Should you do cardio before strength training or vice versa? You should probably do strength training first, to get the best results.
Fitness professionals debate whether you should perform cardio exercises before or after strength training, based on a number of factors. If you’ll be performing aerobic exercise before you strength train, keep your exercises low resistance to prevent muscle fatigue that will negatively affect your resistance work.
Use more speed than power when doing cardio before any strength training.
Why Do Strength Training Before Cardio?
If you perform an aerobic workout before strength training, you’ll burn some of the glycogen stores necessary for your strength exercises. When you don’t have enough glycogen to fuel strength work, your body will synthesize muscle protein to create glycogen, rather than burning fat, as many people believe.
Burning glycogen first with strength training will help you burn fat more efficiently with your subsequent cardio exercises. If you save your strength training until after resistance exercise, your muscles might be too fatigued to perform this type of exercise at your peak, points out the Cleveland Clinic.
Take these viewpoints into consideration to create your workout plans, based on which goal is more important to you.
Cardio First? Use Less Resistance
When performing cardio workouts directly before a strength-training workout, choose exercises that use less resistance. This type of exercise raises your heart rate with, which might tire your muscles before your upcoming strength work.
For example, perform jumping jacks and butt kicks instead of pushups and pullups. If you’re going to do exercises such as pushups and pullups, perform them rapidly. Let your weight drop you after your uplift to decrease muscle use and provide a bounce-back that helps propel you upward for the next rep.
Different Workouts’ Effect on Power
Researchers at the Institute of Sport and Physical Education found no difference in maximal strength or power when they tested subjects who perform endurance training before strength workouts and vice versa. They did find that performing a strength routine by itself provided superior gains in power than the other two options.
Post-Workout Calorie Burn
Researchers at the Human Performance Research Center at Brigham Young University found that performing cardio first, then strength training afterwards, created a higher post-workout calorie burn. However, the researchers recommended strength work before cardio exercise to improve the effectiveness and to increase safety of the strength workout.