Most of these statements were prepared with natural bodybuilders in mind, but the basic concepts still hold true, even if *enhanced* bodybuilders can take advantage of improved recovery ability and nutrient shuttling.
Stuart McRobert
LIE #1: TRAIN MORE OFTEN TO GROW MORE MUSCLE
Train too often, and you may not stimulate any growth because you’re unable to train hard enough because of the excessive frequency of training. And even if you do stimulate growth, you’ll not have sufficient recuperation time between workouts to permit the growth to occur.
It’s very easy for a natural bodybuilder with normal genetics to overtrain. But someone with outstanding genetics for bodybuilding can prosper on more frequent training, and such a person can prosper on even more frequent training if he’s on bodybuilding drugs.
Hardgainers are best off training no more than three times a week, but with just twice a week being ideal for many bodybuilders. But the super-responsive, drug-fed bodybuilding elite can prosper on six workouts a week. (Some, for short periods, have progressed on twice-daily training, six days a week!)
Such high frequency is training suicide for hardgainers. But even the pros can overtrain, and many of them have discovered that, even with their huge advantages, when they cut back on their training frequency (and volume) they are better able to build muscle.
Don’t think that by splitting your training over, say, four workouts a week is necessarily easier on your recovery system than two brief full-body workouts. Because the muscular system is so interwoven, and many exercises overlap somewhat in the muscles they recruit, some split routines train some of the same muscles at every workout. Furthermore, intensive training for just a limited area of musculature still has an overall systemic demand that needs to be recovered from before you work a different area of your physique.
Recovery time—and lots of it for hardgaining bodybuilders—is essential in order to build muscle.
LIE #2: TRAIN LONGER TO BUILD MORE MUSCLE
The origins of this lie are the same as for the previous one. Men and women with exceptional genetic talent for an athletic activity, especially when assisted by performance enhancing drugs, can prosper on a far greater volume of training than can drug-free, genetically normal athletes.
Some great medium- and long-distance runners, for example, inherited an ability to process oxygen and produce energy that’s in another world relative to that of a normal person. Of course, the great runners further enhance their natural advantages with great dedication to training, but they had way more to work with from day one. The same sort of point applies in the bodybuilding world.
As little as just one work set can stimulate muscle growth, provided that its quality is high enough. If you ever need to do more than three work sets for a given exercise, you must be loafing. Train harder. Make three work sets per exercise your ceiling. Sometimes, just one or two work sets per exercise is better. Some body parts are much larger than others, and thus can sometimes benefit from multiple exercises in a given program, but there’s no need to do a great many sets per body part.
Too much training is as counterproductive as training too often. But most hardgaining bodybuilders train too often and do too many sets per workout, and that combination is usually a major part of the explanation for why they continue to make little or no progress.
LIE #3: THE ROUTINES THAT WORK FOR THE BIGGEST GUYS WORK FOR OTHER BODYBUILDERS, TOO
The routines that work for the biggest bodybuilders only work well for people who have the same genetic advantages and drug support that the biggest guys have. While the big guys know what works well for them, that doesn’t mean they know what works for drug-free bodybuilders with normal genetics.
Someone who struggled for years without building any muscle, but then managed to build 25 pounds of muscle drug-free, knows way more about how to train genetically normal, drug-free bodybuilders than does a genetic freak on tons of drugs who has built over 100 pounds of muscle.
LIE #4: A BODYBUILDER’S DIET SHOULD BE A LOW-FAT ONE
A low-fat diet undermines if not prohibits muscle growth even if your caloric intake and protein consumption are adequate. The phobia of dietary fat that many bodybuilders seem to have seriously undermines their ability to build muscle.
When you’re trying to build muscle, get about 30% of your total caloric intake from healthy dietary fats. Avoid newfangled fats, fried food, deep fried food, and anything with trans fats or hydrogenated fats. If you check food labels, you’ll see that most processed food contains unhealthy fats.
And even if you’re cutting back on body fat you still need to consume healthy fats because they supply essential nutrients. A low-fat diet is unhealthy.
LIE #5: TO BUILD BIG MUSCLES IT’S NOT ESSENTIAL TO BE STRONG
Even bodybuilders who have a similar amount of muscle can vary greatly in their strength levels. The explanation may include differences in leverages, muscle belly lengths and efficiency of the nervous system, and variations in the ratios of the different types of muscle fibers. A smaller bodybuilder who is better put together for strength may be stronger than a larger bodybuilder.
But you have to get stronger than you are now, to build muscle. If you can bench press 150 pounds for eight reps now, and in a year’s time you still can’t bench press more than 150 pounds for eight reps, you’re highly unlikely to have bigger chest and triceps muscles. But if in a year’s time you can bench press 200 pounds for eight reps in the same technique as before, you’ll have somewhat bigger chest and triceps muscles. Then if, for instance, 18 months later you can bench press 265 pounds for eight reps in the same technique as before, you’ll have substantially bigger chest and triceps muscles.
The “get stronger to get bigger” maxim is misinterpreted or abused when bodybuilders focus on adding poundage at the expense of exercise form. Don’t be guilty of that. Exercise form must be correct consistently. You must not get injured.
LIE #6: WHEN YOU’RE BULKING, YOU NEED LOADS OF FOOD
On growth programs, many bodybuilders overdose on food, and thus overdose on body fat. While you need a sufficient surplus of calories and nutrients to grow on, “sufficient” doesn’t mean a gross excess. What “sufficient” means is enough to permit muscle growth but without adding appreciable body fat.
Most bodybuilders need to allow a small amount of body fat to accompany a larger amount of muscle growth. But many bodybuilders have overdone the bulking mentality and added far more body fat than muscle, which doesn’t yield a pleasing end result.
But no matter how ideal your caloric consumption may be, and how ideal your dietary fat and protein intakes may be, if you’re not training effectively, the surplus of nourishment will go to waste, and just add to your waistline.
To build muscle, you need an effective training program in combination with sufficient nutritional surplus and lots of sleep (and rest in general).
[h=3]LIE #7: ISOLATION EXERCISES ARE KEY FOR BUILDING MUSCLE[/h] The primary mass-building exercises are the big compound movements including squats, regular deadlifts, parallel grip deadlifts, bench presses, dips, overhead presses, chin-ups and pull-ups, rows, and pulldowns. Each can build mass in a broad area.
Isolation exercises can also build muscle, but only in localized areas—these are the secondary mass-building exercises. To work your entire physique from isolation work alone, you would need many isolation exercises. But just a few of the big compound exercises work almost your entire physique.
In practice, most bodybuilders use a combination of primary and secondary exercises. But if they want to build a lot of muscle, hardgainers don’t have much “room” in their routines for isolation exercises. Hardgainers nearly always include too many exercises, especially isolation movements.
The most responsive bodybuilders—epitomized by the pros—are another story. They can prosper on routines that comprise many of each category of exercises.
But even the pros’ thigh development owes way more to squats than leg extensions.
Their chest development owes way more to bench presses than the pec deck.
And their shoulder development owes way more to presses than forward raises.
[h=3]LIE #8: TO BUILD MUSCLE, EXERCISE MACHINES ARE ESSENTIAL[/h] The primary advantages of modern-day machines are ease of use, and safety.
Consider how much easier it is for a gym instructor to guide someone on using a bench press machine than it is to teach how to bench press with a barbell or a pair of dumbbells. And consider that good machines are set up so that the user can’t get pinned under a weight, and spotters aren’t essential.
Some of the better machinery can be used well, with good results. But machines aren’t essential. And some are poorly designed, don’t fit many users, and can cause chronic irritations and problems.
Traditional equipment means barbells, dumbbells, power rack or racks with safety bars, and ordinary benches. Properly used, that equipment has produced amazing results.
Because most commercial gyms have an abundance of machinery, including for isolation exercises, most bodybuilders get distracted by some of that equipment, and lose focus from the exercises that matter the most.
But once you’re truly savvy about proper training you should be able to work out effectively in any gym.
[h=3]LIE #9: HIGH REPS PRODUCE DEFINITION, LOW REPS BUILD MUSCLE[/h] Both high reps and low reps can build muscle.
Both high reps and low reps can yield no muscle growth.
Both high reps and low reps can be incorporated in a program that results in fat loss.
Both high reps and low reps can be incorporated in a program that results in fat gain.
But there’s no rule that high reps definitely produce definition, or that low reps definitely build mass.
It’s not the rep number per se that’s critical, but how those reps are done, and within what overall program.
No matter what rep number is performed, if insufficient effort is delivered on the wrong exercises, or even if sufficient effort is delivered on the right exercises but there’s too much training volume or frequency, or there’s insufficient supply of the components of recuperation, there will never be much if any new muscle growth.
Twenty-rep squats, properly performed and within the right overall program, have a tremendous tradition of producing muscle growth. But so have medium- and low-rep squats.
Although there’s no tradition of 20-rep bench presses, overhead presses, and rows, mass has been built on both low- and medium-rep sets of those exercises.
Doing super-high reps for the abs (or any other muscle) isn’t going to make a blind bit of difference for reducing body fat unless it coincides with a sufficient caloric deficit to force your body to draw on its reserves (stored as body fat) to supply the required balance of calories.
You can shed fat while doing high-rep ab work, low-rep ab work, or no ab work whatsoever provided that you’re in sufficient caloric deficit for long enough. But very high rep work may contribute to some loss of muscle.
[h=3]LIE #10: YOU CAN’T BUILD MUSCLE IF YOU TRAIN JUST TWICE A WEEK[/h] If you train properly at each workout—which includes training hard enough on the best exercises—you shouldn’t be capable of training more often than three times a week. But working out just twice a week is better for most hardgainers, because they need lots of recovery time between workouts. (Training just twice-weekly is also much more practical for most people than more frequent workouts.)
Of course, if you never push any set to your limit, and you stick mostly to the small exercises, you’ll be able to train four or more times each week without becoming exhausted. But those workouts won’t stimulate muscle growth because they aren’t hard enough.
The main aim of bodybuilding is to build muscle, and to do that you need hard workouts, and when you train hard you can’t train very often.
Genetically gifted bodybuilders, especially if they are drug-assisted, have far better recuperative abilities than the rest of us, and they can make good progress on a greater training frequency, but that’s another matter.
A split program that alternates two different but very short routines, while training three times a week, can be effective for some drug-free bodybuilders if properly designed. I sometimes recommend that, especially when I want to wean bodybuilders off programs of four or more workouts per week.
But generally speaking, just two properly performed workouts a week is better for hardgainers.
[h=3]LIE #11: TO BUILD MUSCLE, WOMEN SHOULD TRAIN DIFFERENTLY TO MEN[/h] Effective training isn’t gender specific. Muscle is muscle regardless of whether it’s on a man or a woman.
But men and women have very different levels of some hormones. That’s what primarily accounts for the big difference in the quantity of muscle that can be built by the two sexes, even when similar training methods and levels of dedication are applied.
But men and women usually have different goals. Few women want to build big muscles.
For a woman to build muscle most effectively, she should train using the same methods that a hardgaining man should apply to build muscle. Going through the motions on a long list of isolation exercises is just as ineffective for building muscle on a woman as it is on a man.
Hard, serious training is required for both sexes to build muscle, but the potential for muscle growth is way less for most women than it is for most men.
[h=3]LIE #12: LIFTING WEIGHTS BUILDS MASS, CARDIO RIPS YOU UP[/h] Adjustments in your caloric intake comprise the main factor for stripping off body fat. If your average daily caloric expenditure exceeds your average daily caloric intake on a consistent basis, you’ll lose body fat.
Lifting weights has the potential to build muscle, but only when it’s done properly in combination with adequate attention to the components of recuperation. And cardio work will help with stripping off body fat only if it’s supported by an overall caloric deficit on a daily basis for a sufficient period.
You could do two hours of tough cardio each day (spread over several short bouts), but you would still add body fat if you overeat.
On the other hand, you could do no cardio whatsoever, but you would still lose body fat if you undereat.
If you try to lose body fat and build substantial muscle mass simultaneously, you’re going to find it very difficult, if not impossible. The former requires a caloric deficit, but the latter is most readily done with a caloric surplus.
What many people refer to as cardio is really just low- to moderate-effort aerobic work. Cardio is hard, and can be sustained for just short periods. Aerobic work can be sustained for long periods.
Aerobic work is the easiest addition to a fat-loss program because it burns calories without much effort, so it can be sustained easily, day after day, week after week, and month after month. It uses up fewer calories per minute than hard cardio, but hard cardio can’t be sustained for long periods.
Stuart McRobert
LIE #1: TRAIN MORE OFTEN TO GROW MORE MUSCLE
There may seem to be some logic here because, in many activities, the more often that a skill is practiced properly, the quicker that competence is acquired. But bodybuilding training isn’t like pure skill training. Furthermore, when someone discovers that a modest amount of proper training builds muscle, there’s a tendency to think that training more often will yield even better results.
A bodybuilding workout will build muscle only if it safely stimulates growth and is followed by sufficient recovery time and supply of nutrients to permit the body to heal, which means to recover from the training and build a very small amount of overcompensation tissue—muscle.Train too often, and you may not stimulate any growth because you’re unable to train hard enough because of the excessive frequency of training. And even if you do stimulate growth, you’ll not have sufficient recuperation time between workouts to permit the growth to occur.
It’s very easy for a natural bodybuilder with normal genetics to overtrain. But someone with outstanding genetics for bodybuilding can prosper on more frequent training, and such a person can prosper on even more frequent training if he’s on bodybuilding drugs.
Hardgainers are best off training no more than three times a week, but with just twice a week being ideal for many bodybuilders. But the super-responsive, drug-fed bodybuilding elite can prosper on six workouts a week. (Some, for short periods, have progressed on twice-daily training, six days a week!)
Such high frequency is training suicide for hardgainers. But even the pros can overtrain, and many of them have discovered that, even with their huge advantages, when they cut back on their training frequency (and volume) they are better able to build muscle.
Don’t think that by splitting your training over, say, four workouts a week is necessarily easier on your recovery system than two brief full-body workouts. Because the muscular system is so interwoven, and many exercises overlap somewhat in the muscles they recruit, some split routines train some of the same muscles at every workout. Furthermore, intensive training for just a limited area of musculature still has an overall systemic demand that needs to be recovered from before you work a different area of your physique.
Recovery time—and lots of it for hardgaining bodybuilders—is essential in order to build muscle.
LIE #2: TRAIN LONGER TO BUILD MORE MUSCLE
The origins of this lie are the same as for the previous one. Men and women with exceptional genetic talent for an athletic activity, especially when assisted by performance enhancing drugs, can prosper on a far greater volume of training than can drug-free, genetically normal athletes.
Some great medium- and long-distance runners, for example, inherited an ability to process oxygen and produce energy that’s in another world relative to that of a normal person. Of course, the great runners further enhance their natural advantages with great dedication to training, but they had way more to work with from day one. The same sort of point applies in the bodybuilding world.
As little as just one work set can stimulate muscle growth, provided that its quality is high enough. If you ever need to do more than three work sets for a given exercise, you must be loafing. Train harder. Make three work sets per exercise your ceiling. Sometimes, just one or two work sets per exercise is better. Some body parts are much larger than others, and thus can sometimes benefit from multiple exercises in a given program, but there’s no need to do a great many sets per body part.
Too much training is as counterproductive as training too often. But most hardgaining bodybuilders train too often and do too many sets per workout, and that combination is usually a major part of the explanation for why they continue to make little or no progress.
LIE #3: THE ROUTINES THAT WORK FOR THE BIGGEST GUYS WORK FOR OTHER BODYBUILDERS, TOO
The routines that work for the biggest bodybuilders only work well for people who have the same genetic advantages and drug support that the biggest guys have. While the big guys know what works well for them, that doesn’t mean they know what works for drug-free bodybuilders with normal genetics.
Someone who struggled for years without building any muscle, but then managed to build 25 pounds of muscle drug-free, knows way more about how to train genetically normal, drug-free bodybuilders than does a genetic freak on tons of drugs who has built over 100 pounds of muscle.
LIE #4: A BODYBUILDER’S DIET SHOULD BE A LOW-FAT ONE
A low-fat diet undermines if not prohibits muscle growth even if your caloric intake and protein consumption are adequate. The phobia of dietary fat that many bodybuilders seem to have seriously undermines their ability to build muscle.
When you’re trying to build muscle, get about 30% of your total caloric intake from healthy dietary fats. Avoid newfangled fats, fried food, deep fried food, and anything with trans fats or hydrogenated fats. If you check food labels, you’ll see that most processed food contains unhealthy fats.
And even if you’re cutting back on body fat you still need to consume healthy fats because they supply essential nutrients. A low-fat diet is unhealthy.
LIE #5: TO BUILD BIG MUSCLES IT’S NOT ESSENTIAL TO BE STRONG
Even bodybuilders who have a similar amount of muscle can vary greatly in their strength levels. The explanation may include differences in leverages, muscle belly lengths and efficiency of the nervous system, and variations in the ratios of the different types of muscle fibers. A smaller bodybuilder who is better put together for strength may be stronger than a larger bodybuilder.
But you have to get stronger than you are now, to build muscle. If you can bench press 150 pounds for eight reps now, and in a year’s time you still can’t bench press more than 150 pounds for eight reps, you’re highly unlikely to have bigger chest and triceps muscles. But if in a year’s time you can bench press 200 pounds for eight reps in the same technique as before, you’ll have somewhat bigger chest and triceps muscles. Then if, for instance, 18 months later you can bench press 265 pounds for eight reps in the same technique as before, you’ll have substantially bigger chest and triceps muscles.
The “get stronger to get bigger” maxim is misinterpreted or abused when bodybuilders focus on adding poundage at the expense of exercise form. Don’t be guilty of that. Exercise form must be correct consistently. You must not get injured.
LIE #6: WHEN YOU’RE BULKING, YOU NEED LOADS OF FOOD
On growth programs, many bodybuilders overdose on food, and thus overdose on body fat. While you need a sufficient surplus of calories and nutrients to grow on, “sufficient” doesn’t mean a gross excess. What “sufficient” means is enough to permit muscle growth but without adding appreciable body fat.
Most bodybuilders need to allow a small amount of body fat to accompany a larger amount of muscle growth. But many bodybuilders have overdone the bulking mentality and added far more body fat than muscle, which doesn’t yield a pleasing end result.
But no matter how ideal your caloric consumption may be, and how ideal your dietary fat and protein intakes may be, if you’re not training effectively, the surplus of nourishment will go to waste, and just add to your waistline.
To build muscle, you need an effective training program in combination with sufficient nutritional surplus and lots of sleep (and rest in general).
[h=3]LIE #7: ISOLATION EXERCISES ARE KEY FOR BUILDING MUSCLE[/h] The primary mass-building exercises are the big compound movements including squats, regular deadlifts, parallel grip deadlifts, bench presses, dips, overhead presses, chin-ups and pull-ups, rows, and pulldowns. Each can build mass in a broad area.
Isolation exercises can also build muscle, but only in localized areas—these are the secondary mass-building exercises. To work your entire physique from isolation work alone, you would need many isolation exercises. But just a few of the big compound exercises work almost your entire physique.
In practice, most bodybuilders use a combination of primary and secondary exercises. But if they want to build a lot of muscle, hardgainers don’t have much “room” in their routines for isolation exercises. Hardgainers nearly always include too many exercises, especially isolation movements.
The most responsive bodybuilders—epitomized by the pros—are another story. They can prosper on routines that comprise many of each category of exercises.
But even the pros’ thigh development owes way more to squats than leg extensions.
Their chest development owes way more to bench presses than the pec deck.
And their shoulder development owes way more to presses than forward raises.
[h=3]LIE #8: TO BUILD MUSCLE, EXERCISE MACHINES ARE ESSENTIAL[/h] The primary advantages of modern-day machines are ease of use, and safety.
Consider how much easier it is for a gym instructor to guide someone on using a bench press machine than it is to teach how to bench press with a barbell or a pair of dumbbells. And consider that good machines are set up so that the user can’t get pinned under a weight, and spotters aren’t essential.
Some of the better machinery can be used well, with good results. But machines aren’t essential. And some are poorly designed, don’t fit many users, and can cause chronic irritations and problems.
Traditional equipment means barbells, dumbbells, power rack or racks with safety bars, and ordinary benches. Properly used, that equipment has produced amazing results.
Because most commercial gyms have an abundance of machinery, including for isolation exercises, most bodybuilders get distracted by some of that equipment, and lose focus from the exercises that matter the most.
But once you’re truly savvy about proper training you should be able to work out effectively in any gym.
[h=3]LIE #9: HIGH REPS PRODUCE DEFINITION, LOW REPS BUILD MUSCLE[/h] Both high reps and low reps can build muscle.
Both high reps and low reps can yield no muscle growth.
Both high reps and low reps can be incorporated in a program that results in fat loss.
Both high reps and low reps can be incorporated in a program that results in fat gain.
But there’s no rule that high reps definitely produce definition, or that low reps definitely build mass.
It’s not the rep number per se that’s critical, but how those reps are done, and within what overall program.
No matter what rep number is performed, if insufficient effort is delivered on the wrong exercises, or even if sufficient effort is delivered on the right exercises but there’s too much training volume or frequency, or there’s insufficient supply of the components of recuperation, there will never be much if any new muscle growth.
Twenty-rep squats, properly performed and within the right overall program, have a tremendous tradition of producing muscle growth. But so have medium- and low-rep squats.
Although there’s no tradition of 20-rep bench presses, overhead presses, and rows, mass has been built on both low- and medium-rep sets of those exercises.
Doing super-high reps for the abs (or any other muscle) isn’t going to make a blind bit of difference for reducing body fat unless it coincides with a sufficient caloric deficit to force your body to draw on its reserves (stored as body fat) to supply the required balance of calories.
You can shed fat while doing high-rep ab work, low-rep ab work, or no ab work whatsoever provided that you’re in sufficient caloric deficit for long enough. But very high rep work may contribute to some loss of muscle.
[h=3]LIE #10: YOU CAN’T BUILD MUSCLE IF YOU TRAIN JUST TWICE A WEEK[/h] If you train properly at each workout—which includes training hard enough on the best exercises—you shouldn’t be capable of training more often than three times a week. But working out just twice a week is better for most hardgainers, because they need lots of recovery time between workouts. (Training just twice-weekly is also much more practical for most people than more frequent workouts.)
Of course, if you never push any set to your limit, and you stick mostly to the small exercises, you’ll be able to train four or more times each week without becoming exhausted. But those workouts won’t stimulate muscle growth because they aren’t hard enough.
The main aim of bodybuilding is to build muscle, and to do that you need hard workouts, and when you train hard you can’t train very often.
Genetically gifted bodybuilders, especially if they are drug-assisted, have far better recuperative abilities than the rest of us, and they can make good progress on a greater training frequency, but that’s another matter.
A split program that alternates two different but very short routines, while training three times a week, can be effective for some drug-free bodybuilders if properly designed. I sometimes recommend that, especially when I want to wean bodybuilders off programs of four or more workouts per week.
But generally speaking, just two properly performed workouts a week is better for hardgainers.
[h=3]LIE #11: TO BUILD MUSCLE, WOMEN SHOULD TRAIN DIFFERENTLY TO MEN[/h] Effective training isn’t gender specific. Muscle is muscle regardless of whether it’s on a man or a woman.
But men and women have very different levels of some hormones. That’s what primarily accounts for the big difference in the quantity of muscle that can be built by the two sexes, even when similar training methods and levels of dedication are applied.
But men and women usually have different goals. Few women want to build big muscles.
For a woman to build muscle most effectively, she should train using the same methods that a hardgaining man should apply to build muscle. Going through the motions on a long list of isolation exercises is just as ineffective for building muscle on a woman as it is on a man.
Hard, serious training is required for both sexes to build muscle, but the potential for muscle growth is way less for most women than it is for most men.
[h=3]LIE #12: LIFTING WEIGHTS BUILDS MASS, CARDIO RIPS YOU UP[/h] Adjustments in your caloric intake comprise the main factor for stripping off body fat. If your average daily caloric expenditure exceeds your average daily caloric intake on a consistent basis, you’ll lose body fat.
Lifting weights has the potential to build muscle, but only when it’s done properly in combination with adequate attention to the components of recuperation. And cardio work will help with stripping off body fat only if it’s supported by an overall caloric deficit on a daily basis for a sufficient period.
You could do two hours of tough cardio each day (spread over several short bouts), but you would still add body fat if you overeat.
On the other hand, you could do no cardio whatsoever, but you would still lose body fat if you undereat.
If you try to lose body fat and build substantial muscle mass simultaneously, you’re going to find it very difficult, if not impossible. The former requires a caloric deficit, but the latter is most readily done with a caloric surplus.
What many people refer to as cardio is really just low- to moderate-effort aerobic work. Cardio is hard, and can be sustained for just short periods. Aerobic work can be sustained for long periods.
Aerobic work is the easiest addition to a fat-loss program because it burns calories without much effort, so it can be sustained easily, day after day, week after week, and month after month. It uses up fewer calories per minute than hard cardio, but hard cardio can’t be sustained for long periods.
