When it comes to exercise, the question of whether to do strength training before cardio has been a topic of debate among fitness enthusiasts for years. Should you focus on building muscle first, or should you prioritize burning fat with cardio? The answer to this question can depend on your personal fitness goals, but understanding how strength training and cardio affect your body can help you make an informed decision. This article will provide a detailed exploration of the benefits and considerations of doing strength training before cardio.
Understanding Strength Training and Cardio
Before diving into the question of which to prioritize, it’s essential to define both strength training and cardio.
Strength Training: Strength training, also known as resistance training, involves exercises that improve muscular strength by challenging the muscles with resistance. This can be done using free weights, machines, resistance bands, or bodyweight exercises.
Cardio: Cardiovascular exercise, or cardio, involves activities that increase your heart rate and improve the efficiency of your cardiovascular system. These activities include running, cycling, swimming, and high-intensity interval training (HIIT).
Both strength training and cardio offer unique benefits to your overall health and fitness. Strength training helps you build muscle, increase strength, and boost metabolism, while cardio improves cardiovascular health, burns fat, and enhances endurance. Now, let’s explore the effects of doing one before the other.
What Happens When You Do Strength Training First?
When you prioritize strength training before cardio, your body is fresh and able to perform at its best. There are several key benefits to starting with strength training.
Maximized Performance During Strength Training
Strength training requires focus, energy, and full muscle capacity. If you do cardio first, you may tire your muscles, reducing their ability to perform optimally during your strength exercises. This can lead to a decrease in your strength gains and the effectiveness of your workout. By starting with strength training, you ensure that your muscles are fully energized and able to handle heavier weights or more challenging exercises.
Increased Muscle Mass and Metabolism
Strength training is one of the most effective ways to build muscle. When you perform resistance exercises first, you put maximum effort into building muscle, which in turn helps you burn more calories at rest. Muscle mass increases your basal metabolic rate (BMR), meaning that your body burns more calories throughout the day, even when you’re not working out.
Better Muscle Recovery
Doing strength training first allows for better recovery of the muscles you worked during your workout. When you follow strength training with cardio, your muscles are less fatigued from the start, which means they can recover more effectively during your cardio session.
Fat Burning After Strength Training
While strength training is excellent for building muscle, it’s not the most efficient for burning fat during the workout itself. However, strength training increases muscle mass, which boosts your metabolism and helps your body burn fat more effectively over time. After strength training, your body continues to burn fat for hours, even during cardio.
What Happens When You Do Cardio First?
On the flip side, doing cardio before strength training has its own benefits, especially depending on your fitness goals. Let’s take a closer look at the impact of starting with cardio.
Improved Cardiovascular Endurance
If your primary goal is to improve cardiovascular endurance or if you are training for an event such as a marathon, then doing cardio first may be the right approach. Starting with cardio allows you to perform at your best when your heart and lungs are fully prepared to handle intense aerobic activity.
Better Fat Utilization During Cardio
Cardio, especially steady-state cardio like running or cycling, taps into your body’s fat stores for energy. If you’re focused on fat loss, doing cardio first could help your body use fat as a primary fuel source. When your glycogen stores (the energy stored in your muscles and liver) are depleted, your body turns to fat for fuel, making cardio an effective tool for fat burning.
Improved Endurance for Cardio Workouts
Starting with cardio allows you to give your best effort during your aerobic workout. This is especially beneficial if your cardio workout is long or intense. If you begin with strength training, you may fatigue quickly, reducing the intensity or duration of your cardio session.
Which Is Better for Weight Loss?
One of the most common reasons people do both strength training and cardio is to lose weight. So, which should you prioritize if fat loss is your primary goal? The truth is, both strength training and cardio play essential roles in weight loss.
Strength Training for Weight Loss
Strength training helps you build muscle, and more muscle means a higher metabolism. This means your body will burn more calories at rest, which contributes to long-term weight loss. Additionally, strength training increases afterburn, or excess post-exercise oxygen consumption (EPOC), which means your body continues to burn calories even after your workout is over.
Cardio for Immediate Fat Burning
Cardio, especially high-intensity interval training (HIIT), is excellent for burning fat during the workout. HIIT increases heart rate and calorie burn, often for several hours after the workout. If you want to see immediate fat loss results, cardio may give you a quick calorie burn. However, without strength training, you may lose muscle along with fat, which can decrease your overall metabolism.
The Best Approach for Weight Loss
The most effective approach to weight loss is a combination of both strength training and cardio. Strength training builds muscle, boosts metabolism, and increases fat burn, while cardio provides a more direct route to calorie burning. Depending on your goals, it may be beneficial to alternate between the two, allowing for both muscle gain and fat loss.
How to Structure Your Workout Routine
The structure of your workout routine depends on your specific fitness goals. Whether you do strength training or cardio first will impact your performance and the benefits you derive from each session. Here are a few tips on structuring your workouts:
For Fat Loss and Muscle Building:
Day 1: Strength training first, followed by cardio.
Day 2: Cardio first, followed by strength training.
Day 3: Active recovery (light walking, yoga, or stretching).
Alternate between the two approaches to maximize the benefits of both strength training and cardio.
For Performance-Based Goals (e.g., Running, Cycling):
If you’re training for an event such as a race, prioritize cardio first. This allows you to perform at your peak during your cardio session and still have energy left for strength training, albeit with slightly reduced intensity.
For General Fitness:
If your goal is overall health and fitness, it’s best to alternate between strength training and cardio depending on how you feel each day. On days when you feel energetic, prioritize strength training, and on days when you’re feeling more fatigued, focus on cardio.
Conclusion
In the end, the decision of whether to do strength training before cardio depends on your personal goals. If you want to build muscle and increase strength, it’s best to start with strength training. On the other hand, if your primary goal is to improve cardiovascular endurance or burn fat during the workout, cardio may be more beneficial to start with.
For most individuals, combining both strength training and cardio in a well-structured routine provides the best overall results, enhancing both fat loss and muscle building. The key is consistency and listening to your body, adjusting the balance between strength training and cardio based on how you feel and your progress.
By understanding the impact of each type of exercise and how they complement each other, you can design a workout plan that aligns with your goals, ensuring a balanced approach to fitness and well-being.
