Dr. Kenneth Cooper found out that so-called "health nuts" ie. those who ate very "healthy" diets and didn't smoke or drink and trained often (running and/or weight training) and on a regular basis were dying prematurely
he hypothesized that it's was due to over-training, and he said something to the effect that those who train more than 1 hour per week are not doing it for health reasons
he's one of the guys who was responsible for starting the running craze in the u s of a back in the 1970s
That is a serious misinterpretation of what Cooper stated. He never said those who train over an hour a week are not doing it for health reasons. He absolutely never said that. He did say according to his massive research that doing to much cardio or his term aerobics has a leveling off of health benefits. He was talking about people who do massive amount of mileage training for a marathon. Cooper ran three miles a day throughout much of his life and continues to run/walk. He continues to promote eating healthy, cardio and other exercise like strength/yoga.
What he said in effect according to his research is that running more than 15 miles a week gave no extra health benefit. How many bodybuilders run more than 15 miles a week?
He still promotes with serious research how aerobics promotes the loss of visceral and subcutaneous fat. It can lower blood pressure and lower triglycerides. How it changes the ratios of HDL to LDL in cholesterol. How it lowers high blood sugar. It increase the strength of the heart muscle so it slows your resting heart rate.
Heart attacks are the number one killer of man. While cardio is never a cure all it has prevented more heart attacks than it caused. Many heart attacks happen during sleep but you never hear anyone saying you shouldn't sleep cause their uncle died of a massive heart attack while sleeping.
Regarding the need for cardio to get ripped it has been shown time and time again that guys that do volume training get ripped without it. Maybe doing 20 sets a body part is consuming massive amounts of calories and has an aerobic effect in it's self.