: How should I balance cardio and weights training for optimal strength but good cardiovascular stamina? I have been strength training for about a while but I left out cardio training hence lost my cardiovascular stamina.Swimming

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Your best approach is to ease into the cardio. You will have to figure out where to put in, either on another day, or right after your weight lifting.

But you have to start out slowly, much more slowly than if you were just intending to build cardio by itself.

How slowly? Well start out with a cardio session that doesn't tire you at all and slowly build up from there. If you notice your strength starts to weaken, your doing too much cardio.

I have to say though, it's not easy, don't think it will be. And there are limits, depending on how much strength vs cardio you want.

Something to consider though, you can use weightlifting as cardio. After your main session, lower the weight, do several sets of high reps, essentially like doing weight lifting sprints. I cant' promise it will be as effective as swimming or running, but it does work and it won't reduce your strength, actually it might improve it.

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I just would like to point out that cardiovascular stamina can be achieved in many ways, not just with cardio or aerobic exercise.

In this case, as you want to retain the muscle you have and continue to lose some fat, I can suggest that you start to train with clean and jerk.

When I was training with the British team, we would start with an empty Olympic bar to warm up with 2 sets of 40 reps.

Then you will increase the weight by 10kg at the time for as many reps as possible, and continue till you reach the maximum weight you can lift over your head for a total of about 10 sets.

I can guarantee that your cardiovascular stamina and inner strength will raise, do this every other day.

At the beginning you will notice that it is a lot more taxing then other aerobic workouts, as it combines the resistance with the explosive action necessary to lift the weight over your head from the ground, if you are not familiar with this, there are plenty of videos that can show you how, but it would be better if you get an instructor to show you, as the technique for this exercise is imperative that it is very good.

If you use this training a few times a week, you will also notice that when you do conventional bodybuilding lifting, it will be easier and probably will be able to lift more, as this is a training that increase strength more then bodybuilding which normally is used for size.