Cardio for active recovery

[Mad Max]

I was reading apost recently where someone mentioned active recovery. AR seems to involve using bodyweight exercises the day after or several days after to help aid recovery. My question is whether doing cardio would have a similar effect. Perhaps on the days you don't train you should do cardio (whether cutting or bulking), because it helps with your recovery and generally keeps the body focused towards improving/strengthening muscles.
Furthermore, does cardio 'firm you up'. I know this is a vague term, but I find that hwen I do lots of cardio my muscles do feel fimer for longer. Isn't this what you call toning 'the partial contraction of muscles after exercise'?
Can someone enlighten me?

[ryuage]

what does a muscle feel like when its firm? :confused:

[asgdrew]

It might for leg day but a better method of AR would be elastic bands. They are absolutely great and work wonders because you can change hoow much resistence you want. Usually active recovery isnt supposed to be very strenuous, so if you did use cardio for AR after doing lower body workouts you mighjt wnat to go for a walk or slow jog for a moderate amount of time, like 20-25 minutes. As long as youve got some blood pumping it will help the muscles. Besides, running alot isnt too good while bulking.

Running will help work the muscles but it wont do anything really significant. Toning is all about body fat percentage and firming up muscles can be done by any type of movement which causes the muscle to react. But running alone wont be good enough so dont be like half the highschoolers in my town who think running is enough to workout their lower body.