Should you do strength or cardio first?

ThaRealNicki

Ive been wondering lately about this. Everyday I go to the gym I do both but I want to know what to do first to benefit me the most. My goal is to lose weight at the moment.

Appreciate all replies in advanced and please explain your answers so we all can have a better understanding :bigsmile:

MsNewBooty83

i do strength 1st. i find cardio kinda wipes me out a bit more overall and id rather get the good stuff in before im spent, lol. also depends on what im doing, i dont do intense lower bod workout then go cycle or elliptical right after. just try to find a good balance that ur bod can handle without overworking one particular muscle group.

pyrowill

Strength first no matter what. Considering strength si all about lifting/pulling you need all the muscles in your body to perform as best as possible, so you know your max load for your desired reps. If you do cardio first you can rob your msucles of their stored glycogen (sugar) and they might not be able to perform as they would.

Strength first....

creature275

priority principle

delonda1

no expert but my trainer told me if you are going to do both in one day do strength before cardio because if you do cardio first you are going to burn yourself out before you get to where you will reallly exert the most energy and need it

leslturn8

Im straight on the treadmill, i kill myself then go and kill my arms, my legs then my abs, if i over to the weights i know i wont lose any teeth on the treadmill if i have already done it:laugh:

ryliejaiden

I agree with what everyone's said so far, strength first.
I do jog for 5-10 minutes as warm up though. I don't like to do weights on cold muscles.

walkner88

You should rotate. The human body adapts quickly and will benefit the most from constant change. If you're building for really big muscles the strength does need to go first, but if your doing it to tone and lose weight then start cardio some days, throw cardio in the middle on others and on big lift days when you want to push yourself put it in the end because you'll get more metabolism benefits from it

BeautyFromPain

In all honesty, I believe they should be done on separate days. But if you do not have the time, fe.
E.g. I canNOT do a legs workout and then a run, my legs are shaking by the time I finish weights.
Do not forget to warm up before weights and to STRETCH afterwards!!! (same applies for cardio)

With some of my clients though if they are doing a weights day sometimes I will chuck in a quick 5 minutes intense cardio workout, usually sprints in the middle of a workout to keep the HR up.

WaterBunnie

We were told to do cardio first to warm up and avoid injury to cold muscles but he did say some do it the other way round so probably best to ask at your gym.

Jain

My trainer (she's an ex fitness compeditior & a hospital physio) told me to mix it up to keep my HR up, so 15mins cardio, weights, 15 mins cardio, weights 15 mins cardio then ab work. And I mix up the cardio, bike, x-trainer and treadmill. If I still have the energy I'll do extra cadio at the end, but tbh I'm usually wiped out by the end of my session.

meerkat70

priority principle

This. The people who do strength as their priority will tell you to do strength first. The cardio queens will tell you to hop on the elliptical. But the right answer is... do the thing you value most in your training first. (Once you've warmed up, obviously!)

meerkat70

I love that there's 10 completely different answers to this question on this thread... (Mine, obviously, is the correct one.)

mndamon

I do 5 minutes of low to moderate cardio to get my HR up first and then after lifting I do about 20 minutes of interval cardio.

Lozze

I do 5 minutes of low to moderate cardio to get my HR up first and then after lifting I do about 20 minutes of interval cardio.

This is exactly what I do.

SPNLuver83

It doesn't matter. The opinions seem to be always 50/50.

I used to do cardio first, then strength. For the past 6 weeks I've switched it up doing strength first and I haven't noticed any difference one way or the other. Well, only that I'm not all sweaty straight away into lifting.

love4ransom

I had a personal trainer for a while. She told me that when a person has a lot of weight to lose, you want to work on losing some of the fat first. The reason for saying that was because when you do sit ups for example, your working your abs underneath but with fat on top, you are going to start looking like you have more bulge. Yes you want to do strength, b/c muscle helps you to burn fat, however, if there's a lot of fat to lose, then you want to work on cardio to lose the lbs first. Plus if you do a lot of muscle training, you'll be gaining muscle, so you won't be able to see your weight loss. When I do to the gym I like to mix it up. 3 days cardio, 2 days strength training.

meerkat70

Thing is that weights burn fat really well. And you really can't gain significant muscle mass while on a calorie deficit (you can gain a little if you're new to lifting, but you can't increase muscle mass significantly). So I'm afraid if that's what your trainer told you, they weren't being exactly accurate.

Cardio certainly will burn cals. But to really succeed in weight loss, in gaining fitness and feeling and looking better, you probably need to do a mix of both.