(Cardio workout; not warmup!)

I heard some guys debating this in the gym yesterday and my personal experience has taught me that weights first don't adversely affect my cardio, while doing cardio first doesn't leave with enough energy to sufficiently exercise the muslces with weights...

Thoughts?

I thought we had discussed this at one time on traineo? Not sure maybe it was just a passing post but I thought it was good to do weights first then cardio...

'nuff said.

Everything I have read or listened to is Weights first cardio second. Some have gone as far as saying when you lift weights your body produces some chemical that actually helps you in your cardio session.

'NUFF said I love it.

I think I may have learned the hard way.

Weights first and then cardio. I don't know all of the reasons why, but one is that when you do cardio your blood pressure naturally becomes a bit lower than normal when you cool down, which in my case seemed to have a rather negative effect on me when I lifted after doing 45 minutes of cardio. (I passed out for about 5-6 minutes.)

So my experience says do weights first and then jump into your cardio.

Weight training first. You will maximize fat burn.

If your primary goal is to add muscle, I would skip cardio entirely on days you lift weights... Otherwise, certainly weight first

I've heard this a lot on Traineo, but I was taught to do cardio first. When I do weights first, I feel like jelly afterward and can't do cardio. Maybe it's just me.

Do weights, drink a protein shake, do cardio (or replace 'do cardio' with 'go home')... Again, it depends on your goals, but you don't want to work against your goals! Doing that would be doing cardio, then trying to do weights and getting nothing out of it, or worse and actually burning muscle to fuel your workout. you lose weight (muscle), lower your metabolism, and make yourself look worse.. hmmm...

I've tried both ways and have been successful. Maybe when I'm lighter, I'll see a difference, but I go by my personal mood. If I'm feeling like lifting first, then I do. Most of the time though I do cardio first...

Wow. I had no idea. I am one of those people who b-line to the cardio machines for a nice long warm up.

But then I reflected on my sports training. We always did weight training before the season started, which was swimming, very aerobic. Der. Well, I guess there is a reason I am not in as good of shape as I once was.

Go weights!

Weights def before Cardio.

I concentrate a lot more on weights than cardio. If I get in a solid 20 minutes of cardio I am happy.

I need to research and get a good weight routine going....

This question is not so obvious for beginners. I remember when I started out, I had no idea what true intensity was like.

Anything less than maximum effort and maximum focus in weight lifting is inefficient. Not to say it won't work, but you're getting much less benefit out of the time you put in than you should.

So definitely do balls-to-the-wall lifting first, then cardio.

I've done cardio before, cardio on non-lifting days, and cardio on mornings with lifting in evenings. I'm doing cardio for 30 minutes right after lifting, and it works great -- even on my leg and lower back days. What I found helpful is to do the 5 minute brisk walk warmup and an exploratory 3 minute run -- that usually loosens me up nicely.

I have been lifting weights for 1hr, then cardio for 45min and weights for the last 15min, and have been losing fat/gaining muscle. I have been told not to do this, but I have a little bit of fat to lose and want to gain muscle, so I did this and found that you can indeed lose fat and gain muscle. I can lift more now (175lbs) and my arms look more toned because of the fat loss, so I wouldn't discourage him from doing this entirely if both of them are his goals.

What is balls-to-the-wall lifting, Itadaki?

I am a beginner in wt training and still have not figure out what/how to do it right yet? Do you do wt training on 1 group of muscle each day or the same group of muscle every other day?

Glovia,

I generally focus on one "area" (chest/shoulders, legs (lots of muscles there!), abs and back, etc.) and open up with exercises that target multiple muscle groups (dead lifts, squats, bench press) then work around those muscles on subsequent exercises.

"Balls to the wall" to me basically means work until failure; when you're done you should feel absolutely spent for a few minutes (regardless of your focus - gaining muscle with heavy weights or toning with lighter weights). You don't want to be completely exhausted and certainly never in pain (usually if you get to that point it means you forced the last few reps with poor form) but you definitely want to feel something.

It's different for everyone though, really you need to find the point for yourself where you're pushed to capacity without going too far beyond that.

It's funny, I'm absolutely confident about my weight lifting routine but this is the first time in my life I've ever needed to focus on burning fat (and there's quite a bit of that fat to burn) and I feel completely clueless and ineffective when it comes to trying to burn fat... but I'm sticking with it!

No need to even comment.

The wisdom of the community strikes again, and the verdict is clear.

You'll get an idea from this overview of MaxOT. MaxOT also recommends only training one or two muscle groups at a time.

"Positive failure" is not the same as fatigue. If you do more than 10 reps with a lower weight, you'll reach fatigue and feel your muscles burning before you hit positive failure.

On the other hand, you can do full body workouts every other day and use heavy sets. A good example are basic 5x5 programs. This means you do the same exercises three times a week, with a day of rest in between. You can't do a lot of exercises with this routine, so people usually stick to the Big Four (squats, deadlifts, bench press, military press) and throw in a few optional isolation exercises if they can.

Start out slow and light to get your form right, but keep increasing the weights until you start hitting positive failure some weeks down the road.

Here's another slightly interesting (at least to me) but related question:

I've always been told the best time to work out is right when you wake up but before you eat: your body has burned through it's carbs (glycogen, thanks Stephanie!) overnight so you'll go right into fat burning, plus eating breakfast immediately after will kick start your metabolism. This isn't something I've been able to test with personal experience since I typically don't get up early enough during the week to get to the gym before work (although I am working on that), and historically I haven't trained on the weekends (that trend I've recently changed, but 4 days out of the past 3 weeks isn't a strong sample set to get an indication of trends). Despite my lack of personal experience to weigh against this, it seems to be a universally accepted truth.

How does this affect weight training? Based on Stephanies article, which seems like a very rational explanation of what I've just found and accepted to be true, it would seem like lifting weights during a pre-breakfast morning routine would be counterproductive or worse yet, detrimental since there would be no glycogen stores to burn...

So far, my 4 days of weekend training I've split into doubles, a morning cardio workout, a break for breakfast and lunch, then a medium to heavy lifting routine. While I'm sure this isn't necessarily a bad training methodology, it's not something I can probably keep up, at least not consistently.

Also, does that 29-minute estimate (to burn through stored glycogen) factor in intensity? I'm pretty confident that walking 3 mph for 29 minutes and running 6mpg for 29 minutes would burn different amounts of energy...

My primary goal is to lose body fat and i also want to lower my resting heart rate. So, I've mainly been focusing on cardio. The heart is a muscle. I don't know of any other way of working it out other than with cardio.

I like to use one of those Polar heart rate monitor to keep track of my heart rate when doing cardio. For it to find my target heart rate zone, my "OwnZone", my heart needs to be in a relaxed state before my workout.

If I lift weights first, my heart will definitely not be in a relaxed state.

So, for me, its cardio first. 45-60minutes. Burn off 400~600 cal.

Drinking a bottle of water to cool my body down (and a pee break) after a cardio workout and a 5-10 minute rest to bring my heart rate down... I'm good to go.

I don't think I can say the same if I lifted weights first. Takes me at least a day to recoup from lifting weights.

If you're doing cardio and your out of energy for lifting weights, then you might be overdoing it with the cardio. I actually feel more energized after doing cardio, but only if I kept my heart rate in check. If i go over, I definitely end up running out of breath... literally.

I'm pretty sure my intensity level as far as lifting weights isn't as intense as some of those here, so it depends if you're focused on that or cardio.

Maybe down the road, I'll do weights first and less cardio to try and bulk up.

But in the meantime, I'll stick to what seems to be working for me. I've gotten comments on how I've lost weight. Feels good hearing it.

Drew, do what works for you! That said, I would recommend testing your BF% on a regular basis and tracking your lean mass in addition to your overall weight (lean mass is 100%-BF%*weight). Then you will be able to actually say if something is really working for you - if you're losing lean mass along with your fat, what you're doing is definitely not working for you.

@Clifford, when it is said that the best time to work out is in the AM prior to eating, that is generally in reference to cardio. The best time to do weight training is the time that sets you up for success - that means you haven't done cardio beforehand and your body is well fueled. Other things may very well work for people, but there's a reason that the unilateral recommendation is to weight train before cardio



Wow, you're setting yourself up for overtraining. If this continues to work for you, great, but on top of the likelihood of depleting your muscle glycogen stores, I can't see spending 2hrs at a time in the gym unless it's my job



There are a lot of threads on this site about the importance of lean mass, so I won't go through a long explanation, but suffice to say that if both are your goals, then your primary goal should be adding lean mass, and consequently your routine should reflect that by not jeopardizing your lean mass (ie - not doing cardio before weight training).

It's not necessarily "exhaustion" that stops you from getting an effective weight training session in, you're depleting your bodies stores of energy when you do cardio so while you might be able to start off strong with the weights, you won't have the energy to properly push your muscles all the way. Other than leg days, I've never felt like doing weights first takes away from my cardio at all, and even on leg days it's barely noticeable.