Can I do cardio in my "bulking" phase

gemmaleigh1989

I put "bulking" in quotations as I obviously don't have plans to be a body builder but do want to gain some good muscle. At the moment I do les mills classes 5 times I week, love them. I'm still trying to cut but once I'm down to my ideal Bf% I am going to start eating at maintenance level and then at a small surplus while doing some serious lifting to gain muscle. My question is, do I have to give up cardio during this phase? I'm planning to cut back to 3 classes a week... Or would this still be counterproductive? I'd be eating back my exercise calories of course and then some to reach my surplus so this should prevent any harm won't it? The classes focus on interval training and not steady endurance cardio if that helps...

JenMc14

The "traditional wisdom" is to scale back because its counter intuitive to muscle gain. You could do a few HIIT sessions if you really feel you want it, but just play it by ear. Keep good track of your measurements to see if its affecting you at all. If it seems you're gaining more fat and less muscle than you'd like, scale it back a bit. It's really all very individual and a great big science experiment.