cardio and strength training questions

creature557

So I have been hearing from people that doing endurance cardio is not doing anything, I push it every minute in the gym so when I say endurance I mean over 30mins straight cardio. People have been telling me that circuit training is the best way to burn calories and gain strength. My question is am I burning less or wasting time by doing a cadrio session and then weights? Or somedays just doing a cardio session? My gym is small and on school campus so if I get a cardio machine its not so easy to get it again.

Question 2 is, why doesn't fitpal calculate calories burned or whatever from strength training?

yookoslovia

If you're going to do both cardio and strength, it's better to warm your body up with cardio for about 20 minutes before you do some strength workouts then go back on cardio. If you do cardio after strength workouts, you'll burn more calories and get a better workout. The first warm-up cardio doesn't have to be endurance, it just has to warm your body temperature up, so I suggest doing some cycling or walking fast. And cardio burns calories and after 20 minutes, it starts burning fat, so it's important to do cardio for at least 20 minutes (and it's good for your heart!) but doing more than 40 minutes, you start burning muscles. Strength training adds muscles, and when you have more muscles, you burn calories and fat more quickly so your metabolism goes up. I like doing both cardio & strength because I feel like with cardio, I can get smaller and with strength I can get the metabolism I need and get toned. So I do warm-ups every day that I work out, but I only run twice a week, and do lower body strength twice a week, and upper body strength twice a week. And sometimes if I have the extra energy, I walk/run after my strength workouts as well. Hope this was helpful, good luck!

grantdumas7

Doing 20 min of cardio before lifting might be too long. You may have to *kitten* how you feel. I personally don't do any cardio as a warmup. I just warmup the body part I am going to work followed by warming up with the exercise doing progressively heavier weights. Here is an example: Squats. I plan working with 225 for 5 reps. I may do light calesthetics followed by bw squats. Then I will do barx15
135x5
185x3
205x2
Then begin my working sets. Now comes the cardio debate. I would never do a long or high intense cardio session before lifting weights. When you lift weights your use glycogen as the primary fuel source. Cardio will burn up your glycogen stores. If you want to do cardio do it for 15-20 min after lifting, or at least 6 hrs before or after lifting.

creature557

Ok so sounds like I should mix it up more. Also any idea on the fitpal strength training calorie burn? I know lifting is more about building muscle to burn "later" but still not sure why it doesn't calculate any calories burned...

Rumik

You can find a "Strength Training" exercise under cardio, which will give you a rough estimate. It's impossible to be any more accurate than that without a heart rate monitor as calorie burn is determined entirely by how hard you work.

mudonthetires856

Ok so sounds like I should mix it up more. Also any idea on the fitpal strength training calorie burn? I know lifting is more about building muscle to burn "later" but still not sure why it doesn't calculate any calories burned...

When logging your exercise, you can go under Cardiovascular and search for Strength Training. It will show calorie burn from there. However, MFP is known to overestimate calorie burn. If you are eating back your exercise calories, I wouldn't eat those calories back since it's not as big of an amount as a usual cardio burn. For actual cardio exercise, I will only eat back about 1/2 of the calories that it gives me.