5 Cardio Mistakes - MAKING YOU FATTER!!!

These are the 5 worst Cardio Mistakes making you lose muscle and making you fatter. If you're wondering: does cardio kill muscle gains or does it really help with getting ripped? Well if your goal is to lose weight & burn belly fat with cardio this video will help answer these questions. Learn if it is necessary for fat loss or weight loss and whether weight training is better for muscle growth and a better body composition. Avoid these common gym workout mistakes. You'll be glad you did.

Timestamps:
#1 - Thinking More Cardio Means More Fat Loss: 0:54
#2 - Thinking Cardio Is The Best Way to Burn Fat: 4:02
#3 - Doing Cardio With No Strength Training: 4:59
#4 - Not Switching Up Your Cardio Workout: 6:09
#5 - Aiming For Your Target Heart Rate Zone: 7:17
5 Ways To Ensure You're Doing Cardio Correctly: 9:04

If you've been doing a ton of cardio but you're not losing any weight or if your planning to start incorporating a lot more cardio to lose some extra body fat you're definitely going to want to first watch this video. Because even though cardio can be very beneficial if done correctly most of the people that you see at the gym spending countless hours on the treadmill, eliptical, and stairclimber are doing it completely wrong. And many of them look the same week after week and month after month because without even knowing it they're setting themselves back further rather than making progress with their weight and especially their body composition. So today I want to go over the biggest cardio mistakes that cause you to waste your time and can even make you fatter rather than leaner. After I go over the 5 mistakes I'll give you the 5 best ways to actually incorporate cardio into your routine the right way so stick with me through his video. Let's start with by far the biggest cardio mistake...believing that more cardio equals more fat loss. I know it might sound unbelievable that too much cardio can hurt your weight loss efforts more than it can help you, but I assure you this is true. So how does too much cardio lead to less and less fat loss. Well first of all due to the low intensity high volume nature of steady state cardio our bodies will perceive long duration steady state cardio as a prolonged stressor. If you do too much cardio it causes your body to release hormones that are bad for fat loss like cortisol which can make your body store more fat instead of burning it. As you increase the time you spend doing cardio per week closer and closer to that of an endurance athlete studies show that cortisol levels rise significantly. Now people that are big supporters of prolonged cardio sessions counter this by saying that overtraining with any kind of exercise can lead to higher levels of cortisol. And this is true, but we see these elevated levels in endurance athletes much more than in strength athletes. When cortisol is elevated your cells become resistant to insulin, you experience more inflammation throughout your body, and you'll also feel hungrier because of the effect that cortisol has on your hunger regulating hormones ghrelin and leptin. A change in your appetite will likely negatively affect your body fat percentage much more than your cardio sessions will positively effect it. By doing too much cardio you will find yourself hungrier not only directly after your cardio sessions but also long after you're done. And unfortunately unlike weight training cardio does not continue burning calories hours after you're done. If you over do it and that causes you to become really hungry not only can you eat so much that you negate the calories burnt from your workout, but you can even eat more calories than you ever lost from your workout to begin with causing you to store body fat. Another hormone that could become an issue for people that run really long distances is testosterone. Extreme endurance workouts over a long period of time have been shown to lower the production of testosterone. Another thing to consider is that as you do more and more cardio your body will adapt more and more. Your muscles, lungs, and heart will all become more efficient at handling the cardio workout and you'll burn less and less calories from the same workout. As you do more cardio, your cardio workouts start to obide by the law of diminishing returns. This is one of the reasons why people usually overestimate the amount of calories....

References:

Elevated Coritsol In Endurance Athletes

Decreased Testosterone in Extreme Endurance Athletes

[GravityTransformation]

Many of the comments are coming from people that read the title and see the thumbnail but dont watch the video. In the beginning i say that "some of these mistakes may even make you fatter."

The most obvious one that can make you gain body fat is mistake number 3. If you think your cardio sessions will make up for a bad diet you do in fact run the risk of gaining body fat. Everyones heard the term "you cant outrun a bad diet." I dont think that mistake is up for debate.

Another mistake I mention is related to general adaption syndrome. You can be overestimating the amount of calories you burn because over time your body adapts and will burn less calories. This happens because your body becomes more efficient at that cardio workout. This is why you should change it up. Overestimating the amount of calories you burn daily is a big problem for people that are trying to burn fat or lose weight. Any busy personal trainer out there can give you story after story of women he or she knows that spent everyday doing long cardio sessions but plateaued and just couldnt lose a single pound even though they were on the eliptical everyday. This is due to general adaption syndrome in combination with adaptive thermogenesis. So it is a big mistake to not at the very least switch up your workouts. 

Next is the issue of muscle mass. If youre trying to bulk up and gain muscle too much cardio will make the process much much harder for you. If you do way too much cardio it will be impossible for you to gain muscle mass especially after you've already experienced the intial nuebie gains. Too much cardio without supplementing with a strength training program will likely lead to muscle loss. This will slow your metabilism making you burn less calories at rest. If one day you happen to want to stop running miles upon miles, a slower metabolism can lead to gaining fat.

Lastly too much long duration cardio too often is likely to cause injuries to your joints. The same can be said for overdoing any activity but if you're strength training you can split up your body parts and allow all your joints adequate rest. On then other hand if you're running 5 days a week you're slamming your knee hip and ankle joints into the ground over and over again all week long. If you do get an injury and you have to take weeks off to heal busted up knees from running it wont be helping your body composition. 

One last thing i should mention is my personal experience. I used to run 7 miles straight 3 times a week. This would take me 1hr to 1hr 10 minutes to complete. I was doing slow long duration steady state running. Although I did not get "fatter" per say after doing this for months my body fat didnt change much but my body composition did suffer. My levels of lean muscle mass were significantly lower than if I were to just focus on strength training and diet like i normally do before a modeling shoot. During this time I was also only eating one meal a day. So i wasnt making mistake number 3 of thinking that my cardio sessions would make up for a bad diet. If I was making that mistake I couldve very easily gained body fat. I also was still weight training the other days of the week so I wasnt making that mistake either. This helped me maintain muslce mass, but once agian the results from training this way couldnt compare to my results from just focusing on strength training, diet, and one or two hiit sessions a week. After spending a couple months running like this I also sustained a knee injury and a hip injury that still bothers me now months later. Maybe if I ran on grass instead of pavement or used an eliptical i could have avoided those injuries. I still run long distances but only once a week or every two weeks max. My other cardio sessions consist of hiit and boxing.

Cardio is great, but just like weight lifting it can be done wrong if your goal is to produce an aesthetic body. Lots of angry cardio queens out there are missing the point entirely. For those of you that actually watched the video with an open mind, I really hope it has helped. If you watch the video you'll see my goal isnt to prevent you from doing cardio its simply to prevent you from doing it wrong. Doing it correctly can definitely help you burn body fat, and it can improve your health as well as your cardiovascular function

[GiacomoMiola]

Plenty of people only care about exterior look...running helps your brain, your heart, lungs, legs, cardiovascular system, ecc...far more important than some muscles, DO IT

[rubenmon]

I have never seen an overweight long distance runner in my entire life.

[DeanSC]

The strongest point here is EATING. The hardest discipline of all.

[jamesharrison]

Making you fatter? Literally NO type of exercise would make you fatter.

[kingchaching]

As a former athlete any type of running will help you lose weight!!

[fionandanu]

Me: Runs for 15 mins
Also me: Am I exercising too much ?

[anytimeelgin]

Every time he uses the phrase "your body becomes more & more efficient" what that REALLY says is that your body is getting HEALTHIER & STRONGER. Don't skip cardio guys. Seriously.

[paulgarcia]

Lol... I've been running for 45 years and I'm in the better shape than a 20 year olds so I disagree with this.

[abdullahalokozay]

I am doing more cardio. nothing like that happen. I lost my weight. and gain strength.

[MsGerti]

i have benn runing now for 2 weeks in the morning and it really helps with everything stress lose weight and durability

[sjsjshbejs]

hours on a treadmill for even a week will make an impact

[shshivaranjani]

That's the most discouraging thing I've come across since i actually started exercising. Cortisol is heavily associated with depression but lemme just say I'm psychologically and emotionally at a better place than I've been ever before. Keep on running y'all.

[sandeepshetty]

i do cardio...but not for weight loss...for conditioning...weight loss is primarily a diet derivative...cardio is a must for developing two KEY muscle groups...the heart and the lungs

[honestlynate]

I've increased my cardio by almost 200% over the past two months. I can firmly agree that more cardio has made me more hungry. However, I have been combating that by drinking more water. And you can never out train a bad diet

[mutafire]

As long as you raise the heartbeat and as long as you do it over and over again, it is not time wasted.

[Pbennett]

From my experience, I lost about 90 pounds in 3 months from running 3 miles 6 days a week and playing basketball. No weight lifting. I went from running 3 miles in 42 minutes to running in 22 minutes. And my fastest 1 mile was at 6 minutes. After that I did strength training for 3 months and only ran 3 times a week, basically Wednesday, Saturday, and Sunday. I think my diet played the major key. But it’s just up to the person on what they’re looking for.

[cebukid]

This guy has obviously never gotten a "runner's high". Distance running has many benefits outside of "looking good".... it's got cognitive, emotional, psychological, endorphin-releasing benefits. A "balanced" distance running training routine will, in fact, produce these benefits and you'll still look and feel great.

[Neotidus]

Sprint or jog, if your nutrition is good you will lose weight.

[angeliquebenavidez]

You can never waste your time being active! It will benefit you no matter what ❤️