Pushing yourself during cardio

In each of your workouts you are accomplishing something different. Workout A is more cardio focused which is why you find yourself out of breath. Workout B is more strength and recovery focused. You are going long periods of time with med-high resistance causing you to use your muscles more and burning more energy, which accounts for the sweating. I think you are pushing yourself hard enough I both your workouts. Keep up the great work!

Sweat is your body's method of cooling off. It just means you got hot, not that you worked out more. For me, I go by breathing. If I'm gulping air, I'm going to hard. If I can chit-chat, I'm going too slow.

39laurita39 wrote: »

cwolfman13 wrote: »

Pushing yourself hard enough for what? If you look at the way runners and cyclist train, it's not all about going as hard as you can all of the time.

To get the most out of your workout, I guess?
Performing in different ways makes you burn more/less calories right?

Kinda. Calories burnt are going to be a product of your average power (can think of this as pace for running) during the workout. In other words, if you do a running workout where you alternate 200m at 6:00 mile pace with 200m at 10:00 mile pace, and do that for 4 miles, you'll burn the same calories as you would if you can 4 miles in a steady 32'.

Now, as a general rule, at very high exercises intensities you can burn the most calories by going at an even, steady pace. On the bike I can ride at 330w for 45'. That burns approximately 900 calories. If I tried to alternate doing 480w/180w for 30s at a time, I wouldn't be able to go for 45', I might only be able to go for 10'. If I wanted to go for 45', I might need to do 420w/120w, which would only average 270w, and burn about 750 kcal.

That said, the workout that burned more calories would not neccessarily be "harder". It would just be a different kind of hard. These different kinds of hard accomplish different things depending on what your goals are.

If you want to burn calories, then just about anything that keeps you active and moving is good. If you want to get "fitter" then the goal should always be to increase the overall training volume (i.e. go from 3 hours per week to 4 hours per week), the intensity (ride the hard parts harder), or the recovery (make the recovery harder/shorter). Their always has to be progression to drive improvement.

I'm not as knowledgeable as a lot of people on here when it comes to muscle development. All I know is that I gained 10 lbs of muscle over around 2 years moving from running and lifting to mostly rowing (and some lifting). I do think that you can build muscle over time but it's not going to be obvious. Look at professional biker's legs. Most believe that the best way to build muscle is low reps and I'd agree with that probably but that's more important for strength. Many trainers well respected (including Pavel Tsatsouline) have said don't neglect high rep/low weight work too, especially for legs. Women will only gain so much muscle because they don't have the Testosterone men have. And your legs won't get bigger (or shouldn't) until you reach a very low BF level, so to answer your question, yes, I think you can build functional muscle and get much more toned. But you're not going to get much bigger (if at all being female).

https://www.strongfirst.com/should-you-train-your-slow-fibers/

39laurita39 wrote: »

MikePfirrman wrote: »

hrod215 wrote: »

In each of your workouts you are accomplishing something different. Workout A is more cardio focused which is why you find yourself out of breath. Workout B is more strength and recovery focused. You are going long periods of time with med-high resistance causing you to use your muscles more and burning more energy, which accounts for the sweating. I think you are pushing yourself hard enough I both your workouts. Keep up the great work!

This is really accurate from my read too. I don't do much stationary bike any more but do mostly indoor rowing. You can adjust the "drag factor" or DF on a rower by adjusting up the damper (not resistance as most people call it). I can do the same distance for 50 minutes and on one row adjust the damper so each stroke is more powerful but slows down more quickly (like a bike in low gear) or I can put the damper/DF to a lower setting and do more SPM (Strokes per minute, like RPM on a bike) work and get a better aerobic workout.

I find the ones where the resistance is higher (and more powerful) much harder. Like hrod mentioned, your muscles are fatiguing more in that scenario. You don't want to do that too many times a week, though. Maybe once or twice a week tops if it's really draining you. That type of workout will better build muscle endurance. It also tends to be more of a lactic acid tolerance workout than the other is my understanding. You'll get cardio benefits from both workouts. If you're truly pushing that type of workout, though, where the resistance is higher, your HR should climb through the course of the workout and be pretty high by the end. If not, you're not really pushing the resistance as much as you think. I sweat buckets on that type of workout.

So would it be possible to build muscle during a high-resistance cardio session? Sorry if that's a silly question, your answer was really helpful but I'm not familiar with muscle endurance so I'm not sure if that has nothing to do with building muscle too. Thanks again

39laurita39 wrote: »

MikePfirrman wrote: »

hrod215 wrote: »

In each of your workouts you are accomplishing something different. Workout A is more cardio focused which is why you find yourself out of breath. Workout B is more strength and recovery focused. You are going long periods of time with med-high resistance causing you to use your muscles more and burning more energy, which accounts for the sweating. I think you are pushing yourself hard enough I both your workouts. Keep up the great work!

This is really accurate from my read too. I don't do much stationary bike any more but do mostly indoor rowing. You can adjust the "drag factor" or DF on a rower by adjusting up the damper (not resistance as most people call it). I can do the same distance for 50 minutes and on one row adjust the damper so each stroke is more powerful but slows down more quickly (like a bike in low gear) or I can put the damper/DF to a lower setting and do more SPM (Strokes per minute, like RPM on a bike) work and get a better aerobic workout.

I find the ones where the resistance is higher (and more powerful) much harder. Like hrod mentioned, your muscles are fatiguing more in that scenario. You don't want to do that too many times a week, though. Maybe once or twice a week tops if it's really draining you. That type of workout will better build muscle endurance. It also tends to be more of a lactic acid tolerance workout than the other is my understanding. You'll get cardio benefits from both workouts. If you're truly pushing that type of workout, though, where the resistance is higher, your HR should climb through the course of the workout and be pretty high by the end. If not, you're not really pushing the resistance as much as you think. I sweat buckets on that type of workout.

So would it be possible to build muscle during a high-resistance cardio session? Sorry if that's a silly question, your answer was really helpful but I'm not familiar with muscle endurance so I'm not sure if that has nothing to do with building muscle too. Thanks again

You can build muscle riding a bike, but it's sub optimal and will come at a glacial pace compared to what you can do in the weight room.