Just get that cardio done

the dreadful bike, lurking in the shadows. Ever so deceptive with its false promises of turning you into Indurain, just jacked.

I spent a good part of a decade of my training career, optimizing everything for strength and size — including low-intensity steady-state (LISS) cardio for recovery. I probably spent 20+ hours a week on training, with 15 of those hours being moving iron up and down.

And fair, I was larger, much stronger, faster, and probably in decent cardio shape. Even though weight training is not the best cardio, doing sets of 20 still has a positive impact.

Now, I’m a father of two with a full-time job and a spouse that equally works quite a bit — there just isn’t the same amount of time for training anymore. If you still have the time and remember to do the LISS on top of the lifting, good for you. You can stop reading.

Since having kids, I’ve tried to keep optimizing under the new conditions, but with kids and partners, the conditions just keep changing — and there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it. Not within reason at least.

Getting closer to forty also means that cardio has to take more of a priority. You can get away with a lot when you’re in your twenties and early thirties, as long as you’re physically active and out of breath a good portion of the week. But when you get closer to forty, something has to change. The general sedentary lifestyle imposed on adults in modern civilization runs your engine into the ground until you get out of breath from just walking a few floors up — embarrassing. Cardio simply has to be prioritized. You no longer play games, go hiking or swimming with friends in the weekend. You are probably just looking at your kids doing those things.

That realization comes too late for most adults — and doing something about it, comes even later.

So what to do?

Personally I tried to keep optimizing, of course. Splitting cardio and lifting to keep the low-intensity cardio optimal — but that just takes way too much time. People forget the warmups, the cool downs, the prep, the showering, the commute…

I also tried high-intensity interval training before lifting. I even had an extremely competent coach set up a 3 x a week plan for me. It went well — for the 8 weeks it lasted. But ramping up intensity over time, for long enough, for someone who doesn’t sleep enough — aka a parent — never ends well. At some point, you reach a tipping point and crash. It’s great while it lasts, but it’s not maintainable unless your lifestyle supports it — and let’s be honest, it doesn’t. Eating and sleeping always take second or third place.

So what to do if you still want to work and optimise?

You accept that optimal is not an academic endavour on figuring out Olympic level

performance plans. Optimal is what you get done.

I listened to a great podcast a few weeks ago with Alec Blenis (link below), and it was a good reminder of what matters — getting shit done. Keep showing up, keep adding more weight, and increasing the pace — that covers 90% of your gains.

So do what you can, when you can, and keep doing it.

For a parent with full-time work, what’s viable? Cardio before your workout. Make it a 20-minute session and use it as your general warm-up, just with a bit of extra push. Get the blood moving, get the joints ready. Equally important for old lifters. Zone 2 cardio might be the big trend now, but there’s still value in Zone 3. Sustained, harder work builds your heart’s ability to pump more blood per beat and raises your lactate threshold — both of which start dropping faster after 40 if you don’t train them. Zone 3 might be more demanding, but lets be honest, with the amount of cardio you do, that is not an issue.

For most, 12–30 minutes is realistic — long enough to get a proper training effect but short enough to fit into a lifting day without wrecking recovery. You assess the zone or effort of which you are working by testing whether if you can rant about life and chores to your training buddies, if you cannot, then you are in the right zone. Stay there.

Be smart about overlapping muscles. Rowing hits your posterior chain, assault bike leans more on the anterior side, running lights up calves, hip flexors, and psoas in a way lifting rarely does. Personally, I prefer some overlap to minimize time spent on warmups, but try it out for yourself and remember to allow for adaptions.

Example weekly plan:

Session 1

A1. 20 min Assault Bike

A2. If time allows, add some intervals after the 20 min — Bikes are low joint impact and easy for spiking heart rate.

B. Squat movement

C. Heavy pressing movement

D. More pressing, a bit of vertical pulling, and a bit of arms for balancing

Session 2

A. 20 min Rowing — don’t overdo it, overlaps heavily with your pulling work

B. Pulling movement like deadlift

C. More pulling, but with your upper body, like High Pulls

D. Close Grip Bench

D. Biceps

Session 3

A. 20–40 min Running — Running has a higher joint impact so pace should be slower for lifters; more time compensates for it

B. Whatever is not sore and do lots of it.

Just squeeze it in where it can be done — and stop ridiculing Zone 3 and 4 because of new cardio studies. After 40, getting out of breath regularly isn’t optional — it’s the insurance policy for the next decades of your life.

Link to Podcast with Alec Blenis