Ep. #199: Research Review: Dr. Eric Helms on Combining Cardio & Weightlifting

Eric Helms: [00:00:00] They compared modern intensity steady state cycling to hit sprints on a bike, and they found that the sprinting actually decreased hypertrophy and strength more or had a larger interference effect compared to modern intensity.

Mike Matthews: In this episode, I have the one and only Dr. Eric Helms back on to discuss a study published in 2016. Titled endurance training intensity does not mediate interference to maximal lower body strength gain during short term concurrent training. And what this study looked at is of course concurrent training, which is the inclusion of both cardiovascular and resistance training in the same program.

And specifically what the researchers wanted to look at is how including cardio in a weightlifting program impacts strength and muscle gain. Now You’ve probably heard that doing any amount of cardio at [00:01:00] any intensity is probably going to, or maybe even definitely going to interfere with your strength and muscle gain, but is it really that straightforward?

And this study, and Eric’s interpretation, is not. Of it, and his explanation of not just it, but the other research that has been done on the subject is going to help shed some light on the matter for you. This is where I would normally plug a sponsor to pay the bills, but I’m not big on promoting stuff that I don’t personally use and believe in, so instead I’m just going to quickly tell you about something of mine.

Specifically, my fitness book for women, Thinner, Leaner, Stronger. Now, this book has sold over 150, 000 copies in the last several years, and it has helped thousands of women build their best bodies ever, which is why it currently has over 1, 200 reviews on Amazon with a four and a half star average. If you want to know the biggest lies and [00:02:00] myths that keep women from ever achieving the lean, sexy, strong, and healthy bodies they truly desire, and if you want to learn the simple science of building the ultimate female body, then you want to read this book.

Thinner, leaner, stronger today, which you can find on all major online retailers like audible, Amazon, iTunes, Kobo, and Google play. Now, speaking of audible, I should also mention that you can actually get the audio book 100 percent free when you sign up for an audible account, which I highly recommend that you do.

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bitly. com Slash free [00:03:00] TLS book, and that will take you to audible. And then you just have to click the sign up today and save button, create your account and voila. You get to listen to thinner, leaner, stronger for free. Alrighty. That is enough shameless plugging for now. At least let’s get to the show, Eric.

You have returned. Sorry, Dr. Holmes, PhD. You have returned. 

Eric Helms: You got it right that time. I was about to hang up. 

Mike Matthews: I I’m a soul learner, but I learned, 

Eric Helms: Hey, as long as you’re learning, that’s all that matters. All that 

Mike Matthews: matters. 

Eric Helms: Small progress is all 

Mike Matthews: gains 

Eric Helms: or something. That’s right. Even brain games.

Mike Matthews: True. All right. So now in this round, we are going to be discussing combining lifting with cardio, which of course many people do for various reasons, some reasons being better than others, and then not just any cardio. But high intensity interval training versus more moderate or lower intensity and which is better for what and why?

Eric Helms: Great question. So yeah, this is a pretty cool study. We reviewed it again in that first issue of mass we did. And I think Greg wrote [00:04:00] this one, if I recall correctly, it’s been a while now we’re on like our last issue of the year, which is cool. But anyway, this is a study by Fife and colleagues, easier to pronounce than our German volume training study author.

But it is titled endurance training. Intensity does not mediate interference to maximum lower body strength gain during short term concurrent training. And I’ll talk about why that title is important. So back in around, say, a long time ago, we established that at the molecular level and the, without getting too detailed, the adaptations that you make to get better at cardio are fundamentally different to some degree in certain areas than the adaptations you make to strength training.

Metabolically for strength training. You’ve got to be able to put out a high output of energy and not have any care about quote unquote pacing. You want it right now. If you have to do like a snatch, right? And those are specific adaptations that are going to happen. However, with endurance training, you’re basically telling your Hey, I need a constant stream of low energy output.

And those do quote unquote interfere. And that’s where the term the [00:05:00] interference effect came from. And then there was a meta analysis back in 2012 which really painted the picture, the broad brush strokes of the interference conversation. And we saw from that there was an inverse relationship, or rather a linear relationship with the amount of total volume of cardio you do is related to how much interference you experience.

And that makes sense. Obviously, you go walk your dog or you become an endurance athlete, you would expect those two things to have different effects on your resistance training, right? 

Mike Matthews: And that’s systemic, right? It’s not oh, running, yeah, it might just mess with my squats, but it won’t mess with my overhead press.

Eric Helms: Interestingly enough, that is something that is still getting teased out and the answer might be yes or no, depending on the study you’re looking at. 

Mike Matthews: What are your thoughts on, I know it’s tangential, but I’m just curious, what are your thoughts on based on what you’ve seen and what, 

Eric Helms: I think it’s both. And that’s because when, if you really want to drill down to the concurrent training hypotheses, there’s both an acute and a chronic hypothesis. There’s one that says, Hey, this is a molecular level issue and therefore it’s not going to be [00:06:00] specific. And if you’re doing endurance training, which is largely, Whole body, or at least it’s going to have adaptations that affect a lot of your body.

It’s going to affect a lot of your lifts and vice versa. And then there is the kind of the acute hypothesis, which is really simple. That’s saying, Hey, if you are tired from cardio, you’re going to be poor at lifting weights. And they’re both true. If you think about it if you go to the gym and bust out a hard cardio session and try to do squats, it’s not going to go well.

And therefore the adaptations you get afterwards are not going to be ideal. But there’s also some things happening at the level that we can’t really see that are at that molecular level where there are competing adaptations. 

Mike Matthews: And that could be relevant if, even if you have your workouts separated, right?

So even if you do your cardio on one day and do your lifting on the next day, 

Eric Helms: Yeah, I’d say if we want to jump to the punch here. So there is a number of ways to mitigate interference globally. The worst thing you can do is right before you lift. Do cardio when stepping down the hierarchy of the next best thing you could do would be to do weights and then cardio, then at least you’re avoiding [00:07:00] that acute fatigue going into your resistance training.

And that seems to be better than the latter. But even better than that would be to. Do them at least six hours apart or on a separate days, and we have a fair amount of research now that would suggest that’s like the ideal succession of things to do. And then probably even one step better than that would be to minimize your cardio as much as you possibly can.

And that’s an option for someone who is like a contest prep bodybuilder, which is like, Or a physique athlete or someone who has to diet for a weight class, or is this dieting, let’s say a model, someone who’s dieting for a photo shoot, you can definitely get effective fat loss without using cardio.

Cardio can sometimes just make it a lot easier. So your food doesn’t have to totally tank. It might help you mobilize fat and just make the process a little bit better, but more or less a deficit to deficit. So when it’s purely a fat loss goal, you can certainly minimize the amount of cardio you’re doing.

And I think that’s. Probably a good idea in most cases, unless you just really enjoy it. And that would improve adherence. 

Mike Matthews: What are your thoughts on just getting to the goal faster? That’s been, the main thing that I’ve [00:08:00] recommended to people is like you being in a deficit kind of sucks. And it’s actually just been my personal approach, but I tend to be, we mentioned that the last time around, I tend to be one of those more masochistic kind of people that I don’t really care how I feel about things.

It’s just what’s most effective. So if I can lose fat faster without. Sacrificing muscle or feeling like a zombie, then I’m going to do it. And so including cardio, if that means I can take my cut, if I can make it 25 percent faster and then get back to feeling good in my workouts and making progress, then I’m going to do it.

You know what I mean? 

Eric Helms: Yeah, I think that’s totally valid. And the real question is if you can, I think, and that all depends on the dosage, right? So if you’re doing two to three cardio sessions a week and they’re not going over 30, 45 minutes and they’re not on the same day, or they’re separated from your training.

It’s probably going to cause a negligible amount of an issue. 

Mike Matthews: And that’s always how I’ve done it. More like 25, 30 minutes, a couple of two, three times a week. And I personally have always preferred high intensity. I do, I would do it on an upright bike. That’s just what I’ve always liked.

Eric Helms: Yeah. So I think it all depends on how you’re going to do it. [00:09:00] How you can distribute it and how much you want to do if someone is going with that same philosophy, but starts banging out post resistance training cardio every day and morning sessions and just doing two days, then I would think there would actually be a significant loss of muscle mass in that process.

And that might not be worth it. It also depends on your goal. Yeah. But it’s not uncommon and it depends on your goal to if you were a bodybuilder at the end of your diet or near the end of your diet, you’re going to be getting on stage multiple times, either once, maybe finishing and eating up into your show, but you can’t really put fat back on and do well, so if you are eating up into your show, it has to be very conservative. You’re dropping cardio off in a titrated manner, increasing food in a titrated manner. But let’s say you’re a strength athlete. Shit, man, you might want to diet off 5 kilos in 6 weeks and do a fair amount of cardio and just have shitty training for 5 weeks.

But then you’ve got a whole 12 week prep period where you’re increasing calories, decreasing cardio, and just making sure you don’t go over, say, 2 percent higher than your weight class, knowing that you can still make it with a water cut. Or a little shift [00:10:00] from, high fiber to low fiber foods right towards the end.

And that might be a better payoff versus having a slow diet the whole time where you’re training just always slightly sucks. So it does depend on the goal and what makes sense in a practical manner. But there are times when you’d probably want to minimize the amount of cardio you could do.

There’s other times where you want to get away with as much as you can without causing a problem. Like you were talking about, there’s other times where you don’t care if you. Lose a little muscle briefly. If your primary goal is just performance output and muscles, just one component of that, and then maybe you could regain it once you actually finish the diet and then have a solid block of good training.

Mike Matthews: Yeah. Like I’ve spoken with people, what’s fairly common is people training for marathons or half marathons, and that’s really their focus for a bit. And they just want to know what can they do in the gym to minimize the muscle loss. Ideally they would like to lose no muscle, but if they have to lose some, They’re okay with that.

They just want to minimize the damage. 

Eric Helms: Yep. What I’ve been getting at here is that there’s a bunch of different strategies out there to try to see if we can minimize the interference effect. And the meta analysis [00:11:00] I was referring to before had a few strategies in there. It suggested, hey, maybe cycling is a good way to go.

The theory being there that you’re not doing a whole lot of eccentric actions, which is lengthening under contraction and kind of what we do to break very common in most movements, but cycling just a constant push forward. So you’re removing some of the muscle damaging eccentric action. In addition, there’s no impact.

For cycling. So some of the joint stress won’t be there. There’s evidence showing that cycling and you’d think other similar movements, like an elliptical or maybe a row or things with no impact and little to no eccentric would also have a lesser effect of interference timing. Like we already talked about, those are the main strategies that have been looked at to minimize the interference effect.

And then also the one that is in this present study we’re going to discuss by Fife is the intensity of the cardio itself. So there is the thought, the prevailing thought and the hypothesis that came out from that meta analysis and other studies that the issue is the difference in intensity between the cardio you’re doing and the resistance training, and that if you were to do short [00:12:00] bursts, say a 30 second or 45 second sprint followed by a recovery period, Because that’s essentially the same metabolic work to rest ratio and intensity of resistance training.

Therefore, you would not have that molecular interference and that is probably true. However, there is a issue with doing that in that if you are going to do hit true hit where for that, that say 30 or 45 seconds, you can’t hold a conversation. You can’t do anything except breathe as hard as you can to actually complete it.

We’re talking all out, a hundred percent. Sprint on a bike and elliptical, a rower on flat ground, whatever, that is something that’s going to have a increased recovery cost, higher intensity means higher recovery, and I think we got on this we put hit on too much of a pedestal in the 2000s where we just focus on that one aspect that it is shares all those metabolic traits with resistance training, and it was more time efficient for burning calories.

So therefore it was the holy grail. Oh, and hey, cherry on top, [00:13:00] there’s a little bit of an afterburn effect where you burn calories without the rest of the day. Never mind that’s only going to be like 10, 20, 30, 40 calories it’s still something, therefore HIT is the solution. While all of those aspects are true, there is an afterburn effect, there shouldn’t be a molecular interference, and it is more time efficient, I think everyone’s just really forgotten about the recovery cost of HIT.

And this is probably the first study that really highlights that. And in fact, in this study, they essentially found that Sprint intervals on a bike, even cycling, were problematic compared to moderate intensity steady state. So they compared moderate intensity steady state cycling to hit sprints on a cycle, on a bike.

And they found that the sprinting actually decreased hypertrophy and strength more. Or had a larger interference effect, I should say, compared to modern intensity, and this most likely comes down to not the molecular differences, but actually just the fatigue caused by it and actually preventing you from training effectively and from recovering so that you can get in the gym and do the work.

That’s really going to help [00:14:00] you gain strength and you retain muscle or gain muscle little thing. I always say when people are telling me that they want to do weight training, Sprints on the ground for their cardio for contest prep, because they’ve seen someone else do it or they think it looks hardcore.

It sounds fun as I go. Look, you could make this argument that hits going to help you, retain more muscle, but it’s really hard to make that argument when you’re on crutches. Cause I’ve seen so many bodybuilders strain their hamstring or fully tear it because they’re trying to be sprinters and even sprinters don’t sprint max speed four to five times a week.

I have a fully periodized program and they carefully integrate it with resistance training. So this trend of bodybuilders just getting out there and just hammering sprints without training. Specifically to be that kind of an athlete has led to a lot of hamstring strains and this is some, and it 

Mike Matthews: just wrecks your legs.

I’ve done it. And I, when I was younger, I was like, yeah I’ll try that for cardio. Yeah. That lasts about a week. And I was like, if I think if I do this, I’ll probably like never squat again. So I’m going to stop doing this. 

Eric Helms: Yeah, exactly. So essentially there was, [00:15:00] less strength gain, less muscle mass gain, and more signs of a an interference effect really in the hit group.

So it really puts that, that nail in the coffin in my opinion, of going, Hey, we can’t just lose context and just look at the molecular differences. You have to think about exercises having a recovery cost. And how that’s going to affect everything else and sure, overall, you just want to limit your cardio, but if you have to do cardio or you want to do cardio, let’s say you’re doing crossfit or something like that.

You’re thinking about where to position it relative to your resistance training and how to sequence your training becomes a little more complicated. And you do have to consider it versus just applying this cart blotch. I’m going to just go hard and go short, and that’ll be just better because it’s more like my lifting.

It’s you wouldn’t just double your lifting. To lose fat, would you like, if you had four hard days of training and you needed a diet, you wouldn’t just go to four, two days of lifting weights and double your volume. That would be bad, but in many cases, you’re trying to do something similar by adding a ton of 

Mike Matthews: interesting and have your personal [00:16:00] experiences working with people agreed with that?

Because the reason why I ask is over the years, again I, myself have what I would say is probably. Qualifies as hit. The high intensity intervals were hard in terms of length. They were never longer than 60 seconds, probably more like 30 or 45 seconds. I’ve recommended it again for people that want to lose fat as quickly as possible.

Now, to be fair, if we’re looking at it in the context of what weightlifting they were doing. The basic programs that I have out there for men and women are not tremendously difficult. They’re essentially push, pull legs programs with some accessory work. And none of your workouts are more than 45 or 60 minutes.

So we’re looking at, two kind of harder workouts per week. And then Anywhere from, one to three, not so hard workouts per week. And I, myself in doing that and doing hit when I was cutting, I don’t know. I never had any signs of falling behind in recovery now, to be fair. Yeah. My lifts stagnated and I [00:17:00] just whatever, took that in stride.

And in just. Working with a lot of people. Nobody comes to no individual case comes to mind where it was like, okay, this is clearly too much. You should just be walking instead. Now, of course, you could make it too much. But what are your thoughts on that? 

Eric Helms: It sounds like you’re already in the realm of reasonable.

When you start out with what you’re doing with your clients, so you’re not starting off with, I’m going to crush these people. And then I have to walk it back. I oversold the differences in the kind of my just inflection of my voice and high presented the results. In this study, if you were to truly look at the statistics and go hard line what was the main outcome?

The main outcome was that man, it didn’t seem like there was a big difference between hit and modern intensity steady state. There was a slight difference in favoring the modern intensity steady state for hypertrophy and maybe the interference effect a little bit, but overall it looked like, Hey, hit didn’t beat out modern intensity, steady state counter to what we’ve, the dog that we believed.

And that’s probably the safest bet to make from the study. So let me just walk back the questions. The extremity with which I presented these findings. So [00:18:00] I think basically people should feel a little more safe doing steady state cardio and knowing that probably on a, if you look at time match or a number of sessions per week, it’s probably not going to be that much worse or that much better to do hit or miss or vice versa.

Mike Matthews: And I guess then the context of why you’re doing it matters too. You mentioned that, but are you doing it? Because again, I really only do it. Do that’s not true. Actually, these days I do yeah, I’d say moderate intensity biking just cause I like to do cardio, but I would do hit when I’m cutting.

And otherwise I wish wouldn’t be doing it. But for those people out there that are doing cardio for longer periods of time, for whatever reason, that’s also a different circumstance than someone who’s look, I want to lose a lot of fat over the next 10 to 12 weeks. And I want to feel good. If that means sacrificing some potential progress.

Yeah. In my weightlifting, then I’m fine with that. That’s just a different context. 

Eric Helms: Yeah. If the trade off is worth the speed, that’s totally fine. And I think that’s exactly what you have to do is look at, all right, what are my goals? And then how soon do I want them? [00:19:00] Is that reasonable in the first place?

And then what level of sacrifice do I not care about? You look at the study and you go, didn’t gain as much lean body mass and it was a small amount, but maybe if I do, if I add hit to my training and moderate intensity steady state, sure, maybe I won’t gain or retain quite as much muscle mass, but if I get leaner faster and I can maintain that and then go into a bulking phase, maybe that will be, it won’t even matter six months from now.

And I think that’s a fair perspective, but really people just need to be informed going into what they’re doing. If you are starting a diet and you come into it and you’re thinking that you have to do hit. Because that’s going to be better for maintenance of strength and hypertrophy, this study tells you that strength will be roughly the same.

And in terms of hypertrophy, it might actually be slightly worse than doing less fatiguing cardio. And if you’re afraid of miss because you’ve heard of the interference effect and you think wow, that’s the intensity zone that’s going to interfere the most with your training. It depends on the dosage, and it may cause actually slightly more problems to really beat yourself up.

So [00:20:00] think about the modality of training you’re doing. If you’re doing, cycling or elliptical, and you’re keeping it to, say, 1 to 3 sessions per week, and the hit sessions are brief, and you’re, auto regulating it, or you’re mixing the two. You’re probably going to be fine, and in my personal practice, I’m typically not having people do more than, 123 cardio sessions per week, and certainly not more than 1 or 2, maybe 3 hit sessions and I am trying to make sure that it’s low impact, low eccentric action, and that it’s separated from resistance training if possible.

And if I have to after, and I think, Okay. From what I’ve seen is that the benefits are worth the tradeoffs in those cases if you can moderate it and if you want to have effective fat loss or faster fat loss, or if you just need that extra edge to really get quite lean, if that’s your goal in a reasonable time frame, and you want to have a decent amount of calories to play with to eat, then yeah, there’s all reasonable applications of Cardio.

And I think the big take home from this study is just that hit is not the holy grail. And if taken too far, it might be slightly worse than a lower intensity. [00:21:00] 

Mike Matthews: Absolutely. And where would you like to see this research go from here? What’s the next question that you would like to see answered? 

Eric Helms: Yeah, I would like to see like some practical comparisons of different types of configurations combining them.

Cause I think what you rarely see. Research always pits one thing versus another, it goes, is hit better than miss or vice versa, or is heavy load training better than light load training. But rarely do we have studies of, hey, is a combined heavy and light load training program set up in an intelligent way compared to something that’s just high reps or just low reps better, or is all hit Or all low intensity steady state better.

But what if we combine them? So I would love to see someone have a mix of different cardio intensities and see if that was a bit better and, and try to figure out, okay, based on prior research and what we think makes sense logically, what’s the most hit we would give somebody, okay, maybe one to two sessions and we’ll do the rest from miss and compare that to an all miss group or an all hit group and see if perhaps that one in the middle can maybe lose fat [00:22:00] faster without actually losing any more muscle mass and maybe better than the than both.

I think that’s, it’s possible. So I’d love to see a study set up in that manner. 

Mike Matthews: Maybe you’ll be the one doing it. 

Eric Helms: Okay. 

Mike Matthews: Great Eric. This was, I’m sorry, Dr. Holmes, PhD. This was very enlightening. I’m excited to do the next one when when the time comes. 

Eric Helms: Sounds good. I look forward to it. 

Mike Matthews: Hey there, it is Mike again.

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