Training Protocols

i just recently purchase an indoor bike exactly for that reason, fasted morning cardio. comparing with the amount of money we spend on steroids its probably one of the purchases that will bring the most value long term. I used to go for a morning walk, but then rain came and its just way easier to do the cardio at home. My routine changes for this year is to wake up, take hgh and go on the bike for 30-60 mins low intensity cardio.

dr. Doping said:

I find cardio to be a very underrated tool (or activity) in the context of strength training and I'll use this thread to try and convince you why getting a room bike is the best purchase you can make in 2026

Ever since completely stopping my previous sport and going all-in on strength training, I have been neglecting cardio. There were periods when I did it semi consistently after training in the gym but I always eventually started skipping it because the workouts were long and I am always training in the evening. As a result, I had unfavourable blood pressure and lipids. Half a year ago, I moved out of my parents place and with that, came the freedom to do stupid (or sometimes not) decisions. One of them was getting a room bike. My room is spacious, but enough to justify having a room bike and not using it. And that is literally the biggest motivator for me to do my 20-30 minutes of fasted cardio every morning. I cannot let myself stop doing it, since it takes up place and decided I will not regret getting it. Ever since, my quality of life has improved drastically. I no longer have stamina issues, my blood pressure and resting heart rate are much much better and my lipids and glucose metabolism should improve too. And don't fall for the broscience advice "cardio kills gains". It doesn't.

Tl; dr: get a used room bike for cheap and use it. Your life will improve a lot.

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I’m with you on this, and honestly this is one of those posts that sounds simple but hits way deeper than most “advanced” discussions.

Cardio is criminally underrated in strength and PED circles, mostly because people still treat it as a threat instead of a tool. What you described is exactly how it plays out in real life: long evening sessions, “I’ll do cardio after”, then it slowly disappears. Not because people are lazy, but because the setup makes it easy to skip.

The room bike part is the key insight here. Removing friction matters more than motivation. When the bike is literally in your room, there’s no excuse, no logistics, no mental negotiation. You wake up, you get on it, done. Twenty to thirty minutes is nothing, but done daily it compounds hard.

The benefits you’re noticing are exactly what most lifters miss until something goes wrong. Better resting heart rate, blood pressure under control, stamina back, feeling less “heavy” moving through the day. And yes, lipids and glucose handling almost always improve when steady cardio becomes routine, especially fasted low intensity work.

And the “cardio kills gains” thing really needs to die. Reasonable cardio improves recovery, nutrient partitioning, work capacity, and lets you actually push harder in the gym long term. What kills gains is being inflamed, out of breath walking upstairs, running high blood pressure, and pretending that’s hardcore.

What I also like about your approach is that you’re not overcomplicating it. No fancy protocols, no suffering for the sake of suffering. Just consistency, every morning, enough to matter but not enough to interfere.

If more people did exactly what you did, especially those on cycle, we’d see fewer horror bloodworks and fewer “why do I feel like trash” threads.

So yeah, fully agree. A cheap used room bike might be one of the best “supplements” someone can buy. Not sexy, not flashy, but massively effective over time.

Thanks for sharing!

Shark

I agree so much, it always made a difference for me, and I think stamina and good cardiovascular health is such an important thing for life. I guess everyone has their own goals, but it really irks me when people say it's all about the looks and you "don't need cardio for fat loss", fat loss is not the end of goals, at least for me, health and functioning is way more important than looks. I hate how the cardio topic is often reduced to burning calories.
I've been not doing nearly enough in the past years, and bringing back more cardio to my routine is one of my goals for this year, along with more relaxation and sauna. The indoor bike sounds like the perfect solution, I realise it more and more how much it would help, but we don't have space for it, so I'll just have to make some more gym days and more hikes and walks.
People are generally too obsessed with looks and only want to do what matters for the looks, but health doesn't equal looking a certain way. I guess cardio gets a bad rep because it's uncomfortable initially, and can be somewhat boring, but it really made a difference for me, when I was doing it about 4 times a week, plus swimming and martial arts, I could go on and do things indefinitely.