Transcription
Day 25. Pause chin-ups, close grip push-ups, and squats. I took my time on this today. I was a little bit tired, so I just was very casual about my sets and my rest period.
The P.O.S. chin-ups gave me an excellent pump in my biceps and forearms, and really good activation in the upper back again. Really working on my scap retraction. That's kind of something I've been working on the last couple days.
And the close grip push-up on the parallette, this is one of my favorites, favorite chest exercises because when I do it, I'm actually kind of getting a little bit of squeeze in my hands, like I'm trying to squeeze my hands together, and that really fires up the chest. So I feel these really strongly in the pecs, like more activation than I do on most chest exercises.
Today, I'm going to talk about cardio. What I think about cardio, if you should do it, who's it for, how to actually do it, all these things. And first of all, before I get into it, by cardio, I mean any exercise that you're doing that is not specifically to build muscle, strength, power, but you're doing it to increase your daily energy expenditure, or to lose weight, or improve your cardio metabolic health, or actually just to increase your aerobic conditioning. Okay? So examples: walking, running, jumping rope, biking, swimming, getting on the elliptical, all that stuff I'm going to be considered, I'm going to be considering as cardio. Okay?
So, should you do it? Well, depends on your goal. I, I'm going to say for most people, yeah, I think I think you should be doing it. But if you're, if you're an underweight hard gainer, maybe doing cardio is not the best strategy in the meantime. So maybe you want to get your body weight up before you start worrying about your, uh, your conditioning. But in general, I think most people are going to benefit from adding some cardio in.
So here's why I think so. Reason number one: you can eat more food without getting fat, which is nice. This will help you stay lean. As your energy expenditure increases, you can be a little bit more flexible with your diet.
Reason number two: if you are overweight, it's easier to get lean. So by exercising, by increasing your, your exercise volume and your cardio volume, you increase your daily calorie expenditure, which will accelerate your fat loss.
Number three: increased recovery, uh, between your training sets. So especially with these higher rep calisthenics, if you're not in good aerobic shape, you will have a longer recovery and your workouts are going to take longer. So get in good shape, you will recover faster between sets and your performance will be better overall.
Reason four: cardiovascular and metabolic health. I don't think I have to go into this to too much detail. I think everyone knows by now that it's very good for your heart.
And number five: I think this is, I think aerobic fitness in general is a severely underappreciated component of your general physical preparedness. So be in good shape. This will help you be prepared for, for anything. Okay?
So, how to do it? How much do you do? Here's what I recommend: 20 to 30 minutes a day of Zone 2 cardio, which Zone 2 is 60 to 70% of your max heart rate. So this is pretty light and pretty manageable cardio.
So there you have it. That's my views on cardio. Highly recommend it. I think it's very beneficial for most people. So I hope you guys are enjoying the content, and if you have any questions, let me know. Otherwise, I will see you tomorrow.