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Q&A for: 25-Apr-06

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Ask Mike Your Fitness Question:

1522. Q: mike i usually cycle everyday to my destination and sometimes i would cycle all over for maybe 2-3 hours can that be considered as an exercise

A: Definitely! Cycling is a perfectly good form of cardio exercise and it sounds like you do a ton of it. If you can I would recommend that you do some weight training, especially for the upper body, to complement the cardio workout that cycling gives you.

1523. Q: Mike, what's the deal with digesting red meat versus digesting chicken? Is it easier to digest and pass chicken, therefore making it healthier, or is this just urban myth?

A: Your system can digest lean chicken faster than red meat, but that doesn't necessarily make chicken healthier or unhealthier. Different foods simply take different amounts of time to digest. Some people have other health concerns about red meat, but I don't think that speed of digestion is a common one.

1524. Q: Mike in order to do the cutting face after some bulkup i was told to do 20 mins cardio just before the weight training every time.As far as i know its better to do the cardio after the weight training cause if u do it before u spent energyu ll need later.The answer i got is that the body starts burning fat after the first 20 mins.So u do 20 mins cardio and after that 1 hour of fast weight training(with small breaks)in the duration of witch the body will burn fat all the way.What is your opinion ? Should i do cardio before or after the training ?

A: I don't agree with that explanation at all. It doesn't make sense: if after 20 minutes you start burning fat, why would you even do cardio for those first 20 minutes? Just do weights the whole time and get double the benefit. I don't agree with that theory or recommendation.

My usual recommendation is to keep cardio separate from weight training and keep either training session under one hour. Both cardio and weights can become catabolic (muscle-destrying) on your body when performed for too long, so it's important to keep training sessions under an hour or so, especially if they're intense.

If you absolutely have to do cardio and weights together, the I would do weight training first and cardio later. One possible exception is if you do very light cardio as a sort of warm-up before weights, but I don't think that's what you're talking about.