Aerobic Training in Bodybuilding: Increase or Decrease Muscle Mass?

it often assumes rather erroneous connotations. If on the one hand it is considered a "necessary activity for the purpose of slimming - cutting, in bodybuilding or bodybuilding - on the other hand, many try to avoid it because it is considered deleterious for the increase in muscle mass (hypertrophy). These are both considerations that, if decontextualized, they totally lose their meaning.

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The goal of this article is to clarify the correlation, indeed, the complementarity of aerobic and anaerobic activity. It is therefore not certain that medium-intensity and prolonged training should be used exclusively to reduce the percentage of fat or that it should be totally avoided during the muscle growth phase. Let's see better how aerobic activity can offer benefits to bodybuilding. different from the customary ones.

and isometric, anaerobic alactacid and anaerobic lactacid, concentrated on the expression of strength at 70/80% of the maximum

Carrying out fundamental multi-joint exercises, but also isolation - trying to fill the gaps in the proportions or in the expression of the kinetic chain

Mildly high-calorie diet, without neglecting the amount of carbohydrates but not even proteins.

, which is the most important (involuntary) muscle in the whole body.Here is that aerobic activity, the main method of cardiovascular training, can also be a valuable aid for the search for hypertrophy; according to some, it could even significantly increase performance and results.

It is however necessary to specify that any point of view not supported by appropriate scientific research must be "taken with a grain of salt". Let me be clear, the goal of this article is not to create unfounded expectations, or to emphasize a system that, in reality, is far from representing a "miraculous remedy." This does not mean that it cannot be useful, however. Cardiovascular training also has numerous health benefits and can counteract some of the downsides of bodybuilding or any other weight training.

Examples of undesirable effects of bodybuilder training are: the formation of varicose veins, the tendency to hernias of various types, etc., all due to the tendency to work in the Valsalva maneuver. This considerably increases the intra-abdominal and blood pressure. Also, if this is true. that anaerobic training increases the thickness of the heart wall as an adaptation response, it is not equally true that by increasing the wall to the maximum, and minimizing the chamber, the anaerobic efficiency is increased. The heart must necessarily increase its own frequency in order to pump more blood, subjecting himself to considerable stress in the long run. Aerobic training improves breathing - it also teaches to breathe during exercise - optimizes circulation and creates improvements in the pumping capacity of the heart; therefore it counteracts in a decisive way the negative effects of which we have spoken.

Let's start from a simple concept: like any other muscle, even the heart, subjected to training, changes by adapting to the stimulus. Among the physiological variations induced by aerobic endurance training, basic cardiovascular and respiratory, are the following:

Increases Decreases Cardiac efficiency Heart rate at rest and in training Capacity, endurance and anaerobic threshold - with specific workouts Breath frequency Respiratory efficiency Blood pressure Muscle capillarization Blood sugar, triglyceridemia, LDL cholesterol Myoglobin, mitochondria and enzymes in muscle fibers When combined with diet, weight loss Muscle energy reserves of glycogen and lipids Risk of metabolic diseases and related cardiovascular events Ability to remove lactic acid from muscles