Weight training & Cardio on the same day

Strength training first and then cardio. You burn FAT while doing cardio after you strength train, and your heart rate is the highest.

Not true at all, but it gives people a warm and fuzzy to believe it, so please proceed.......

Strength training first and then cardio. You burn FAT while doing cardio after you strength train, and your heart rate is the highest.

Not true at all, but it gives people a warm and fuzzy to believe it, so please proceed.......

Oh really? And what's your way of burning fat then you professional? I've had several certified trainers with degrees tell me that that is how you burn fat, and I've lost 20 pounds by doing it.

There is no general 'truth' to this. It depends on your individual fitness goals and your knowledge about your body's response to exercise. Personally, for example, I'm not on a weight loss mission. I'm shedding a bit fat in the process. I'm lifting with a purpose. I go hard and heavy, eat accordingly....and sleep well aka muscle repair. Any extended cardio session on a lifting day would only postpone the healing process after training, and it would also increase my risk for injury. Running on the treadmill or otherwise with shaky and tired muscles isn't a good idea for me.
I set aside one or 2 days of the week for some steady state cardio, preferably and comfortably on my stationary bike, while watching a movie with well built guys in tight super hero suits....lol

If you are working out with a professional trainer, and it works for you, that it's great! Don't change a program that's working! However, you have to keep in mind, that a professional trainer will want you to log as much 'gym time' as possible. You are supposed to get the feeling, that you're getting your money's worth in any case. Whatever your trainer's strategy, in your case, he got lucky!

Happy Training!

Strength training first and then cardio. You burn FAT while doing cardio after you strength train, and your heart rate is the highest.

Not true at all, but it gives people a warm and fuzzy to believe it, so please proceed.......

Oh really? And what's your way of burning fat then you professional? I've had several certified trainers with degrees tell me that that is how you burn fat, and I've lost 20 pounds by doing it.

My "way of burning fat" is the same way every human body burns fat: by maintaining a long-term calorie deficit.

You don't "burn fat" with exercise--at least you don't use up stored body fat during exercise. You use a relatively small amount of energy during a workout session. Depending on your energy balance the rest of the day (week/month/year), the body will either replace the energy that was used during the workout, store more energy (as fat), or use already stored energy. That process is affected by the overall balance between intake and expenditure--NOT by mix of fuel substrate used during exercise.

People vastly overestimate the amount of fat they burn during exercise. It is possible (sometimes) to affect the ratio of fats:carbohydrates burned during a workout--by training a certain way, sometimes with fasted cardio, etc. However, not only does the percentage of fat burned during exercise have ZERO effect on long-term fat loss, the actual amount is trivial. If you compare a "fat burning" type of workout vs one that burns a lower percentage, the typical difference in a 60 minute workout is less than 1/2 an ounce. So even if the "fat burning" process DID work the way your "trainers" have told you (which it doesn't), it still would be virtually meaningless.

The fact that you have "lost 20 pounds" does not affect the discussion in any way. It is just a classic example of "correlation =/= causation". Since loss of stored body fat is only affected by long-term calorie deficit, you could walk around with a slice of baloney in your shoes and still lose 20 pounds. But that wouldn't mean that the baloney was responsible for your weight loss. It's the same with doing weights before cardio. It's just a different type of baloney.

Iv noticed at my gym that most of the people there to lift will do 5-10mins on either the bikes or treadmil then go and lift and then come and do a 15-20 brisk walk on treadmill

They're are doing a warm up prior to lifting and then finishing with cardio.

There is actually 2 'Golden Rules' when it comes to this and they are very simple.

Rule 1:- Do whatever works for you.
Rule 2:- If you think are doing it in the wrong order because <Google/A friend/A guy with lots of certificates/That one guy with really bad form who grunts a lot while lifting weights which are too heavy for him but ego won't let him lift the appropriate weight/A celebrity trainer/People you overheard in Starbucks>*** tells you so, refer immediately to Rule 1.

***Delete as applicable.

For the average person looking to keep or get fit, lose weight, tone and/or build muscle it will make no difference the order you do it in and the supposed extra fat burn from doing it in a particular order is so negligible as to not be worth considering.

I'm a PT and with my clients there is no set rule, we mix it up and they still get the results they are looking for. There will always be a bit of cardio at the start of the session, usually the rower, followed by dynamic stretching. Then it will be either cardio or lifting next. Some sessions might just be one or the other while some we do both before ending with a cool down and stretching. It hasn't hindered any of them in any way and they are all either where they wanted to be before we started working together or are on track to their goal.

If you must do them on the same day, do cardio after weights.

Resistance training uses glycogen (sugar stored in muscles) for it's energy source.

If you do the cardio first, you will deplete your body of the glycogen first and not have it available for the resistance training. Cardio can switch over to other energy sources rather than glycogen.

However, not doing them on the same day is even better that way you don't short change either one from an intensity standpoint.

this.

ETA: If I'm doing cardio and weights in the same day (which is rare, since I don't do much cardio) I have to do weights first or I just simply do not have the energy to lift heavy. If I have anything left in the tank, I'll follow up with some cardio. But I don't care for it, I just do it for my ticker health. I like to expend my energy on heavy weights.

I do not think there is a general rule, but probably more like self preference. I do feel that you should do weights first and then cardio. If you do cardio first than you cannot possibly push yourself at your hardest when lifting. Weights are more important and should take up most of your energy and then do cardio after.

Both strength training and running uses glycogen as fuel. One method I like to do is do my strength training first and then I would do a brisk walk on the treadmill for an hour. This brisk walk uses mainly fat as fuel rather than glycogen.

The reason the long cardio session dips into the fat reserves is because you've already used up glucose (free blood sugar) and glycogen (stored carbs) with strength training, and probably the beginning of the cardio session.

I do weights first so I'm not too tired, & make sure I have time. It's easy for me to rationalize cutting 10 min from the elliptical or treadmill so I'm getting to work on time, but I wouldn't want to not work some muscle group by missing part of the weight machines.

Cardio pretty much every day, weights every other day.
Works for me.

You can work out however you want, but the whole "I burn up glycogen lifting weights so I can burn more fat doing cardio" idea is just wrong.

People have a lot of stored glycogen--enough to run 2 continuous hours at a minimum. So no matter how brotastic your lifting routine, it is highly unlikely that you will use up your glycogen stores.

And if by chance you DID burn them up and went to "all fat", your cardio workout would suck dead bears. Because of the limitations of beta oxidation, the max effort one can produce when working out using all fat is about 50%-60% of VO2max--that's not only slow, but you feel like absolute crap while you are doing it. (e.g. marathoner "hitting the wall").

So, between the sharply reduced intensity, and the fact that you would probably stop after about 10 min because it's such an unpleasant experience, your calorie burn for your "fat burning" workout would be minimal, thus accomplishing very little, if anything.

Maybe you think that is an extreme example. So, let's say we go with "BroPlan Alpha": fasted workout, lifting weights first, etc. We are successful at manipulating the fuel substrate ratio so that we push the workout RQ from .9 to .75, showing a higher percentage of "fat" being burned. And you do cardio for 60 minutes. The result? At most, a difference in total fat burned of about 1/2 ounce.

Now here is the best part: we went to all that trouble and effort to achieve this awesome 1/2 ounce of increased fat burn, but, in fact, research has shown conclusively that, over the course of 24 hours, it makes absolutely no difference. The body will down regulate fat oxidation the rest of the day so that, after 24 hours, the individual who "burned more fat" during the workout will have burned the same amount of fat as anyone else.

Ooops.

As I and others have said--from the standpoint of fatigue, personal preference, workout goals, etc, etc, an individual can outline any number of valid reasons for sequencing their workouts a particular way.

But the most oft-cited reason for lifting first--i.e. that doing weights first will lead to increased fat burn when doing cardio--is thoroughly debunked by just about any physiologic measure available. The only possible exception might be someone who is already super-lean and temporarily needs to get super-duper lean. But that does not include 99% of the population.