Is cardio necessary to achieve the lowest possible body fat percentage?

It is almost certain that you have heard the saying "the definition is in the kitchen" and questioned whether this can really be the case. And indeed, the reality is that the majority of fat loss is regulated by diet. However, you should not fall for the fallacy that this alone is the ideal solution, because strictly speaking, nutrition is only one part of a sophisticated overall concept to reduce body fat and reveal your muscles. If you want to Body fat percentage really want to reduce your weight significantly so that your muscles are as defined as possible, you will of course need to spend a lot of time in the gym and doing cardio training. However, there are numerous misconceptions and myths about cardio training in particular, including interviews with well-known fitness models who report having to do countless hours of cardio training to keep their body fat percentage low. But is this really necessary or is there another way? In the following article, we would like to delve into this area of tension and explain whether excessive cardio training is really necessary to maintain the lowest possible body fat percentage.

So what does cardio training have to do with a low body fat percentage?

Sports science has been studying the relationship between the volume and intensity of cardio training for many years and has come up with a constant stream of new findings in this regard, which have repeatedly contradicted each other, particularly in the past. A recently published study by a renowned university looked at the preparation of natural bodybuilders for competitions with regard to the effects of cardio training on body composition. The study looked in detail at the final months of competition preparation, during which it is characteristic to get rid of the last fat reserves in order to achieve an extremely low body fat percentage. Significantly, the athletes involved in the study reduced their body fat content from an average of 14 percent to an average of 7.2 percent within 14 weeks. The athletes achieved this remarkable result not only through a calorie-reduced diet, but also through cardio training, which consisted of five 40-minute sessions per week. What particularly amazed the researchers in this context, however, was the fact that the proportion of muscle mass that fell victim to the diet was significantly greater than expected at an average of 5.5 kilograms (i.e. 43 percent of the total weight loss). The scientists suspected that this effect was related to the greater calorie deficit, as the athletes had to show for their excessive cardio training. So the bottom line is that excessive cardio training is not exactly beneficial for the best possible muscle definition.

What else could be the problem?

However, the calorie deficit created is not the only reason why excessive cardio training is counterproductive for optimal muscle definition. A study published in the Journal of Sports and Physical Fitness suggests another plausible reason. It is in the nature of things that strength and endurance training stress the organism in different ways and accordingly also address different muscle fibers, which also affects the visual development of the muscles and thus determines how much they stand out under the skin as part of a decreasing body fat percentage. While strength training primarily targets the fast-twitch FT muscle fibers, which are comparatively voluminous, endurance training focuses on the ST muscle fibers, which are more delicate. Furthermore, as these muscle fibers are designed for endurance performance, they are designed for energy efficiency and are therefore less dominant. Our organism is still a miracle of efficiency and therefore knows very well how to adapt to given demands. With regard to cardio training, for example, this concerns the adaptation of the muscle fiber composition to the given loads. So if you overdo it with endurance training, your body tends to develop more ST fibers, which reduces muscle volume in favor of endurance. If your goal is to define your trained muscles in the best possible way, too much cardio training is pure poison for your body.

What influence does the intensity of the training have?

Another option that is also particularly popular in the context of fitness sports to reduce body fat is the High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT). This approach is based on the concept of making cardio training as short as possible, but at the same time highly intensive, which eliminates the disadvantages of extreme training volumes. Strictly speaking, HIIT comes very close to the load profile of conventional strength training, as the relevant load patterns stress and therefore train similar muscle fibers. As a result, your body is much less inclined to change the fiber composition of your muscles to the detriment of muscle definition. However, high intensity interval training is not the last word in wisdom when it comes to optimally reducing your body fat percentage. The fundamental problem with HIIT training is based on the load pattern mentioned above, as it stresses your body in a similar way to weight training and therefore increases the amount of regeneration required. Due to the additional and comparatively one-sided strain, there is an increased release of stress hormones and an increased susceptibility to injury, especially in conjunction with a diet. The release of stress hormones in particular inhibits fat loss and, in the worst case, has a negative impact on your physical and cognitive performance.

So what should you do if you want to achieve a low body fat percentage?

The bottom line is that it is neither advisable to do particularly intensive cardio training nor to go for extreme volumes. Instead, it is essential to find a happy medium, which is particularly important if you already have a comparatively low body fat percentage and want to reduce it even further. As a result, especially in this phase, it is advisable to focus on a good three to four hours of training per week at a low intensity. At this point, it is a good idea to replace running with light cycling or walking, for example, in order to burn calories without putting too much stress on your body. Don't forget, however, that cardio training alone is no guarantee of success, but also just one piece of the puzzle in the overall concept of body fat reduction.