Most powerlifters keep their cardio training low. There is intense lower body training involved in the deadlift and squat, and too much cardio can cause a decrease in overall energy required for such intense training throughout the week overall. It can be challenging to not cross the fine line of what becomes a hindering amount of cardio to your lifts.

Unfortunately, I was “blessed” with the endomorph body type; or as I like to call it, the fat genes. Okay okay, so I have some mesomorph (muscular body type) mixed in there too. What all this means is I can build muscle fairly easy, can gain fat very easily and it is very difficult to lose fat. That being said, in order to simply maintain low body fat levels I need to do a considerable amount of cardio. In order to lose fat I need to do even more. This has been my challenge with wanting to make strength gains in powerlifting while keeping my body fat down.

I do not do any less than 60 minutes of cardio 5-6 days per week in my figure off-season. When trying to lean down, I have to bump it up to 90 minutes per day during most of my prep, and 2 hours the last 4-6 weeks. Low intensity cardio (135-145 bpm) works the best for ME.

My dilemma has been finding the cardio modality with the least amount of joint stress and least amount of strain on my lower body overall — something that gets my heart rate up but doesn’t fatigue my legs and glutes. I always enjoyed the stairclimber, but after some time I was feeling like 60+ minutes a day of stairclimbing was a lot on my legs and joints considering all of the heavy squatting and deadlifting I do. When I started my lean down 6 weeks ago, I felt the intuition to switch to all high incline walking on the treadmill at a slow pace. The elliptical was another option but my toes always go numb after about 20 minutes…though it is still an option. The switch was just what I needed. I do not feel as achy in my knees, and walking at 15.0 incline and 2.0 mph, I get a passive stretch which I feel has helped me with recuperation altogether.

So far so good …