Cardio Before or After Weights? 3 Straightforward Reasons

Cardio before or after weights? I remember when everyone thought of cardio as the only way to lose weight. Most people thought that weight lifting was only for those that wanted to gain weight and big muscles. I’m glad everything is clear now!

It has been shown that weight lifting is one of the best strategies you could take to lose weight. Cardio is always a great addition though. Don’t get me wrong, if you need to lose weight, always do cardio! But in case you don’t have enough time to fit both into your schedule, choose weights over cardio.

Now, Why Should You Do Cardio After Weights? Why Weights Over Cardio?

Table of Contents

Cardio Before or After Weights – What Is Right

Better Performance While Weight Training

First of all, if you want to have an adequate and good performance while you perform your weight training, you got to leave cardio after weights. Have you ever tried weight training after a long cardio session? It’s terrible! You will end up with the worst training sessions.

What happens is that you use your body’s preferred energy source for intense exercise. When you use up that energy during the cardio session, you end up with no energy to lift weights which results in a deficient training session that does not accomplish your calorie-burning, muscle building, and strength training goals.

Greater Afterburn Effect

After a workout, your body burns calories by trying to accomplish muscle recovery. This occurs at a much higher rate after an intense weight lifting workout compared to a low-intensity one, steady-state cardiovascular workout such as running.

This is why is so important to weight train with energy and put lots of effort into it so that the calories burned afterward are greater. If you do cardio first, and weight training afterward when you don’t have enough energy to push yourself to your limits, then the afterward effect won’t be the same.

Less Risk of Injury Due to Fatigue

If you try maxing out or taking yourself to your limits while doing weight training after a good cardio session, you might end up hurting yourself due to how tired you will be. This could be really dangerous and might even delay your journey to lose weight.

There are many more reasons why you should do weights before cardio. However, these are the main reason that made me understand its importance. Sometimes, people may give you long scientific explanations dealing with glycogen and insulin and thousands of things that still don’t aid in understanding why you really should do cardio afterward. So I wanted to explain to you in a simple and easy way.

So remember, doing weights burns the glycogen in your body first so that when you get to cardio, you can burn more fat! If you want the muscle-building (when you gain muscle you burn fat faster), fat-burning benefits, it’s best to start with weight training. You’ll be able to complete your workout as you should with more strength and power and then get to cardio and burn some extra calories and fat.