I want to lose BODY FAT. Cardio BEFORE weights or Cardio AFT

Destiny424

i would love to hear from others on here what has helped them lose body fat besides eating healthy.. my goal is to lose body fat.. what has worked for you as far as a workout? has Cardio BEFORE doing weights helped or cardio AFTER weights? would love to hear from you all, thanks

suziecue66

From reading a hell of a lot of different blogs it seems that cardio after is better. You do your weights for about 30 mins, then step on treadmill (example) warm up a bit and then do some intervals followed with about 20 minutes of steady state cardio. Others don't think it matters what order as long as getting it done.
This program I am doing has cardio first then weights. But I've switched to weights first as I get my cardio done and then I am so exhausted to do the weights. When I do the cardio I push myself so that I am sweating heaps. I've increased the incline heaps and that makes it so much harder.
Also you could do cardio in the morning and weights in the afternoon/evening if pushed for time. If I can get both over and done with in the morning its better for me as by the end of the day with kids home etc I just don't feel up to it most times.

Reefer_bob

I do both.

I do a moderate 15 minutes on the bike to warm myself up and get elevate my heart rate.

Then I'm off for 30 minutes or so of weight training.

I finish off with another 15 - 20 minutes of more aggressive cardio. Jacob's Ladder, real stair climber, more aggressive bike.

I also find that this keeps me from getting bored. I have trouble doing one type of exercise for 30+ minutes.

I'm down about 22 so far, and have gained strength. YMMV, hope this helps.

enginerd81

I've been doing 5 min elliptical warm up - then my lifting then cardio.

The way I see it i'd rather have extra energy and endurance for lifting than for cardio. That way I lift more and have better form.

BrianSharpe

It depends........from a weight loss point of view it probably doesn't matter in which order you expend the calories however my tri coach is pretty insistent that you do do your run before weights to reduce the likelihood of injuring yourself (muscle fatigue) on the run. Our dryland program is broken into 1 hr on the bikes first followed by another hour of strength and flexibility.

If you're doing 2 separate workouts during the day it's a good idea to separate them (for example run in the morning and weights in the evening) to allow recovery time between activities but it really comes down to what fits your schedule.

It's a little OT but there's an excellent book "Which Comes First Cardio or Weights" by Alex Hutchinson that explores, from a scientific standpoint, a great number of exercise and fitness myths. A great read that belongs in every fitness library.