Here's the deal on why cardio is such an obsession now, there's several reason's. 1. Repetition. Most every popular bodybuilding and fitness book/article/site/mag advocates doing a bunch of cardio when cutting or losing fat. Eventually I think enough people just keep reading that and hearing it, that they decide its "required". 2. People don't really understand the Leg's affect on the entire body as far as fat loss is concerned. These are usually the same people that put off leg training entirely. Once you hit legs with maximum intensity, (with diet in check) you will definitely see fat loss. Compound lifts, heavy weight, and intense leg trainnig including your deads and squats are key in eliciting fat loss as well as just all around lean muscle maintenance and growth, regardless of your goal. I think heavy weight training is always superior during a cut than volume training. 3. People have no patience. If you add cardio in, yes, you will probably lose fat at a faster rate when coupled with your weights and diet. However, there are reasons not to do cardio if you don't have to . First off, it's pretty much unneccessary if your diet is rock solid, and you're doing hard heavy compound legs and fierce leg training. If you do this and have a good diet, you will see the lbs drop. It may not be incredibly quick poundage dropping off, but you can be assured that if its from 100 percent diet and weights, it's NOT going to be muscle. People that go overboard with lots of running and crazy cardio can totally overdo it and lose their muscle, which is the last thing you would ever want. Also, cardio can hinder your muscle recovery if you overdo (especially legs obviously). Finally, if you don't do alot of cardio, it's a great "trump card" to pull out if you plateau on your cut. So the best is to do the least amount of cardio (starting with none) then go until you hit a sticking point, then slowly add in cardio, only enough to breach that point. It's critical to make sure the diet component is solid. if its not then minimal sesssions (2-3 times per week tops) may help. 4. The final reason that some people do cardio, is that their bodytypes do not allow successful weight loss with out the aid of some cardio. That's dependant on your body though. And this is probably the most rare reason. I'd be willing to bet you most people who " cut" have never tried doing a pure heavy weight + diet alone cut, and if they do their diet probably isn't dialed in like it should be . A specific person I can actually show you that is an All natural pro bodybuilder who's won multiple competitions, who does ZERO cardio even when preparing for a show, is Aram hamparian. His website is
mastover.comThats my 2 cents. And yes, running and cardio for cardiovascular health/endurance is a whole different story and is completely fine.1 drinking session a week probably won't do anything terribly noticeable, as long as the rest of your diet and training is like seriously rock solid for every other time in the week surrounding it. Unfortunately alcohol is the worst thing to "cheat" on though. A few quick things it does:-Alcohol is "empty cals" . There are no proteins carbs and fats to be utilized by your body, so pretty much all the calories are worthless and will be really really likely to be stored as fat.-Your liver can't really burn fat and alcohol at the same time, so as long as there's alcohol for it to take care of , it won't be doing fat. - Alcohol is horrible for testosterone levels in men, it really does drop it down pretty low. testosterone is one of your best friends when it comes to bodybuilding in general, its incredibly powerful for building muscle and helping with fat loss and all that good stuff. So you definitely want it around. I would just keep the drinking down as low as you really can. If you are gonna drink, make sure that you don't cure that hangover with a big fat bowl of ramen or moes southwest grill like I'm always tempted to do, that's how things to downhill, and thats how you ruin your week of progress.
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