How do bodybuilders stay so lean with light cardio?
In: Biology
The traditional way was a bulk season and a cut season. You get jacked as fuck over the winter and even gain some fat, then lose weight and just maintain as much muscle as you can. I don’t think they do it as drastic anymore but that’s still the basic concept.
Like someone else said, before a show they drop the last little bit of fat and sweatout the water weight. They do some push ups to pump their muscles up before they go on stage. It’s almost impossible to maintain that stage look.
Cardio is more beneficial to your cardiovascular endurance and health but is not better than a disciplined diet for leanness.
The more muscle you have the higher your metabolism. Diet plays a huge role as well as the intensity of the workouts.
When I was bodybuilding I was muscular and lean at times, and at other times I was bulky with too much body fat. It mostly came down to diet. Cleaning up my eating and stepping up my workouts was usually enough to drop the body fat fairly quickly without having to do a lot of cardio.
Extremely restrictive diets and dehydration (before shows and such). Cardio doesn’t do as much to lower body fat as some would lead you to believe. It helps, because it burns calories, but so does just eating fewer calories to begin with.
they’re only that lean ie 1-2% bf for men during competition time. bodybuilders workout in cycles, a bulking phase where they gain as much muscle as possible (along with fat) during the “off-season” ie fall/winter. and then the cutting phase, where they lose as much fat as possible right before the competition season ie spring/summer. they do a lot of cardio during the cutting phase.
Its pretty much all diet. Exercising is helpful to lose/maintain weight but diet plays a larger role. Ideally you combine the two for a better effect
Think about your body like a car. Bigger it is, more fuel it needs just to operate. Greater muscle mass is an easy way to increase passive calories burned. After that they can just watch their diet and stay pretty lean without much effort
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