re: I quit doing cardio

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VO2 max training like jogging is the least important

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I think some people just misunderstand the reason elite endurance athlete Zone2 train and forget it's part of a polarized training regime where you also have to do maximal efforts in the other 20% of your training. Most of us are not elite endurance athletes. You can stimulate mitochondrial bio genesis at any cardio zone level. You get more stimulus-response at higher effort levels per unit time. But efforts levels above Zone 3 leads to increased fatigue and the need for more recovery time. For endurance athletes total volume of training is everything. High intensity training and the required recovery limited total volume. While Zone 2 training allows for an almost unlimited training volume. If you only get 4-5 hours of cardio a week Zone2/polarized training is probably not the right thing for you to maximize cardio benefit. HIIT is probably a better fit in this scenario. But HIIT increases fatigue and might interfere with strength training. And for those of us over the hill there are cardiac risks running at high heart rates. Steps are a pretty meaningless metric. Time and heart rate are what should be targeted. If you can elevate your heart rate into zone 2-3 and maintain it there during your lifting routine you can probably kill two birds with one stone. That's the basis of the rucking using increased weight to increase heart rate during a normal walk pace.