what type of cardio if i already have really muscular legs?

bluemax87

1) Cardio doesn't TARGET muscles for energy. Your blood does when fat stores are not enough.

2) the way it was explained to me (and obviously is up for debate as I'm not a Subject Matter Expert) was like this: the first 20 minutes of any cardio workout, your blood looks for water. Where do you store water? the majority of it goes to your muscles because they burn more resting calories than anything else. After that first 20 minutes, the blood THEN targets the fat cells in your body for energy. This is the way the body was programmed and (apparently) we can do only a little to change this part of the cycle. The part where your blood goes back to burning muscle is when you do a cardio workout for over 60 minutes (again, this is what I was told, not what I've been shown by medical evidence). The reason for this transfer is because muscles store more energy than fat cells and after the 60 minute mark in your cardio the body doesn't get the quality of 'fuel' from fat as it does from muscles.

3) I refuse to use a Heart Rate Monitor. Not even the ones on the elliptical or treadmill. For me, I can hit my 'target heart rate zone' at about 4.0 mph, and I hit the 'cardio zone' by 5.5 mph. This is crap for me because I need to run faster. I have the ability to run faster. I don't feel very fatigued at 5.5 mph on the treadmill. So, to me, the target heart rate zone is more for those people who don't have the endurance level to maintain a higher heart rate.

4) I wouldn't worry too much about the size of your calves. Even though you may think they're ugly, they are very beneficial to your running capability!

chrisdavey

If you are eating at a calorie deficit then it is going to be VERY hard for your calves to get any bigger using any sort of cardio machine that has been mentioned. Don't know if you know but calves are notoriously one of the hardest muscles for body builders to make grow. Quite often it is a genetic thing, that you either have them or you don't.

TrainingWithTonya

i dont have an HRM, i use the one attached to the machine that asks for my age, weight, gender. After my warm up on level 1 i go up to level 10-12 and my HR shoots way up to 175-ish... i havent really paid attention to my HR before until people started saying that its way to high and i need to slow down to get into "fat burning" zone...

Do you consume caffeine within 12 hours of your workout? What about allergy or asthma medications? Those will all increase heart rate artificially and throw off HRM's and any of the "fat burning zone charts" for estimating how hard you are working. Blood pressure medications will throw them off too, in the opposite way. Some other meds will effect HR too. So, just relax and don't worry so much about the zones if you are on anything, drink soda (even diet), or eat chocolate, or ...........

none of that my trainer said IF i do go on the treadmill for cardio to keep my heart rate at 135 thats VERY low.. i can barely get it that low if i'm even pushing a little!

Okay, I decided to look at your logs to see if I could see something. And I did. Starbucks, Daily. There's your caffeine. Also, I don't know if you are taking any supplements you aren't logging, but a lot of them have caffeine too. I wouldn't worry about it and just focus on getting your workout in and feeling comfortable doing it. If you were to base it on a scale of 1-10, one being laying around doing nothing and 10 being working so hard to feel like you are dying, you should work out between 5-7.