 Or should you even do cardio at all? Some say the answer is simple, I say, it depends on your goals. When we exercise we either perform aerobic or anaerobic exercise, and often, a blend of the two. We also either use our fast twitch muscle, slow twitch muscles, or a combination of both. These variables will effect our results, and deciding upon performing cardio before or after lifting (or not at all) is a choice that could make a difference to help us achieve our goals. If you have one single goal, to increase muscle mass, then yes, the simple answer would be to do cardio separately from lifting, or maybe not at all. But what if your goal is not so singular; ie. gain muscle mass while losing fat? Then you need to analyse the pros and cons for each approach. *All nutritional and fitness info must be discussed with your doctor before any changes to diet or exercise regime are implemented. Goal: Gain muscle mass If your only goal is to build muscle mass, then you most likely will not even do any cardio. And for your goal, this is mostly a good thing. Anaerobic activity is generally high intensity activity of short duration, therefore not using much oxygen. It is easy for our body to keep up with oxygen demands as the duration is not long enough to deplete our oxygen stores. Instead of using oxygen for fuel, anaerobic activity will use the glucose stores in our muscle (glycogen), rapidly depleting it (read more in my article Insulin: Friend or Foe?) and resulting in the formation of lactic acid (which is produced in the absence of oxygen). Exercises that recruit a high level of fast twitch muscles are more anaerobic in nature, meaning that they fatigue quicker and do not have the endurance of the slow twitch fibres. Think of sprinting vs long distance running; sprinting (for less than 2 minutes) will use almost primarily fast twitch fibres meaning that you cannot maintain a sprint for long periods of time. Running slower however uses more slow twitch fibres; they require more oxygen, use less glycogen and produce less lactic acid. This means that you can maintain this pace for longer. In the same manner, weight training is an anaerobic activity and uses a greater proportion of fast twitch muscles. Slow twitch fibers are aerobic in nature; they require oxygen to create energy and this oxygen has to cross the cell membrane through diffusion. If these aerobic, slow twitch fibers get too large, the oxygen can no longer be diffused into the cells; their growth will be limited in order to keep them at a size whereby the diffusion can take place. On the flip side, fast twitch fibers are anaerobic in nature (using energy from glycogen vs oxygen) so they are able to grow larger than slow twitch fibers. This is essentially how we achieve our goal of increasing our muscle mass, and making them physically larger. So how does performing cardio hinder this goal? When you lift heavy weights in an anaerobic fashion you signal to your body to target your anaerobic, fast twitch, larger fibres. When you do Steady State cardio you send your body the opposite signal, to use your aerobic, slow twitch, smaller muscle fibres. So how is this not beneficial for gaining muscle mass? While muscles are worked in the gym, this is what essentially breaks them down; it is the recovery phase, the process of repairing them that makes them grow larger. Studies in trained individuals have shown that when muscles were recruiting in anaerobic activity, followed by aerobic activity (lifting followed by cardio) their ability to repair themselves – thereby getting bigger – was hindered. This is because when you perform aerobic activity, mTOR, the trigger for protein synthesis and muscle growth, is inhibited, and AMPK, an enzyme that inhibits protein synthesis is increased (read more: Strength vs Hypertrophy). Both of these affect your muscles’ ability to be able to synthesize the protein it needs in order to repair itself (and therefore grow) from the grueling, glycogen depleting lifting workout you have performed just before your cardio. On the flip side, studies have also shown that performing cardio immediately before lifting weights can hinder your performance while lifting, essentially making this portion of your workout less effective. Most notably:
This is due to the potential glycogen-depleting cardio you have performed before lifting, leaving less glycogen in our muscles to use for lifting. If you are performing your cardio at a moderate to high intensity, this will tap into your glycogen stores a lot more than low intensity, steady state cardio. All this leads us to the conclusion that if your only goal is to gain muscle mass, performing cardio and lifting in the same session, either before or after, can compromise your goals. However, for most people, even if fat loss is not a goal, overall improvement of health is; meaning that cardio is still an important part of your training regimen. Luckily, performing cardio on either a separate day than lifting, or, if not possible, at least at a different time of day (ie. pm vs am) will help mitigate cardio’s potentially catabolic affects. Goal: Fat loss If your goal is fat loss and fat loss alone, then yes, cardio can help you with this goal. But as we’ve seen in my article Your Metabolism: Can you change it? building muscle mass can help you raise your resting metabolic rate thereby increasing how many calories your body uses in a day. As we’ve also seen in Nutrition 101: Master the Basics, the key to fat loss is ensuring that you are in a calorie deficit, meaning that you are burning more calories than you consume in a day. And while other factors are important, this one is the main factor. Obviously consuming fewer calories is one way to create a calorie deficit; the other way is to burn more calories in a day. Adding cardio to your exercise regime will help you burn more calories, especially if you do it right. Most people’s idea of cardio is long sessions on a cardio machine at the gym, and while this might give you initial results, you will quickly lose the effects of these sessions. Our body is adaptive and once you perform a certain activity for a while our body becomes efficient at it, thereby using fewer calories. In order to avoid this plateau, try:
Goal: Gain muscle, stay lean, and have a great workout! I added that last part, about having a great workout, as that is my personal goal every day. Yes, I want to gain muscle, and even though I don’t have a ton of fat to lose, I definitely want to stay lean. But my bottom line is that I want to have a great workout, every day. I love to lift heavy, I love cardio, and unfortunately I do not have time to work out twice a day in order to lift in one session and do cardio in another. I do occasionally start lifting without a cardio style workout, but always feel more prepared to lift heavy after I have done at least 20 minutes cardio. I also train in the morning (right after dropping the kids off at school) and despite having been awake for about 1.5hrs by the time I arrive at the gym, I do not yet feel fully awake. The act of blasting my music, sweating and raising my heart rate prepares me mentally and physically to lift some heavy weights. I love leaving the gym feeling like I left it all on the gym floor; for me that means that most days I do some combination of both lifting and cardio. If I am more focused on fat loss I will increase total cardio time, if I am more focused on gaining muscle I will decrease total cardio time: I vary the kind of cardio I do (treadmill, step mill, spinning bike and rowing machine), plus add some metabolic conditioning moves to combine cardiovascular conditioning with strength benefits (read more: Metabolic Conditioning: Why you should do it instead of cardio), and of course vary my strength program. In order to determine if I lose reps on my lifts after performing cardio I would have to conduct a long study in order to factor in numerous variables. I did however run one time for 60 mins before doing pull ups and I definitely performed less reps than when I do them after I run for my usual 20 mins. Keeping this in mind I plan my training schedule in order to perform enough cardio to stay lean and gain cardiovascular benefits, while preserving enough strength for my heavy lifts. To determine your personal cardio strategy I would advise you to start by choosing one of the goals above, perform the cardio strategy advised for that goal, and then analyse your results. If you are getting good results, feel good about what you are doing, then change nothing! If not, adapt accordingly. Everyone is different so keep this in mind and keep adapting until you figure out what works best for you. *All nutritional and fitness info must be discussed with your doctor before any changes to diet or exercise regime are implemented. Change nothing and nothing will change; without change, there can be no progress! Related Articles: Our Metabolism: Can we change it? Nutrition 101: Master the Bascis Cardio: HIIT vs SS vs Zone II Fasted Cardio: Yes it can help you shed some body fat, but is there a better way? Metabolic Conditioning: Why you should do this instead of cardio BCAAs: What are they and what can they do for you? Pre and Post Workout Nutrion: Maximize your gains with correct nutrition  1/18/2018 07:20:19 am
Should the fitness buff do cardio before or after weightlifting? I think the answer is quite complicated. Some performers do it before the workout, some do the same after their weight workouts, and most interestingly some individuals do this smack in the middle. I don't think there is any problem with that. If you have enough time for the separate cardio session, then it is absolutely fine. But if you want to reap the fullest benefit of cardio and weightlifting session, then my suggestion is you should lift the weights first and do cardio training after, by which you can torch more fat and keep your energy at the optimum level.
Ralph, you are right, it is complicated!! You make a good point about the potential to burn more fat if performing cardio after lifting, however there are also studies that show that this could actually be detrimental to muscle repair and growth: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27040693 Comments are closed.
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