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<br>After years of doing cardio and HIIT classes, I'm trying to incorporate more strength training into my fitness regime as I want to build some muscle (and have next to none). My question is: If I carry on doing my cardio, will it hinder my muscle-building? I used to run two or three times a week and do a couple of HIIT classes, but have now cut that down by half. I'm not sure if I should cut cardio out altogether though, because I do want to build muscle but am nervous that I'll gain weight if I stop running and doing HIIT. This is an excellent goal to have. Building more muscle not only brings about tons of health benefits but is incredibly empowering (and makes your body look amazing). Whether you want to lose fat, build muscle, or do both, strength training is a great way to start.<br><br><br><br>But that's not the only thing to consider when it comes to exercise. Cardio is incredibly important for your overall health, but possibly the most important factor is what you enjoy and will stick to. Every body responds differently to cardio and strength training. But most people probably don't need to worry about cardio harming muscle growth, Ngo Okafor, a celebrity personal trainer, told Insider. The key is not to let the cardio interfere with your resistance workouts. And there are only so many hours in the day. Only you know if running and HIIT, or high-intensity interval training, classes leave you too fatigued to lift weights. To build muscle (aka hypertrophy), you generally want to lift weights heavy enough that you can perform sets that put your muscles under tension for 60 to 90 seconds, Luke Worthington, a personal trainer, previously told Insider. This usually means sets of 12 to 15 reps, but it depends on your tempo. Focus on compound movements like deadlifts, squats, and bench press too.<br><br><br><br>When it comes to building muscle, the magic actually happens when you're recovering from your workouts, not in the gym, so you need to make sure your body has enough rest between workouts. Many strength-training fans do what's known as "active recovery," which usually means some form of steady-state cardio like a leisurely cycle, a walk, or a gentle jog. This can help the muscles recover by increasing blood flow. More-intense cardio, like sprints or HIIT classes, is likely to add more strain to the muscles, so you might need to be mindful of how the exercises make you feel. However, some research suggests HIIT preserves muscle better than steady-state cardio does. Personally, I do dancing, swimming, and netball alongside my weightlifting - they don't take away from my strength gains, and I enjoy them. You need to eat right for muscle growth, which ideally means being in a small calorie surplus (though as a weightlifting newbie you may still see growth at maintenance or even in a deficit).<br><br><br><br>I, for one, am jealous that you're about to get into proper strength training, because you'll likely experience a wonderful thing called "newbie gains" - this is when you start lifting weights and your body responds so brilliantly to the new stimulus that you can build muscle and  [https://hiddenwiki.co/index.php?title=Keeping_The_Brain_Nimble_Through_Puzzles Prime Boosts Supplement] strength pretty quickly. Luke Goulden, a personal trainer, told Insider that you'd done the right thing by cutting down on cardio already, mainly because it leaves you more time to work on those all-important gains. HIIT to hinder muscle growth. While you do generally burn more calories doing cardio than resistance training,  [https://lnk.bz/s2Fqb Prime Boosts Supplement] the more muscle you have, the more calories you burn at rest, so it pays off in the long run. Don't worry too much about gaining fat - whether you do or not largely comes down to how much you're eating, so keep an eye on things and adjust accordingly.<br>