re: I quit doing cardio

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I've also heard something about cardio effects don't really kick in until around 15-20 minutes to maximize improvements. So if you workout for a half hour cardio session 3-4 days a week, you'd see minimal improvements. But extending that to 45 minutes, you're already in an elevated HR zone, likely zone 2-3, and it may have taken you that 15-20 minutes to get there and sustain it. So you're only adding 15 minutes to your workout time, but all of that is like a bonus, and better than doing a short 15-20 minute cardio based workout on another day. And after you acclimate to that, you stretch it to an hour.

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As a former collegiate strength coach, one of the more frustrating but also fascinating aspects of human adaptation is that they are highly individualistic and also adaptations are never in a vacuum. If even the most learned doctor tells me something so specific, I will be highly skeptical of what they say afterwards.

For myself, ive found that working incline walking into rest times for my lifts have made a huge difference. 30 minutes of walking 5-6 times a week in addition to 5x calisthenics has been incredible for my physique. Its my sweet spot...at my age in my 30s. Who knows how I would have responded in my 20s etc.

The key is trial and error. I know this is cliche but its also everyone's best path for success. Add an input for minimum 2 weeks...see what output you get

**Take-home: A great starting point to cardio is incline walking on treadmill or just terrained walking outside. Start with 20 min/day. You CAN do this during rest times for intense lifts if the walking intensity is low enough but youll have to monitor your performance in your subsequent sets