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Cardio or Lifting First?

T

Torres

MuscleHead
Sep 16, 2013
308
44
lol, I see you missed this is a female member.........................................

Holy shit !!! LOL !!! Yea I missed that or Jenner !!!

Just do whatever they said !!!
 
M

Mijeyzway

Member
Jul 12, 2013
15
0
Cardio always post WO, that is if you are doing it when you train. Also have your post WO shake after training but before you do post WO cardio. My 2 cents.
 
MissMonsterr

MissMonsterr

TID Lady Member
Apr 9, 2015
55
10
I've always done cardio last if you're going to do both on same day. You're energy will be used up if you do it first and you won't get good results out of your lifting. Just what I've done and was always told! :)
 
Stayc

Stayc

TID Lady Member
Feb 17, 2015
12
8
I do cardio last. If I get tired I can cut it shorter. But I think it's whatever makes you comfortable. Everyone is different. I know I've heard all sorts of theories. But it works out either way. Best of luck! :)
 
HDH

HDH

TID Board Of Directors
Sep 30, 2011
3,386
2,812
I never do cardio and weight training in the same session. I'm cutting right now and my overlap puts me in the gym twice a day, 3x a week. I do a 5 to 7 minute treadmill warm up before weights, cardio is always fasted.

I enjoy the time in the gym, it's my favorite escape :)

H
 
Z

zipbolang

TID Lady Member
Apr 18, 2015
16
5
I get cardio from from resting less between sets; i blaze through a full bodyworkout, the only rest is how long it takes me to walk to the next machine/weight rack or scout for an alternate exercise if the equipment is being used. On off day I do muay thai..cant run too much anymore as the knees are kinda shot! haha
 
sassy69

sassy69

TID Lady Member
Aug 16, 2011
1,067
398
I'll do a light cardio warmup, train, and depending on that day's split (or if I'm in prep), I'll follow up w/ cardio.

I'd venture to a degree, what constitutes your workout may depend somewhat on your genetics, your goals and where you are in all of it at the moment. I know plenty of ladies who don't do a lot of cardio and can get themselves peeled. I'm not one of them, so I accept that I need cardio. The bigger point is to do something to get your heart rate up, HIIT style seems to be the ideal approach. I personally prefer to lift and not in a crossfit manner at the moment (this is heavily dictated by my current variety of tendontis and ligament issues & my conditioning given that I've been working around or rehabbing those issues for the last 4 yrs), so I'm not getting a lot of true HIIT style activity. You can get more aerobic action from a full-body workout approach, any sort of sequence lifting (e.g. Javorek BB complexes), crossfit-style stuff (but respecting form over speed and common sense over speed) - anything that keeps your heart rate screaming w/ some recovery periods.

But if you're doing standard lifting, don't do all your cardio before the lifting. You need those energy reserves to do the lifting, assuming your intent in lifting is to tear down & build up muscle tissue. Then hit the cardio - where cardio can be any combination of steady state & HIIT. Research I've seen more recently says dont' just do steady state. I'll also attest to the fact that perpetual steady-state cardio can tend to aggravate things such as plantar fasciitis, etc. if you're doing the same thign all the time - like steep angle treadmill. Also I always see people setting the cardio eqpt to some extreme like steep angle treadmill or hi speed stepmill, but then hanging onto & leaning on the machine console -which is sort of a cheat to yourself if you're going to bother doing cardio.

So anyway, cardio after training, unless your training is HIIT / aerobic enough itself that it is "cardio".
 
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mrshaymaker

Member
Oct 24, 2015
24
3
I'm currently skinny fat at 127 lbs and 27% body fat. I only do HIIT 2x per week and just started lifting 3x per week (a beginner routine, compound exercises, focusing on progressive overload). I do go on the elliptical for 10 mins before I lift as I was told this would be beneficial but someone recently told me to do the elliptical after lifting. True? What do you do?

I've recently heard it's better to do it afterwards, but it depends on what your goals are, I think. I work best with doing a few mile run first, then lifting weight. When it comes to fitness, running inspired me first though. :) If I don't get SOME type cardio in to warm up and get my heart going, I find it harder to find my groove lifting weight.
 
M

mrshaymaker

Member
Oct 24, 2015
24
3
I'll do a light cardio warmup, train, and depending on that day's split (or if I'm in prep), I'll follow up w/ cardio.

But if you're doing standard lifting, don't do all your cardio before the lifting. You need those energy reserves to do the lifting, assuming your intent in lifting is to tear down & build up muscle tissue. Then hit the cardio - where cardio can be any combination of steady state & HIIT. Research I've seen more recently says dont' just do steady state. I'll also attest to the fact that perpetual steady-state cardio can tend to aggravate things such as plantar fasciitis, etc. if you're doing the same thign all the time - like steep angle treadmill. Also I always see people setting the cardio eqpt to some extreme like steep angle treadmill or hi speed stepmill, but then hanging onto & leaning on the machine console -which is sort of a cheat to yourself if you're going to bother doing cardio.

So anyway, cardio after training, unless your training is HIIT / aerobic enough itself that it is "cardio".

Do you feel there's a difference in "steady state" cardio forms? You referred to a treadmill, but I run on the road. When I switched to the road from a treadmill after I started running, I found it much more difficult. Now it's just what I'm used to at this point. I feel like not running at least a mile (around a 10 minute pace) prior to lifting makes it hard for me to get into the lift.
 
sassy69

sassy69

TID Lady Member
Aug 16, 2011
1,067
398
Do you feel there's a difference in "steady state" cardio forms? You referred to a treadmill, but I run on the road. When I switched to the road from a treadmill after I started running, I found it much more difficult. Now it's just what I'm used to at this point. I feel like not running at least a mile (around a 10 minute pace) prior to lifting makes it hard for me to get into the lift.

If you're doing actual road work, to a degree you have the addition of variations in terrain compared to say, a treadmill. But I think the point is that its "steady state" such that your body finds the pace and stays there. Over time, it can get acclimated to that vs the burst variations of HIIT. The usual comparison is look at the body of a distance runner vs the body of a sprinter. In the extreme, the distance runner ends up "skinnyfat" while the sprinter develops pretty amazing leg muscles and is lean & muscular.
 
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MissLC

TID Lady Member
Nov 23, 2015
27
2
Something few have mentioned but also very common and I think a good option is fasted morning cardio. Still depleted but also separate from lifting. This is my preferred time for cardio as I'm usually dead after lifting. I'm the body type that sometimes needs 2 cardio sessions a day to get lean, so when I need to post workout I do. But I always prefer keeping them separate.
 
Jimmyinkedup

Jimmyinkedup

Senior Member
Aug 22, 2012
143
36
What I was taught years ago was to do resistance training first as that will burn through all your glycogen stores and then the entire time you do cardio you will be burning fat for fuel. If you did it vice -cersa you would be doing cardio for 20 mins before you reached the point of burning bodyfat and then lets say you were doing 30 mins of cardio you would only burn fat for 10 more mins of cardio and then your resistance workout would be compromised due to the deplete glycogen stores anyway. At the time I believed that so it is what I did and it became habit. Still do it that way to this day.
So why did I say, "at the time I believed that"? Well because now , even though I still do it that way out of habit, I personally do not feel it will make any difference what so ever which order you perform them in so I always recommend doing whichever you enjoy or feel like works better for you.
 
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