Strength/Cardio routine

daaaaaanielle

Up until now, I've been doing virtually nothing but cardio (primarily Couch to 5K and cycling) to make the whole eating at a deficit thing a bit easier. I've decided that now would be a good time to start introducing some strength building exercises into my routine but I have some questions about that.

I've already got a good idea of the routine I want to follow for strength from doing a whole bunch of reading about the different options out there and I want to keep up with the cardio alongside it to increase my general fitness levels but I'm not sure where to fit the strength in. I can usually get to the gym 3 (sometimes 4) times a week at the moment though I am not against going more often if it's going to work out better in terms of achieving results.

Should I try and alternate between, such as Monday cardio, Tuesday strength, Wednesday cardio, etc? Or could I complete the cardio (C25K is a 30 minute walk/run) then do my strength routine afterwards? Would that leave me at risk of failure/injury? I'm concious of the fact that I know that last time I gave strength training a try, I got knocked out of the game for a day afterwards because of DOMS and I'm worried that alternating means I wouldn't be able to get the cardio done the following day. Though, ultimately, I guess it comes down to what will benefit me the most.

CarlydogsMom

On a day where you want to do both, weights should come before cardio. Give your weightlifting the best you can give.

Realize that DOMS can be pretty intense at first, so you may need to tweak your cardio for a short while, then your body starts to adjust, and while DOMS may set in, it isn't as bad as it was when you first started out.

My first day lifting, I was "assessed" by my trainer, trying me out on most of the compound lifts. I could barely do the bar on squats, deadlifts, I don't think I could T-bar row more than 25#, and I don't think I could even bench the bar. I know for sure we had to do the 20-lb fixed barbell for overhead press, I couldn't do more. Anyway, for a full week after that first session, I hurt.

Kept going, though, even through DOMS. Now I feel my muscles after I lift, and DOMS is almost a pleasant feeling the next day. I can tell I worked out, but it's not bad enough to prevent me from doing other things.

So if your DOMS freaks you out at first, don't worry, you'll adjust, and you can pull in your cardio as you think you can handle.

daaaaaanielle

CarlydogsMom wrote: »

On a day where you want to do both, weights should come before cardio. Give your weightlifting the best you can give.

Realize that DOMS can be pretty intense at first, so you may need to tweak your cardio for a short while, then your body starts to adjust, and while DOMS may set in, it isn't as bad as it was when you first started out.

My first day lifting, I was "assessed" by my trainer, trying me out on most of the compound lifts. I could barely do the bar on squats, deadlifts, I don't think I could T-bar row more than 25#, and I don't think I could even bench the bar. I know for sure we had to do the 20-lb fixed barbell for overhead press, I couldn't do more. Anyway, for a full week after that first session, I hurt.

Kept going, though, even through DOMS. Now I feel my muscles after I lift, and DOMS is almost a pleasant feeling the next day. I can tell I worked out, but it's not bad enough to prevent me from doing other things.

So if your DOMS freaks you out at first, don't worry, you'll adjust, and you can pull in your cardio as you think you can handle.

That sounds reasonable enough. I've got a test session with a trainer to basically walk me through the different exercises and make tweaks to the routines I've found that are geared towards the results I want.

Sounds as if I should possibly stick to my 3 times a week and do strength and cardio each visit to give myself proper rest days. I think I'd like to eventually move on to alternating days, probably once I hit maintenance with my weight loss, because hopefully DOMS won't strike me down as hard at that point!

Thanks

DancingMoosie

I like alternating days or at least doing them at separate times of the day if doing both. For example, I lift weights Tues/Thur am, then cardio that afternoon, then I can do circuit training, yoga, or cardio the next morning, depending on howy body feels. When doing 2 workouts daily, I keep both shorter than 45 min each, but on days that I do one workout, 1 hour is fine.

galaxyeyed

I'm on week 6 of C25k and Strong Curves. I do them both the same day, usually jogging in the morning and weights at night. I tried to do them on alternating days in the beginning, but I'd be so sore after weight training the next day that even walking sounded awful. Of course, the soreness only lasted like a week, but that's three sessions that I was exhausted for, so I just started doing them the same day, and it's been working fine. There's been like two times when I tried to do weights RIGHT after running, and it wasn't super fun...I don't think I lifted as well as I could have.