Question: I have reached a plateau on the bench press. I've been stuck lifting the same weight on the bench press for weeks now. I'm benching the same weight for the same reps now that I was benching about 2 months ago. What can I do to start increasing my bench press again?

Answer: Ah yes, the infamous "increasing your bench press" question. I've heard this so many times because it is extremely common. That is why there is always some stupid "add 50 pounds to your bench press" article in every fitness magazine... anything to make money huh... But getting back to your question, this is very common and happens to EVERYONE. But the good news is, there are a few ways to get past it and start increasing again. Here's how: cardio weight training workout workouts Question: My main goal is to build muscle, but at the same time I'd like to lose a little bit of fat and maintain my cardiovascular health. For this reason, I'd like to keep doing cardio (jog or ride the bike) in addition to the weight training workouts I'll be doing for the purpose of building muscle. However, I've heard some bad things about combining cardio workouts with weight training workouts. Something about how cardio burns muscle or how doing it will make it impossible to build muscle. Is there any truth to any of this, and how can I make this work without sacrificing anything? Answer: This is a question I get a lot and see come up all the time on various workout related forums. How to build muscle while still doing cardio? Will doing cardio allow me to lose fat while building muscle? Nope, not really. The reason being that building muscle requires a caloric surplus, which is a fancy way of saying more calories than your body actually needs each day (these extra calories are used for building that new muscle). On the other hand, losing fat requires a caloric deficit, which is a fancy way of saying less calories than your body needs each day (which then causes your body to burn stored body fat for energy instead). As you can tell, building muscle and losing fat require the opposite of each other, thus making doing both at the same time really hard to nearly impossible. Meaning, adding in cardio workouts in addition to your weight training workouts will not allow you to lose fat while building muscle. If anything, it will just burn up all of those extra calories you needed for building that muscle and actually PREVENT muscle from being built. Which brings us to the next question... Will cardio prevent me from building muscle? And if so, what's the solution? Keeping cardio on the low side while in a muscle building phase is recommended for 2 reasons. First, it burns calories, and as you appear to already fully understand, building muscle requires as excess of calories. But, like you said, the solution here is to just make sure you consume enough calories to compensate for the calories burned during cardio. As long as a surplus is still created, you're fine. The other reason cardio should be kept low is because it can very easily cut into your recovery, especially in very high amounts. The weight training program is designed with suffient recovery in mind... the volume, frequency, intensity... everything. But to then add a ton of cardio on top of all of that changes things. The only solution here would be to either cut down on the cardio, or, if you need/want to keep it at this level, you really just have to listen to your body. If strength isn't going up or you don't feel recovered, or you feel tired/run down, etc... those are signs to cut back somewhere. And if cardio has to be kept the same, then you'll need to cut back on the weight training. Remove a set here, remove a set there and then just keep paying attention to how your body responds. You may even need to drop one of the lower body workouts altogether. The really short and simple answer to your question is yes, you can still build muscle even with cardio at high levels. No doubt there. It's just not going to be the ideal situation to be in, and it will require some extra work and attention.

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