Is it better to do cardio after weight training or before?

“Cardio before weights or weights before cardio?” There is no single correct answer. Whether it is better to do cardio after weight training or before really depends on your goal(s) and focus for the particular training session, and how your body reacts to training both within the same workout.

While there is research that indicates that the order of exercise may have an effect on your performance, there are also some findings indicating that it may not. So let’s take a look at how you could approach your training depending on your training focus.

 Each person’s goals and reasons for working out are as varied and numbered as the people exercising. Some train to lose weight, others to get stronger, and still others to improve their endurance. Each of these three training goals can impact the way that you approach your workout.  So let’s take a look at three hypothetical people with these different goals and how those goals could impact the order of their workout.

 Person A: I Want To Lose Weight

Conventional exercise wisdom tells us that aerobic or cardio exercise is one of the best ways to lose weight and reduce unwanted body fat. While cardio exercise helps us to burn more calories, it can also impact the energy level that we have available for the subsequent weight-training session. So, with Person A’s focus on weight-loss, cardio before weight-training makes sense. This allows them to concentrate their ‘best efforts’ to this form of exercise while they are their freshest.

 Person B: I Want To Get Stronger

The goal of increasing or maximizing strength requires progressive resistance training. The principle of ‘overload’ – where you progressively work your muscles at an intensity level that’s greater than what they’re accustomed to – comes into play here. While you can certainly accomplish this goal in the same workout as your cardio exercise, in order to give your ‘best efforts’ here, it’s probably best not have muscles that are pre-fatigued from a cardio workout before doing your strength training. So, weight-training first after a proper warm-up, followed by cardio after weight training, makes sense for someone with this exercise goal.  

 Person C: I Want To Build My Endurance

Someone wishing to maximize their endurance (and here I’m going to presume we’re talking about cardio endurance) needs to be able to perform their cardio workout over an extended period of time. While cardio endurance training and the higher-intensity strength training workout essentially use different energy systems in your body, the fact remains that if you’re already pre-exhausted from performing a strength-training workout first, your endurance workout may suffer. So, in this instance, performing your cardio workout first is probably best.

Finally, because the order of exercise has an impact on your fatigue level, there is a safety component to the order of exercise decision. Make sure that you understand and consider that before deciding which order of exercise is best for your particular workout. If your intention is to conduct a heavy strength training session, safety probably dictates that you do that first.