Article By: John Fontana

Next time you go to the gym, pay attention to the people around you while they workout.  I’d bet that 9 out of 10 people that do weight and cardio training in the same day would begin with cardio.  They will float around on the elliptical or jog on the treadmill for 30 minutes to an hour and then lift some weight.  Have you ever thought this reasoning through and wondered why it’s pretty much a universal occurrence? The average gym goer looking to shed a few pounds will usually decide to complete their cardio before getting into some weight lifting.  Is this the most efficient and effective way?

The first issue I have with the cardio first mentality is the muscle fatigue that will ensue. Depending on how intense your cardio session is you likely won’t be so exhausted that you can’t get decent weight training. You also won’t be in an optimal position to where you have a great weight training session.

Spending that much time performing cardio will deplete the glycogen from your muscles. Glycogen serves as energy for the muscles; if you don’t have the glycogen you likely won’t have the energy to perform the exercises at your best. The argument can be made that the same thing will happen if you perform weight training before cardio.  However, weight training is a more neurological and muscularly demanding type of exercise and places more of a demand on your body.  You see people running marathons for well over two hours, but I doubt many people can consistently perform weight training equally as long.

If fat burn and weight loss is your main goal, you have to realize that muscles burn more calories than fat.  The more muscle you have on your body, the more calories you will burn per day. The same thing goes in the gym; weight training (anaerobic) requires more muscle fibers than aerobics.  If you have exhausted your muscles from the amount of time you spent on cardio equipment, you just depleted glycogen stores and muscle fibers. Again, your weight training won’t be as good and you won’t be able to burn as many calories as you would have if you started as session with weight training.

The last point I want to make is about the heart rate during these two types of exercise.  Performing weight training first will exhaust your muscles, but not to the point where you can’t complete cardio training afterwards.  The good thing is that you will have fatigued your muscles to the point where it is more of a cardiovascular demand on your body.  Since the muscles have to work harder to complete the cardio exercise, your heart rate will spike up faster and easier. Heart rate is the main concern when looking to burn maximum calories, so being able to get the heart rate up quicker and easier is a bonus.  Instead of having to run at an eight mile per hour pace to get your heart rate to 170bpm, you can now run at a 7-mile per hour pace and achieve the same results.  If you were to take that carry over into weight training, being able to do less weight or repetitions would be a negative.

I recommend giving it a switch if you have previously been performing cardio first and weight training second.  A 5-10 minute cardio warm up to get the blood flowing and loosen the muscles is beneficial, but that should be it until after weight training is performed. You will be performing the same amount of work as before but likely receive quicker and better results.  Give it a shot.

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