So the age-old myth;
Does cardio kill your progress in the gym? And if so, how?
The mechanism basically breaks down to how the enzymes
and the protein transcription within the muscle is happening.
There are two competing pathways the mTOR
or Mechanistic Targeting of Rapamysin and the AMPK AMP Activated Protein Kinase
The mTOR pathway is closely related to your anabolism
which is building up of things.
That's when we take energy and create muscle cells we grow and we repair.
Meanwhile the AMPK pathway,
that's more about catabolism or breakdown.
That's taking glucose, fatty acids and amino acids
breaking them down and making energy.
Basically when you think mTOR think straight and high
and when you think AMPK
think endurance and mitochondrial biogenesis.
mTOR is basically up regulated by state of rest and digest or feast.
High energy or food intake, heavy resistance training
or explosive power training, rest and sleep to counteract that training
High insulin levels, that comes back to the food again,
and then good anabolic hormone levels.
Growth hormone in particular but also IGF-1 or insulin like growth factor 1
These guys will trigger mTOR to fire up.
Which is basically the life of a bodybuilder,
a power lifter or a sprinter. Train at super high intensity,
get plenty of rest, eat like a horse, and sleep really well.
On the other hand AMPK is activated basically by one thing,
an increased level of AMP in your muscle.
ATP is the stuff our body uses for energy.
That's tiny.
I'll just start again.
ATP is the stuff that our body uses for energy.
When you break that ATP down you get energy on one side
and you get a molecule called ADP on the other side.
When you do moderate intensity, high volume training,
because of all that work that ADP also is broken down
further into more energy. Not as much this time.
But on the other side you also now get a product called AMP.
That AMP, that's the guy that triggers your AMPK pathway
and starts you back on this more aerobic,
more mitochondrial biogenesis pathway.
Which sounds a lot like the life of an endurance athlete.
Lots of medium intensity training at high volumes
done basically every day of the week.
Back to the big question and the answer is basically yes.
If you spend too much time in the middle zone for intensity.
In this zone of interference you're going to up regulate
your AMPK by having high levels of AMP in the muscle.
Which will inhibit and block your mTOR which is going to
get in the way of muscle growth.
Now the big thing with this
the side effects of this middle zone training.
Number one; It inhibits your hypertrophy stimulus
your ability to promote muscle growth.
It reduces your strength, speed and power
by blocking your Type II and making you
more Type I muscle fibre dominant.
It also causes neural fatigue
and it's going to exhaust the nervous system.
It drains and destroys your glycogen stores which is a big factor
when it comes to power athletes and power sports.
The other thing is -- The last and most important thing
is it's not going to help you with your sporting fitness.
Doing a lot of low to moderate intensity work
it doesn't actually get you ready for the explosiveness
and the aggressiveness that you need to exhibit on a court, on a field
or on a running track if you're a power athlete.
A much better option is to do your active recovery work
in a low enough intensity to avoid any interference
with your strength and power gains.
And then do your high intensity work with sprints
and intervals at a high enough intensity
to help you on the court or the field.
What are you doing? I’m tagging some footage.
Whilst? Hitting the cardio.
I’m not going to lose it because I’ve got videos tonight.
All I have to do is just hit one button
so I might as well just bike and hit the button
as opposed to sit and hit the button.