Cardio Before or After Lifting Weights: The Truth
If you are looking for a direct yes or no answer to the question, I am afraid that you are about to be disappointed.
Exercise is not as simple as pouring milk on top of your cereal (if you pour your cereal on top of your milk you are crazy).
In short, the perfect answer to this is: it depends on you. What are your goals, and why do you even walk into a gym in the first place?
Now, there are more reasons to do cardio after you lift weights than the inverse, but this does not mean you should never hop on the treadmill before hitting the bench.
Those who want to focus on their endurance for sports such as boxing, triathlons, etc. you should do cardio first. Most sports require you to have more wind than strength.
Athletes are fully expected to be at one hundred for the entire length of the event, and if you can’t, then you’re cut. If your looking to lose weight, get ripped, or just improve overall strength the best thing to do is get weightlifting done first.
If you do cardio before lifting, you fatigue your muscles and not improve your strength at the best pace.
To have a toned body, or build mass, have similarities in the gym. No matter what look you are going for cardio comes second because you want those muscles to pop asap.
The biggest difference between tone and mass is what you eat(there is an article linked below if you would like no more).
If neither of these is your goals and you are just going to the gym to stay healthy, do what you despise beforehand.
Sometimes, you just know that you aren’t going to lift if you get a full thirty-minute cardio session, and sometimes you know you won’t get that mile in if you hit the weights for an hour.
Whichever it is, get what you hate out of the way and then end your workout on a good note.
Knowing Your Mission
You have to know what you are going for. Once you start to get serious in the gym, set a goal for yourself.
Ask yourself why you are doing this, and if you can’t find a reason: make one. The hardest part of working out is getting that first foot out of bed.
Know your mission, and fight for it. Once you know your mission, figure out how to achieve it. Should you do cardio first, or get your time in with the weights.
Being that my family has owned a gym since I was two, I’ve seen a lot of different methods of working out and training, from Marines to women trying to lose that post-pregnancy weight.
Personally, my training required me to hit cardio first.
I was a boxer for two years, and I still train as though I am fighting. Before that, I played football, and that required me to get a decent hour of weightlifting in.
Once I started boxing, I realized my endurance was garbage. That’s when I told myself that from now on cardio comes first, and then I hit the weights. I found this system works for me, I am not extremely tone, but that isn’t why I work out.
I work out in order to be in top fighting condition, and that doesn’t mean having muscles on top of muscles. Endurance has always been my priority in the gym, and I hit the weights as soon as I finished with cardio for a shorter span of time.
Though, I didn’t do this routinely.
There were days were my trainer suggested that I lift first in order to have days focused on strength, and there were those rare occasions were I only lifted for a day.
I have been training for most of my life, and it has predominantly centered around whatever sport I was playing. I remember that for the year I played basketball,
I only did cardio for most days( And boy, when I tell you I HATED basketball workouts). Yet, it worked and I didn’t do half bad on the court.
The only reason I did well, was because my coach knew what area to work me out in. Working out is not black or white, there is a lot of grey to it, and you must learn where and when you should partake certain activities and/or training methods.
I’ve learned that you are working out for one person, and against one person, and that is yourself. All you have to do is figure out how, why, and what you are trying to accomplish when you step into the gym every day.
The Solution
Now, I hate the treadmill.
I have used it on rare occasions, for quick sprints in the middle of my cardio.
Some people prefer this form of cardio, but I always tried to work out in a variety of ways.
A wide range of workouts helps to build muscle in a way that is useful for any activity.
For example, if I suddenly decided to only use machines to workout for three weeks, my body will get used to the fluidity of movement machines provide.
As soon as I move back to free weights, my stability will be unbalanced because I’ve become used to that stability.
Instead of focusing on one aspect of working out, we should try our hardest to hit different muscles every day.
The day that you are working out biceps, that day’s cardio should incorporate diamond pushups or chin-ups.
Doing bodyweight workouts, or aerobic exercises, are a good way to replace the hour-long treadmill jog as your form of cardio for the day. Cardio is important, and you should work on it in some way, shape, or form as much as you can.
A light jog before or after you work out is a great way to start cardio if you are not used to that area of working out.
Personally running outside has been easier for me, but a nice jog on the treadmill never hurt anyone. Find what gets you working.
As I’ve said before, you can also do cardio that directly ties into the weightlifting you just did.
If it is leg day for you box jumps, jump ropes, and stair climbers are a great way to really feel the burn and work up a sweat.
This will also increase your muscle endurance and allow you to push weight for longer spans of time. Some workouts require you to lift a lot of weight, but at a slow pace.
If you are training for sports, or even to have recreational strength, you need to have muscle endurance.
Muscle endurance is exactly what you would think it is, how hard you can push your muscles for longer spans of time.
Ask the guy who constantly benches 400+ at your gym “How many times can you bench 225”. The answer may surprise you, he might only do it ten times because he trained his muscles to push too much weight in one go.
Your perfect body is not going to be useful to you if you can only use it for five minutes.
Cardio Before or After Lifting Weights – Tips
Now, here are a few tips that will help you learn how to conduct your workouts.
Tip 1 – Set a goal.
If you start going to the gym without a goal, you are going to stop as soon as you run into one roadblock.
Take it from a man who has been working out your entire life, you are going to wake up in the morning, or get off of work, and ask yourself “Why am I even doing this?”.
Thinking about the long term goal helps to motivate you and get that first step into the gym.
Tip 2 – I did not do well in training for endurance until I got myself a partner.
She pushed me, a little five foot two, 130-pound girl, pushed me harder than I ever pushed before. Get someone you can relate to and is willing to work out harder than you.
A balanced rivalry/friendship will help you conqueror cardio and you will hit two miles the day you thought only one mile was plausible.
Tip 3 – Once you set a goal to figure out the routine necessary to achieve this goal.
Should you put extreme focus on cardio, and lift weights at a necessary pace.
Or, should you focus on improving strength, and do cardio right after. As I said before there are some instances where cardio first is a necessity, and pure lifting can be a plausible solution to push you towards your goal.
Tip 4 – Write down your workout plan.
Before you head to the gym on that early Monday morning (or Sunday if you are really looking to get some good work in) write out your workout plan for the day.
Whenever I started training to build mass in order to fight at a higher weight class, I had my trainer write out my entire week.
Tip 5 – Working out is not easy, and to many people’s surprise, it isn’t supposed to be so.
Once you hit a certain level or goal they were trying to reach, they plateau.
Once you hit that goal, change up your workout and your goal. If you achieved your goal and built up
strength through a six-week program, whenever the six weeks are overbuilt endurance for those new muscles you have.
Tip 6 – Finally, you should learn to love cardio.
A lot of people do not enjoy cardio, God knows I hated every mile I ran. Find a way to love it, since I hated running, I incorporated other ways of doing cardio.
Although I still run because that is the best form of cardio, it is not the only thing I did. There are tons of cardio workouts that you could do in your living room if you wanted.
For the people out there that love fighting, six rounds (at three minutes each) of shadowboxing is my personal favorite.
Learning to love working out is just as important as knowing how to work out.
Conclusion:
Working out can never be completely explained by one blanket statement. Training your body to peak performances is a delicate and complicated process.
Learning what you are training for is the best way to learn how you should workout. Cardio is an element of working out that cannot be forgotten, and when you do cardio is truly up to you.
Just remember if you are focusing on using your muscles for a long span of time, like in a boxing match or triathlon, you need to focus on cardio first and lifting second.
Now if you just want to walk across the beach without having to suck in your gut or flex your biceps, then focus on strength.
Cardio can be helpful in many ways, but when you do cardio could have a negative effect on your long-term goals if you are not organizing your workout in the correct manner.
Cardio can coexist with your workout, and it can also push your muscles farther. You don’t have to constantly run across a treadmill for an hour to be done with your cardio.
Be sure to spread your wings and do a variety of workouts in order to achieve your goals in the quickest way possible. Now, I say quickest, but these things will take time.
Just be sure to organize your workout in the way that best suits you, and learn to love what you are doing.