Do body builders cut weight?

[KnightTemplar]

Agree with this ^ completely.

For a bodybuilder, sprints for cardio would be ridiculous as you get closer to a show. A lot more strain of effort, more recovery - it would take away from the quality of the actual bodybuilding training later on in the day as well. Low-intensity, steady-state fasted cardio is something I always see bodybuilders use as they get stage ready.

There's also an interesting thing that I remember seeing a few years ago now about competing adaptations. Essentially, your muscle fibers will adapt best to one stimulus at a time, so a type of cardio that's more reliant on Type-1 (slow twitch) muscle fibers will be more compatible with a bodybuilder's goal, which is hypertrophy (mainly occuring in type 2 muscle fibers).

It's a long time since I did much reading on this at all though, so I'd need to go back and find where I got this from. I have a feeling it may have been an Eric Helms presentation.

I recently watched a video by two Olympic Weightlifting coaches doing a Q&A. One of the questions was from a Powerlifter who asked how he should program hill sprints along with this lifting. The coaches answer was: don't do hill sprints. Because it uses a lot of the same muscle fibres, energy systems etc as heavy lifting, which means it could effect recovery. They advised him to do LISS training for his conditioning.