Strength vs Cardio vs Flexibility

logg1e

I did tonnes of cardio and yoga whilst losing weight, and fell in love with both. Now I'm transitioning in to maintenance. My daily calorie allowance is going up 100 per week and I'm doing less cardio. Weight-loss is slowly levelling off.

I'd like to focus more on building muscle, but am struggling due to a few things - I'm still technically in a deficit. I'm missing the cardio, but weight-lifting zaps my energy and I'm slightly less flexible in yoga.

I'd really appreciate hearing how you decide what workouts and classes to do at the gym, what rest days to have etc so that I can figure out how best to spend my time so that I get stronger without losing my speed, stamina and enjoyment of the other classes.

ana3067

I do the workouts that coincide with my goals. Since my goals are to be at a low body fat and in the future to bulk up my muscles, I strength train with just a bit of cardio.

If you enjoy cardio, then do that. If I wanted to I could actually do lots of cardio - my energy is just fine. Chances are you're either eating at too much of a deficit still, doing too much at the gym, not warming yourself up properly, not fueling yourself properly, working out too long, things like that.

Yoga is a weight-bearing exercise, so chances are you will need to either change the type you do so that you are mostly just stretching and not actually using body weight that much, or you'll need to cut it out entirely.

If you want to build muscle, then you need to eat at a caloric surplus.

I work out on a push/pull split 4x a week, 3 rest days. I do 10 minutes of cardio after weights, and have an optional 20-30 minute cardio session once a week on one of my rest days.

logg1e

Chances are you're either eating at too much of a deficit still, doing too much at the gym, not warming yourself up properly, not fueling yourself properly, working out too long, things like that.

I think I'm doing most of these and it's that realisation that's led me to start this thread and to ask others for ideas.

I read a lot about people doing 10 minutes cardio before strength. The cardio I enjoy are 45 minute classes such as spin. If I'm doing both I do my weight-lifting first. I think I'll have to cut these classes down to about three per week.

How does this sound? Two days of weights only, two of cardio only, one of both (perhaps different ends of the day) and two complete rest days. Yoga is generally a Les Mills Body Balance class, so not pure yoga. There aren't too many of those on offer at the gym, so I tend to do one when other commitments allow.