 Question is from the Iron Princess 17. Is cardio a waste of time if you're lifting heavy? Or do you suggest doing some in your workout? You know why I picked this question? Because I think people get the impression that we're anti-cardio. That you should not do cardio, that it's terrible. No, did I just share on the show the other day that I ran? I mean, I'll do that every once in a while. To make sure I could still do it. That's important, you know? I ran, you ran to the fridge? Yeah. I get on there and run a couple miles every now and then just to make sure that I could still do that. Well, here's the thing with cardio. We are anti-cardio being the answer to everything. And a lot of people have overdone cardio, especially when it comes to fat loss. That's where you get into problems. But can cardio help you get stronger and build more muscle if it improves your health? Yes. And I actually experience this. I experienced this in my early 20s when I was, you know, some of the heaviest I ever was and biggest I ever was. And I was lifting heavy and all I wanted to do was build muscle and I didn't care about anything else. I remember my buddy actually made a compelling argument and he said, you know, your cardiovascular endurance and your health or your lack of those things are preventing you from building muscle. And he says, you should try doing a little bit of cardio and you'll probably build a little bit more muscle. And so I thought, okay, I'll give this a shot. And I did, I didn't do a ton. I did like three days a week of elliptical or whatever. And I was totally, totally terrible cardiovascular shape. So it took me a few weeks to get used to. And it was like 25, 30 minutes. And I did notice I got stronger in a lot of the exercise that require a lot of effort, like barbell squats. Well, yeah, you increase your aerobic capacity. And you do deadlifts, I mean, right now, going through the first phase of power lift, it's eight to 12 reps of deadlifting and squatting. Like, I can be gassed. Totally. Yeah, definitely winded from that. So just me doing some cardio to increase my aerobic capacity is gonna carry over into my ability to get right back into another set and it not win me or gas me so much. So yeah, there's definitely benefits to it. I think that's a, you know, it is a good question to I think talk about because we have been labeled as team no sweat. And, you know, we've done videos on YouTube that cardio sucks for fat loss. And I think the message that we're just trying to get across is just that is that it's not, for many, many years, it was promoted as the best way to burn body fat. And it's completely the opposite. It's not the best way. In fact, it's not nowhere close to the best way to burn body fat, at least not long-term. Maybe in a short-term window, like, hey, Adam, I got 14 days. I need to burn as much fat as possible. Well, yeah, running like crazy in those 14 days is gonna burn a ton of calories, which then in turn can help burn fat. But it also gets you adapted to that and to maintain that is gonna be really tough for most people. You're far better off building a bunch of muscle, which will speed up your metabolism, which makes that losing body fat a lot easier. If your cardiovascular fitness is really bad, your strength is gonna suffer. If your health isn't optimal, your muscle-building potential is also gonna suffer. And is cardiovascular capacity, does some of that improve your health? Well, yeah, it does. Now, you don't need a ton. You don't need to be a runner or an endurance athlete. But if all you ever do is lift weights, especially if you always lift weights like a strength athlete, like a power lifter, especially if you don't do things like supersets or giant sets or strip sets, which are body-building techniques, but also tend to train the cardiovascular system a little bit. Like if you've ever done a lower body superset where you're going from lunges to barbell squats, like that's gonna work your cardio. But if you're training really, really heavy all the time and you're doing these long rest periods, you're gonna benefit from having better cardiovascular endurance. And I mean, you're gonna benefit in terms of your gains, your strength and muscle-building. I also just don't like to lose abilities. You know, if I've been neglecting it too long and I know, you know, I'm not involved in like highly competitive sports anymore, but even just like daily activities or playing with my kids or, you know, coaching or doing anything like I'm still moving. And like I don't wanna be the guy out there just like completely gassed because I haven't even given it any attention. So it's definitely something that I make sure that I have that as something I, you know, intermittently will throw in because it's very important to me that I maintain certain abilities as I age. Two years ago, I let my cardio get so bad. I was in a competition with one of my top trainers and my fitness manager. This was back when I was running San Teresa. And the competition was to see who could put on the most, gain the most size. And we were all young dudes and meat heads. And so we would lift weights together and then we would just eat and we would eat anything to get as many calories as possible. And this is when I got my body weight over a little over 240 pounds. And I'm a six foot tall guy. I don't have a massive frame. I weigh 212 right now. So it's another 30 pounds on my body, much of it not muscle because we were just packing the food back. And that was this really, really big, heavy dude. And I remember at the end of the competition, we all tallied who gained the most weight and whatever. And the joke was at the end of it that we were all gonna get on a stationary bike because we're like, at the end of this we all need to do a little bit of cardio just to see what happens. So we all get on a stationary bike, the three of us. And we're all like, bro, 10 minutes into it, we were gassed. We were bringing it from a stationary bike. My friend Desk was talking so much shit. They were making announcements about the three gorillas on the cardio. Everybody come to the zoo, come look at the three gorillas. But we were dying, 10 minutes, it was terrible. I have a similar story. I was, same thing was, this was the biggest bulk I'd ever been on. I was weighing first thing in the morning at 2.35, throughout the day, I was definitely pushing 2.40. And this was also the same time that I was just getting into starting up boot camps. And my boot camps were predominantly like people above the age of 50, right? So most advanced age clients, for the most part, most of them pretty deconditioned. Every once in a while, I had one or two athletic people, but for the most part, most people were really... This is everyday people. Yeah, and even more advanced ages and overweight, right? So they're not moving fast is where I'm going with this. And, you know, part of the, I would do this dynamic warm up with them and then we'd run one lap around the track is what I'd have them do. And they were all kind of rousing me about how big and big I was getting some of that. And like, oh, you gotta run with us. And of course I'm not gonna like, you know, act like I can't do a single lap with my clients. You're not gonna do the old, oh, my knee hurts. Right, right, but I hadn't done, I hadn't done anything at this point in a long time because in order for me to push that kind of weight, I had to like, I tried not to move. Like I was like intentionally not moving as much as I could throughout the day so I could pack the calories on because it was so hard for me to push my weight that high. That's how aggressively I was bulking. And I'll never forget that lap. And I remember inside being like, oh my God, I have to pretend like this isn't killing me right now. When my shins were on fire, I was like gasping and I'm like jogging in front of all them. It's like a light jog one time around. And I remember that was like, oh yeah, like never again will I be this bad, dude. It was so bad.