Cardio Before Or After Strength Training

Should you perform cardio exercises before or after strength training? This all boils down to your goal. Let’s have a look.

Cardio Exercise First

Cardio exercises involves exercises that keeps your heart rate elevated for a prolong period of time (usually more than 8 minutes). This is due to your muscles requiring more oxygen-rich blood for them to function well thus your heart will have to beat faster to keep up with its need. When trained consistently, your heart grows to adapt to the higher demand needed by your body, resulting in a stronger and more efficient cardiovascular system. It is worth noting that during cardio exercises, your body generally burns around 60-80% fats and 20-40% carbohydrates as the fuel source.

Pros

When cardio is done first during your workout, you can be sure to burn more calories for the entire workout due to the initial elevated heart rate and the increase of your body temperature resulting in a higher high rate throughout your workout. How much calories you burn is closely related to your heart rate thus the higher your heart rate is and sustained, the more calories you will be burning.

Cons

However, doing cardio first will result in lesser energy, endurance during your workout and possibility a reduction of strength which will affect your strength training, resulting in sub-par performance.

Strength Training First

Strength training involves the use of resistance to stimulate muscle growth for the purpose of strengthening the musculoskeletal system. This kind of training does not elevate the heart rate as much compared to cardio exercises due to a different set of energy system applied. During strength training, your body requires immediate fuel source to execute a muscle movement thus drawing majority of the fuel from within the muscles, otherwise known as the glycogen storage. Your body generally burns around 60-80% carbohydrates and 20-40% fats.

Pros

Doing strength training first allows you to be the freshest and have the most energy when tackling the weights. This helps to improve your focus, decreases your risk of injuries, and perform at your best to achieve as much muscle stimulation as possible for growth.

 

Another advantage of doing your strength training first and cardio second is the ability to burn more fats during the cardio phase due to 2 reasons:

 

1. Your body is already warmed up with slightly elevated heart rate when you are starting your cardio exercise. This allows your body to by-pass/decrease the time spent in the anaerobic system where more carbohydrates will be used, and start your cardio exercise straight with the aerobic system where more fats will be used. Thus you will be burning more fats.

2. After an intense session of strength training, your glycogen storage will be close to being empty. This allows your body to draw into the fat storage more effectively, burning more fats during your cardio.

 

Cons

However, due to the nature of strength training, where the heart rate is only elevated for a very short period of time during movement (usually less than 2 minutes), the overall calories burn in a workout would be lesser as compared to doing cardio first.

So what’s the verdict?

As mentioned earlier, it all depends on your goal. Both cardio and strength training uses the same fuel source in your body – Fats and Carbohydrates. Thus, it is important to priorities your training objective so that you do not waste these resources in doing things that aren’t helping you to achieve your goal.

Here’s a list of recommendation in terms of the exercise sequence corresponding to your goal.

Build Muscle - Strength Training First

Improve Stamina - Cardio Exercise First

Lose Weight - Strength Training First

Gain Weight - Strength Training First

Burn More Calories - Cardio Exercise First

Burn More Fats - Cardio Exercise First - due to higher calories output during workout

So there you have it! Cardio or strength training first, it’s your call!