Diet is only going
to take you so far
on your quest for
cuts. Eventually, we
all come to a point
where we do want
to see some serious
definition, and the
cardio monster rears
its ugly head.
I can honestly say that when I started
lift ing weights at home or at my buddy’s
house in 1983, I had never even heard the
word “cardio.” Most of us got into training
and bodybuilding as teens or young men,
and the basic goal was to get bigger and
stronger. We wanted to pump iron and
get swole. We didn’t sign on to walk on
treadmills like hamsters on a wheel or
climb revolving stairways to nowhere. Of
course, I can’t speak for everyone, but being ripped was not
on my agenda in those foundation years. I was too busy doing
everything I could to lift more weight and put more bodyweight
on, not even being overly concerned for a long span whether
it was muscle or fat. Eventually, we all come to a point where
we do want to see some serious defi nition, and the cardio
monster rears its ugly head. Faced with the prospect of doing
boring, repetitious, time-consuming cardio, many bodybuilders
will att empt to rationalize their way out of it. I can just rely onmy diet! They might even cite one of those rare genetic freaks
like Dexter Jackson or David Henry who managed to display
striations on top of striations without doing a lick of cardio
(though Dexter fi nally started doing it aft er he turned 40, more
for health reasons I suspect than because he truly needed
to). Sorry to break it to those guys, but you were not born with
that one-in-a-million blast furnace metabolism. Diet is only
going to take you so far on your quest for cuts. Eventually your
metabolism will grind to a halt aft er a prolonged period of
lowered calories. That’s your body’s clever survival mechanism
kicking in— it doesn’t want to die! To keep things moving, you
will need to do at least some cardio. You might be one of the
lucky ones who can get by with no more than three 20- to
30-minute sessions per week, or you may have to suck it up and
do 45 minutes every damn day. You all have Beats headphones
and Pandora on your phones for tunes that get you moving.
Or bett er yet, listen to MD Global Muscle Radio episodes on
Pandora, Player FM, or as Apple Podcasts on iTunes! The time
will fl y by as you incinerate that nasty body fat.July 2019 musculardevelopment.com MD 83
- You
Refuse
to Do
Cardio