Cardio before strength

Cardio warm-up before strength is correct. I suggest no more than 10 minutes to get warmed up.

However to burn the most amount of bodyfat, irregardless of what your heart rate monitor says, you need to understand how your energy systems work. Weight training, anaerobic activity should be done before cardio. Simply put, weight training drains your muscles glycogen stores (your bodies primary fuel source), and when followed up by cardio, your body then fuels the activity by burning your bodyfat.

An ideal session would include 10 - 15 minutes of stretching and cardio.
45 - 60 minutes weights.
15 - 20 minutes cardio.

Never exeed 90 minutes in one session.

Hope that anwers your question....and if you really want results, ask me about epoc. (exercise post oxygen consumption)

During intense strength exercise your body will run into a shortage of oxygen and switch from aerobic to anaerobic and will start creating ATP from carbohydrates without the use of oxygen. Energy conversion happens faster in anaerobic conditions at the expense of less energy produced. It gives you a tremendous amount of usable energy that heart rate monitors can't measure because your heart doesn't have to pump all the energy to those muscles like it does during cardio exercise. The liver stores much of this but some of the energy is already there stored in the muscle and can be used instantly.

I don't think HRMs are designed to monitor this energy output. You would need to have a VO2 sensor and probably some type of blood glucose monitor to accurately determine the difference between when your body switched from aerobic to anaerobic. That's way beyond what a HRM was designed for. It's strictly for aerobic exercise. I'm sure there's some truth to calories burned based on your breathing and heart rate but it's not going to be accurate for strength training.

So if you had testing done to see at what heart rates your body changes from aerobic to anaerobic would you then have a more accurate measure? I truly am trying to learn and want to understand this.

heartrate has nothing to do with it. There is no heartrate cuttoff when anaerobic exercise kicks in. It's intensity. If you lift or do anything at a high enough intensity, your body uses Type II fibres to do it.

To put it another way, your body has engines that power the muscles. to keep it simple, a car engine, and a jet engine. The heart rate monitor measures gasoline consumption of the car engine. since a Jet engine does not use gas, your gas monitoring HRM is unable to measure the jetfuel burned. Different energy systems in the body. The HRM measures the cardio system. It is unable to measure the lactic acid or ATP-CP energy system.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_systems

Thanks for this! Now this is something I can easily grasp the concept. Thanks!

I notice if I run on the treadmill even just for 15 minutes before doing some lifting, I burn over twice as many calories per my HRM. Then if I just start lifting first.
Is that right?

I was just looking this up yesterday. Experts say that cardio before strength training burns more calories and increases the after burn as well. Pretty awesome! I found this info here >> http://exercise.about.com/od/gettingweightlossresults/a/Cardio-Before-Strength-Training.htm

It must have worked as I dropped 2lbs in one week. The biggest drop I've seen yet. My appetite was WAY up as well.

My question is this, should I be doing this, or should I just do all my cardio at the end?

Here is the explanation:

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/blog/Azdak/view/hrms-cannot-count-calories-during-strength-training-17698

So, just trying to understand all this.......the last week I have been running at around 5mph and then lifting 2 exercises (6 sets total) for 1 body part. Then I head back to the treadmill to run again.

I do this for my entire upper body and then lower body on another day.

I had to change my routine up alot as for the most part all I was doing was cardio and really light weights during aerobic classes at the YMCA.

It must have worked as I dropped 2lbs in one week. The biggest drop I've seen yet. My appetite was WAY up as well.

My question is this, should I be doing this, or should I just do all my cardio at the end?

There is no one routine that is perfect for everyone, and no one routine that will be perfect at all times for the same individual. Sometimes you see results from doing something different, not necessarily because the new routine is better than the old one, but because it is different.

That having been said, alternating brief intervals of cardio and strength is something that has been studied and it has been shown to have positive results--esp with newer exercisers.

Cardio warm-up before strength is correct. I suggest no more than 10 minutes to get warmed up.

However to burn the most amount of bodyfat, irregardless of what your heart rate monitor says, you need to understand how your energy systems work. Weight training, anaerobic activity should be done before cardio. Simply put, weight training drains your muscles glycogen stores (your bodies primary fuel source), and when followed up by cardio, your body then fuels the activity by burning your bodyfat.

An ideal session would include 10 - 15 minutes of stretching and cardio.
45 - 60 minutes weights.
15 - 20 minutes cardio.

Never exeed 90 minutes in one session.

Hope that anwers your question....and if you really want results, ask me about epoc. (exercise post oxygen consumption)

Excellent information. Burn off the sugars first, then the body is more inclined to metabolized fat for fuel.

That would all be well and good if it made any difference. But it doesn't. The fuel you burn during exercise has no effect on body fat. Even if you burn more fat during exercise, a) it's a miniscule amount to begin with and b) the body burns less fat the rest of the day, so that at the end of 24 hrs there is no difference, either in total fat oxidized or RQ.