Traditional cardio, glucose tolerance, and cortisol

[Frosty]

Okay this is something that I'd like to hear some discussion on. Traditional cardio seems to get a bad rap but there is a ton of evidence on it being beneficial for glucose tolerance, which never hurts. The biggest argument against traditional cardio seems to be that it increases cortisol, but this only seems to be the case if it's really intense or if it lasts a long time like 45-60 minutes or longer.

However, regardless of the diet, what if the cardio is kept to just 20 minutes? This seems, based on research, to be long enough to improve glucose tolerance but without raising cortisol levels.

So could traditional cardio have a good place in almost any program assuming it isn't very intense and it's kept to only 20 minutes?

[figurebre]

Bumping this thread.

I have done a lot of experimenting myself with cardio this last month. I took 5 weeks off completely. I get much better pumps when lifting and I am much more sore the next day. I actually, have gotten a little bit tighter from the break and all of my vitals are still obnoxiously healthy.
I was going to slowly increase the cardio in. 2 15 min sessions a week, addiing an additional 15 minutes per week.
It is also probably important to mention prior to the break I was burning atleast 3500 calories a week in cardio.

[natron]

Okay this is something that I'd like to hear some discussion on. Traditional cardio seems to get a bad rap but there is a ton of evidence on it being beneficial for glucose tolerance, which never hurts. The biggest argument against traditional cardio seems to be that it increases cortisol, but this only seems to be the case if it's really intense or if it lasts a long time like 45-60 minutes or longer.

However, regardless of the diet, what if the cardio is kept to just 20 minutes? This seems, based on research, to be long enough to improve glucose tolerance but without raising cortisol levels.

So could traditional cardio have a good place in almost any program assuming it isn't very intense and it's kept to only 20 minutes?

This a great idea for nutrient partitioning, although I still prefer short term HIiT style cardio, I'll admit, I do this quite often

[Frosty]

This a great idea for nutrient partitioning, although I still prefer short term HIiT style cardio, I'll admit, I do this quite often

Just thinking out loud here....with strenuous training programs it seems like HIIT would be rough on recovery. Unless you worked to increase your work capacity to handle it.

[natron]

Just thinking out loud here....with strenuous training programs it seems like HIIT would be rough on recovery. Unless you worked to increase your work capacity to handle it.

Yeah, you wouldn't be able to perform it quite often. In the past few years I've switched to my own tailored for of cardio though, and it's worked great. But that is for another discussion as I'm currently writing an article on it.

[natron]

I should add my HIIT cardio sessions were very short, only 12-15 minutes

[bodimajestik]

This is how I do my Cardio...20 minutes of fast walk on Treadmill(no running)...15 minutes of cycle moderate base but fast enough,10 minutes on stepper and I get results....overdoing cardio wont help much. you will loose your hard earned muscle mass. We need to remember that we also do burn calories while intense weight training sessions. So burning fat is all about diet and optimum cardio and weight training. I am saying this becz few years back I was just doing cardio like crazy just like an average Joe....and I didn't get good results plus I started getting weak in my lifts. Then only thing I did was I just reduced my fat and carbs intake and also reduced the cardio. Weight training was pretty much the same....Just making a little change in my diet yield me good results....So anyone who thinks that doing 2 hours of cardio daily will help burn more fat is just wasting an extra effort....