Cardio Before Or After Weight Training?

Should you do your cardio before or after your weight training? This is another question I’ve seen asked time and time again. For some reason (I have no idea why!), it has always been common place for weight training to follow cardio. This is the wrong way to do it, no matter what your goal, cardio should always be done after weight training and here’s why…

Why cardio should follow training:

1. If you’re goal is to lose weight then doing cardio after your weight training is especially important. The simple reason is that weight training depletes glycogen is muscles. Glycogen is used as primary a fuel source for cardiovascular exercise, so with glycogen depleted your body is more likely release fat from cells to be used as energy. When you do cardio without weight training before, it takes around 20-25 mins for glycogen levels to fall and fat cells to potentially be released.
2. You should save your maximum amount of energy for the weights.
3. Doing cardio before weights will pre-fatigue your muscles. Obviously this limits your muscle building potential becuase you won’t be able to push out the weight and reps you otherwise could.
4. If you’re training hard, ti should require 100% physical and mental energy. You cannot do this after 45 mins of running on a treadmill. Cardio on the other hand, only requires mental energy to stave off boredom!

A few notes on cardio…

If you goal is to gain weight and build muscle, I suggest you drop out all non-essential cardio. When I say non-essential, I’m not saying quit doing sports you enjoy, just don’t do cardio for the sake of doing it. The more cardio you do the more calories you have to put through your system to grow, so doing more cardio simply means you have to eat more!

If you goal is to lose weight, cardio after weight training is ideal. As I mentioned above, glycogen is already depleted meaning you’re much more likely to burn actual fat.

That’s it, if you have a different opinion or any questions post them up!