Cardiovascular exercise is undoubtedly a staple in any physique conscious individual’s lifestyle. Most people tend to “bulk” during the fall and winter months and “cut” during the spring months.“Bulking” is when you try to pack on as much muscle as you can. When you bulk, you usually try to eat as much as you can so that you have the energy to perform daily activities, but also have a surplus of calories, which in theory is supposed to help your body build muscle. During this stage, there is a lot of emphasis on lifting weights, and cardio is usually either ignored or not heavily implemented. “Cutting”, on the other hand, is when someone puts added emphasis on dieting and cardio in order to get rid of the fat that has built up over the bulking period. This causes somewhat of a shrink wrap effect, which shows off all the definition of your muscles.

One concern most guys have when they are going through the “cutting” period of their training schedule is losing muscle. It is no secret that cardio has the potential make you lose the muscle gain that you have worked so hard to obtain. Cardiovascular exercise includes things like running, swimming, biking, rowing, jump roping and basically anything that you can do for an extended period of time that elevates your heart rate. Cardiovascular exercise can be broken down into two subcategories, which are aerobic activity and anaerobic activity.

Aerobic activity is when you are jogging and maintaining seventy to eighty percent of your maximum heart rate. This is a moderately intense activity that is usually done for a more extended period of time for its maximum benefits, an example being jogging for thirty minutes. Some of the benefits of doing this are increased lung capacity, burning fat and developing a healthy heart. Unfortunately, this activity can lead to muscle loss.

Anaerobic activity on the other hand is intense activity that skyrockets your heart rate around eighty to ninety percent and is done in intervals. This activity focuses more on the high intensity aspect, but requires half the time of aerobic activity and achieves all of the same results. Some of the benefits of doing this are increased lung capacity, burning fat, and developing a healthy heart. One perk about this activity, however, is that there is significantly less muscle loss and in some cases there are muscle gains that are made.

Two extreme cases of only practicing one type of cardiovascular activity are marathon runners and sprinters. If you look at the body of a marathon runner, they are usually extremely skinny with little to no muscle and have a more or less skinny look about them. Sprinters, on the other hand, always have an athletic and powerful looking body. This is proof that aerobic activity causes minimal, if any, amounts of muscle loss.

Anaerobic activity is the fast track to obtaining all the benefits of aerobic exercise, while still maintaining your muscular gain. Research has shown that there is a great deal transfer of one’s ability to perform aerobic activities longer from doing anaerobic exercise. This means that even though your main source of cardio comes from running interval sprints, your ability to run long distances for an extended amount of time will still improve. On the other hand, long distance running does not improve your sprinting abilities by a great deal.

Another added benefit to anaerobic activity is the caloric burn that you receive from it. During anaerobic activity, not only do you burn more calories per minute than you do from aerobic activity, but you also obtain something that some people refer to as the after-burn. The after-burn occurs after every workout that you do. Depending on the intensity of your workout, you continue to burn calories at an extended rate even after everything is done. Research has shown that you burn more calories both during and after your workout from doing anaerobic activity as opposed to aerobic activity.

Anaerobic activity is the kind of training I used to get ready for my mixed martial arts competitions, and I can personally say that jump rope at a steady pace for one hour is just as tiring as interval bike sprints for twenty minutes. Personally, I would advocate high intensity interval training, which means that you do a certain activity such as biking, running or rowing, and do bursts where you exert maximum effort  for thirty seconds, and then lower the intensity for thirty seconds to recover and repeat this cycle eight to ten times (possibly more based on your fitness level).

Another added benefit to doing this is that you can be creative with it. High intensity interval training is not limited to conventional activities such as running. Another way you can switch it up is by adding plyometric exercises such as box jumps for thirty seconds and having your resting activity be isometric exercises such as planks. I’ll spare you the technical workout jargon, but the point is that you have the ability to be creative and make your cardio workouts more interesting and less monotonous.

The next time you hit the Huff to work on your summer body, change up your cardio routine and try anaerobic exercises and see the benefits for yourself. You will not only suffer a significantly lower amount of loss of muscle mass, but it is also possible to actually gain muscle from doing it. In addition, you will burn more calories and get in just as good of shape as you would from performing aerobic activity. Summer is right around the corner and this is the fast track to getting in shape.