard you’re thrashing, it’s not hard enough for 30 seconds. But bike sprints, like on a spin bike, if you crank the, the resistance on a spin bike up quite a bit and pedal as fast as you possibly can, you are going to gas out by 30 seconds.

When I. I haven’t done them in a while, but the last time I was doing bike sprints like that, I had like eight rounds. So if you think about it, eight rounds of. What I’m talking about is really only four minutes of work. That’s nothing. Four minutes of work, nothing. By, like my fourth or fifth interval, I wasn’t gassing out at 30 seconds. I was gassing out at like 18 seconds. Like I’d hit 18 seconds and my legs would just stop working.

And every interval they would get shorter and shorter, even though I was pushing just as hard. And the pump in your quads is like nothing you’ve ever felt before in your life. Crazy. But I do think that in general, I like hiit. I especially on a bike, I think it’s great. But I do think it, it serves you better to be in a fed, like a well fed state to be doing that kind of activity. Yeah.

Giacomo

And in a well fed state, it, it’s twofold. You become more agile and your cardiovascular endurance gets really tapped into as far as your ability to be able to have better heart health and as well. So.

Dani

So frequency. Let’s talk about frequency. Can you do cardio every single day?

Giacomo

If you’re walking, you could also outside of walking is fine, but anything else outside of that, I would recommend not doing it before you train, do it after you train. And also it’s not even on our list.

Dani

Great thing to bring up. When, when do you do cardio? Great point.

Giacomo

Mm. I mean, if you. Listen, if it’s different, you’re doing it or not and you have to get in, just do it. But ideally after you train.

Dani

Yeah.

Giacomo

Not before. And always, 99% of the time you’re going to be doing it in a bed state.

Dani

Yeah. Fasted cardio. Oh my goodness, have we done. I know, I just recorded a whole reel about this on

Instagram. Fasted cardio and how it is not beneficial. But go dig and look for that. I’m not going to get into all of it right now, but don’t do fasted cardio. I mean, listen, if you’re just walking, you’re probably fine. We all get up and walk around before we eat.

Walking. Not a big deal to do it fasted, in my opinion. But it’s also not beneficial. That’s the thing. Fasted cardio is not beneficial. At best, it is neutral. At absolute best, it is neutral. At worst, it is harmful to any kind of muscle building goals or muscle maintaining goals, even so. Yeah. But to Giacomo’s point, yeah, cardio after the lifting, you lift first, you do cardio later.

Or you can split them up into separate parts of your day entirely. Like if you like doing cardio right when you wake up, that’s cool. Do your cardio right when you wake up, do your lifting in the afternoon or the evening. That’s another option. You know, if you have all the time in the world.

Giacomo

Cardio on training days or cardio only on non training days?

Dani

Yeah, cardio on training days is fine. Yeah. If someone wants to space it out so they’re doing cardio on their rest days. I don’t usually have a problem with that either. I sometimes, if I have the option, which is not often, but if I have the option, I will try to not schedule cardio right after a heavy leg day. Meaning, like, I won’t schedule it on the same day. If I have the option, I’ll put it on a different day, but a lot of times I don’t have the option.

So people will say, is it, I heard it’s not okay to do cardio on the same day that you trained legs. I mean, it’s not 100% ideal, but the difference is like so negligible that if that’s what works best for the schedule you’re working with, then I think it’s totally fine.

Giacomo

Fair enough.

Dani

So last on your list here you have listening to your body. Tell me what you mean by that, because I have not the foggiest.

Giacomo

Listening to your body would mean paying attention to how sore you are. If your muscles are sore and they’re not recovering the way they normally would have to work out, and you know it’s because of

cardio, you have a decision to make. If your muscles listen. If you’ve been training for a while, which I assume some of you are not within your first three to six months worth of training, and if those of you who are pay attention because you’ll, you’ll wind up at some point reaching this

scenario, I think many of you will. You know what it feels like to train. You know what it feels like to recover. Long after the first couple months, the honeymoon phase of falling in love with working out. Once you start to throw cardio in, you can, you can feel how your body’s recovering and how sore it is, or not because of the cardio that you’re doing.

And now you can understand what that would do to your ability. And also, you know, like, what’s happening when you try to lift weights. Are you progressing? Are you getting stronger? Are you stagnant? Does the, is the weight, is the movement pattern different? Does it feel like more of a struggle bus? All these things are directly related to your cardio and how your cardio impacts your training and your recovery.

And I think it’s all worth paying attention to because the cardio makes you feel good and serves a need and has a. And has a benefit. But what is it doing when you pay attention to its impact on your body in terms of your training, you know, your performance and your recovery?

Dani

All right, moving on to our question and answer segment here. Giacomo, how do you get your gym motivation back? I’ve been slacking so bad and I just don’t feel as passionate anymore. It’s so hard to go. I’ll be consistent for like a week and then not go for up to a month and it’s a cycle and it makes me sad.

Giacomo

Yeah, that would make me sad too. There are times where the motivation will absolutely not be there. And I feel like it’s only natural to go back to a point in time where you used to, to lift and wonder why you don’t feel like that anymore. I also think it’s normal to reason with yourself and think about the routine that you had and try to get it back and then get saddened and frustrated that you’re not able to have that routine and just compare yourself to the routine from the past as well

as how the training made you feel. And the reality is that that isn’t self sabotage. However, it’s not going to be where you are at right now. What you, what my recommendation to do is, is to accept that for what it is and to realize like you may be, you may very well already be in routine and six months into your training and still not feel good and still not feel motivated.

I do think that at some point though, you will wind up feeling a new type of way about training again, even if you’re, even if getting into it, you didn’t feel like that. So my recommendation is when all else fails to show up, to continue to show up for yourself even when it hurts, even when it doesn’t feel good, even when you’re not motivated. And if you can get that routine going and also be real little realistic about where you’re at.

If you were training four days a week in the past and you, and you’re training two days a week right now, so be it, start off with two or three days a week, start off with 30, 45 minutes and build on top of that and try to think about how you’ll feel eventually down the line, regardless of whether, and just focus on getting into routine. Those are my thoughts as far as getting back at it.

Because it’s so easy to beat yourself up for, for where you’re not right now and compare yourself to where you were, you were at a different point in your life. It felt different. You, you know all of that. It’s going to look different for you now. So just be a little easier on yourself while you’re getting back into a new routine.

And eventually down the line, it should feel. It should feel the way you want it to feel, or at least you hope that it will. And if it doesn’t, hey, at least you’re taking care of yourself. I got a question for you, Danny. Danny, how do you feed a vegan 3 year old so they grow healthy and strong?

Dani

Oh boy. Well, I don’t consider myself to be an expert on this by any stretch of the imagination. I am not an expert in childhood nutrition at all and there certainly are many people who are, so I would definitely check those folks out for sure. Drina Burton has quite a few cookbooks that are geared towards vegan kids that I have had some success with some of the recipes in there.

But I think there are a couple of really important things to keep in mind. So the first thing that I would say is I would give any 3 year old, vegan or not, a multivitamin because anybody who’s ever met a three year old knows that they are picky as hell and sometimes they will go through phases where they will only eat one food over and over again for many, many weeks and they won’t eat anything but that one food.

So I think a multivitamin that has vitamin B12 and vitamin D in it I think is really important, period for any kid. Past that, I would say you want to make sure that you’re giving them lots of choices from lots of food groups, so lots of different vegetables. There’s lots of studies that say the more you introduce a variety of fruits and vegetables to kids at a young age, the more likely they are to like them when they get older.

So lots of fruits and fruits and vegetables, but not just fruits and vegetables. This is where a lot of vegan parents screw up and make the news by hurting their kids really bad is they do nothing but feed them fruits and vegetables, which is not, not a great idea. They need grains, they need potatoes and tubers, they need beans, lots of beans, lots of healthy fats, nuts, seeds, avocados, things like that, tofu, edamame, tempeh.

Get them to try lots and lots of different things. And also, you know, don’t beat yourself up if the only thing that they will eat is, I don’t know, like Annie’s organic graham cracker bunnies or something like that. Like the most important thing with kids at that age is that they are getting enough food to grow. So, you know, There’s a ton of like mom shaming out there for what people will feed their kids.

And you know, I used to have my own opinions about this sort of thing as well. But until you are staring a three year old in the face that will not eat, they can be stubborn for days sometimes. Sometimes what they are going to eat is going to be vegan chicken nuggets and frozen french fries

and that’s what they’re going to eat. You know, obviously if they’ve not had these things before, they can’t really crave them.

So, you know, take that for what it’s worth. But once, once something has been introduced, there it is. And I think kids should be taught that no food is like good or bad. The host of issues that will set a kid up for if they are taught that some foods are bad is high. So I think more, more important to talk about how there’s like always foods and sometimes foods or something like that, something that’s a little bit better and taught to listen to their body and not taught that they need to

clean their plate all the time, etc. But how much food does a kid that’s three years old actually need? Somewhere in the vicinity of 40 calories per pound. So if your kid, if your three year old is like 35 pounds, let me do some quick math here. 35 pounds times 40 calories, whoops. Not 340 calories is 1400 calories. So you know, don’t stick your kid on a meal plan or give them macros like an adult might follow if they have goals.

But you know, that should be like sort of the ballpark. They might need more than that and that’s fine. But you don’t want to have them consistently be under eating. But in my experience, which is limited, right? I have limited experience here feeding vegan kids a wide variety of foods and talking to them about things like hunger and snacks. And Daisy asked me the other day, she said, what do you do when you’re not hungry but you want to eat food? And like holy girl, I made an entire

career out of talking to people about. Exactly. So we had a good conversation about it. But food conversations with kids I think are really, really important. But at three, lots of variety, lots of fun around food, lots of colors. And Daisy and Desmond, who first came to us when they were five and a half months and two and a half years, are now four and six and a half healthy, great on their height, weight, developmental stuff, all things very good. Vegan since birth.

Giacomo

All right, everybody, thanks so much for tuning in to another episode of Vegan Proteins Muscles by Brussels Radio. Stay in touch with us on socials. Hit the contact button on veganproteins.com and you will receive a video response from one of us. Consider joining one of our challenges or get a membership with Mussels by Brussels and to be a part of a community once again.

Dani

My name is and I’m Danny.

Giacomo

And we’ll talk to you soon.