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View Full Version : INdividual Cardio Requirements



csuperman
08-14-2013, 08:48 PM
By Shelby Starnes
I’m often asked, “How much cardio should I do?” or “How much cardio did you do for your contest prep?” as if there is a simple answer or a single cardio protocol that will work for all individuals to get into contest condition.
To display the wide variance among competitors, I will outline how two of my clients and I approached cardio in preparation for our shows last month.
Jennifer Cordovez (in prep for the NPC Team Universe, where she won her IFBB pro card in Figure)With Jen we used a carb cycling diet, in which she started off with 30 minutes of moderate intensity cardio on her medium carb days (a couple per week), and some sprint intervals on her low carb days (also a couple per week). As we went deeper into the diet, the number of medium and low days increased per week so that she was doing more cardio per week as well. We eventually increased the duration a bit as well, to about 40 minutes per session. Jen shapes up pretty fast, so with three weeks remaining before Team Universe we dropped her cardio back to 25 minutes per session (and eliminated sprint intervals). At this point I also began increasing her calories a bit. As a result, she kept getting leaner. One week out from competition I had her stop cardio completely. Jen is now an IFBB Figure Pro.
Jamie Pinder (in prep for her IFBB Women’s Physique Division pro debut at the Chicago Wings of Strength)Jamie’s division, Women’s Physique, requires more extreme conditioning, and so both her diet and cardio were more extreme than Jen’s program. Jamie’s cardio climbed to about 1.5 hours per day, with four-five days per week including some sprint intervals for the first 15 to 20 minutes. Two weeks out, Jamie was very close to where I wanted her, so we stopped the intervals and shifted to all low/moderate intensity for one hour per day. One week out from Jamie’s pro debut, we dropped her cardio to 45 minutes daily. Her last cardio session was the Wednesday before her show. Jamie went on to win her first pro show with a perfect score (every judge had her in first) and is now headed to the first Women’s Physique Division Olympia.
Shelby Starnes (in prep for my IFBB pro debut at the Chicago Wings of Strength)I started off with fairly minimal cardio (20 minutes every other day at around 16 weeks out). As I progressed in my prep, the amount of cardio increased gradually until I reached about 45 minutes per day. I do all of my cardio at low intensity; that is, walking on a treadmill at 3.0mph at 0% incline. By two weeks out I was very close to ready and dropped my cardio sessions down to 20 minutes per day, keeping it there through the Wednesday before the show. While I didn’t place very well at my show, my conditioning was on point. I need to add quite a bit more size to get a good look at the pro level.
As you can see, all three competitors ended up using very different approaches to meet the same end goal: achieving optimum contest condition. Also worth mentioning is that the cardio Jen, Jamie and I did was slightly different than how we did pre-contest cardio in the past. The takeaway? What works for an individual one-year won’t necessarily work for them the next. The body is a dynamic, changing system and cardio – as well as diet, training, supplementation, and everything else related to bodybuilding – must be approached on a case-by-case, day-to-day basis.