Getting back into cardio: I give up on my weights-only approach

I decided to do an experiment using my own body as the test subject for about 6 weeks. I had decided to completely ignore cardio and focus only on weights to see what the results would be. After 6 weeks I can say that I am happy with the muscle growth but also not so happy about a number of other things as far as fitness is concerned.

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_{neither of these people are me}

This is a large group of people that subscribe to a weights only, no cardio approach to fitness and for a lot of them, this system actually works. However, after my experiment I think I have narrowed down why this is not going to work for me and mostly it has to do with diet. I drink a lot of beer compared to your average fitness enthusiast and as everyone knows the calories are completely useless as far as weight loss or maintenance is concerned. I am aware of this but because I believe that life should be about balance it is a part of my life that I am completely unwilling to forego. I also wouldn't say that I am terribly dedicated to my diet either outside of getting a lot of protein in there.

This approach was fantastic for growing muscle because in 6 weeks or so, I put on 5 kg of weight and most of it anyway, appeared to be muscle. I don't know for sure because all I have to base this on is the guy who is looking at me in the mirror and nothing else. I don't have access to advance equipment to measure BMI or body fat percentage and I think for most people, just taking photos and comparing them week-by-week is enough.

At the start I weighed around 85 kg and this was when I was focusing more on cardio than weights. I would run a 5k nearly every day, sometimes more. I would also hit the weights a few times a week just to remind my upper body that I wasn't done with it yet. However, I was never really pushing myself in the gym and trying to reach for personal bests or really even trying to max out at all. I was in there just to keep the juices flowing in my upper body to hopefully maintain muscle mass.

When I changed over to 6 days a week of weights for about an hour or an hour and a half with very little in the way of breaks I had convinced myself that I was getting cardio in there in a round-about way which is true to a certain degree, but after 6 weeks of doing only weights I have noticed some negative effects that I would prefer were not the case.

For starters, I have less energy during the day. When I was doing the 5k runs every day, I found that for the rest of the day following it that I had more energy. I almost never felt this way about weights. I guess the stress that I was putting on my body was not enough and the burst of energy for hours after the run simply wasn't there. This of course could be a mental thing on my part and I am not going to try to say that this applies to everyone.

After 6 weeks of weights-only training, I could see and feel good gains in my muscle mass but also notices that since I didn't curb my alcohol intake and was no longer doing ANY cardio exercises, that my belly had become more profound. Sure, this was always going to happen for someone whose major source of carbs came in a brown bottle, but I was no longer keeping it at bay with the cardio.

The obvious answer here would be for me to not drink beer but as I mention time and time again, this is a part of my life that I am not willing to give up. I exercise so that I can drink beer for the most part.

At the end of 6 weeks I can say that I was very impressed with my gains but there were other unintended consequences that I never thought I would experience. For one thing, I now have a limited range of motion as far as reaching my back is concerned. I am not trying to compare my self to elite bodybuilders or anything because I am certainly not that, but I recall hearing stories about how these beefcakes can barely reach behind them at all. So I suppose you could say that I was in the beginning stages of that.

By the end of my experiment I am 92kg and while I am happy with the muscular growth, I felt very disappointed when I tried to do what used to be an easy run the other day. I set out just to do 1.6 km (one mile) jog and found that I couldn't even do that. Keeping in mind that just a month and a half ago that this was very easy for me to do and I have to say that perhaps going all in on weights might not be the best idea.

Cardiovascular health is very important, probably more important than getting bulked up and therefore I am going to return to a more balanced exercise regimen. I am going to return to mostly focusing on cardio and mixing in some weights 3 times a week.

There is only one way that I can make this happen and that is going to be getting on a dreaded treadmill because since it is warm outside now I will be far too sweaty after a run to hit the weights afterwards. I also have a mental block that disables my ability to do weights first and cardio after. This is just a personal issue. Therefore, the only way I can accomplish weights and cardio on the same day is to use a treadmill that is in the same room as the weight stack.

Instead of pushing for higher weight levels I am going to attempt to maintain my muscle mass by hitting around 75% of my max after an easy 30 minute run/walk on the treadmill. Hopefully I can find some good Spotify talk radio to keep my mind occupied during those 30 minutes because I despise running on treadmills. However, it does seem to be the only way forward.

I'm not trying to tell anyone out there what their exercise program should look like and this is all just an experiment that I am doing on myself. If it ends up giving someone out there an idea about what to do that is great though.

_{I'm not a super fitness guru by any means but I did manage to lose over 50 lbs in my 40s, which is a very difficult time in one's life to accomplish such a feat. I believe if I can do it that other people can as well}