For many athletes striving for optimal health and fitness, a pressing question remains: should you do cardio before or after strength training? Both forms of training have their benefits, but the order in which you perform them can make a big difference to your results. Whether your goal is fat loss, muscle growth or general fitness improvement, it is important to understand how cardio and strength training can affect one another. In this piece, we explain what science says and how you can adapt the order to suit your personal goals.
What happens to your energy during a workout?
To understand what the best time for cardio is, it is helpful to first know how your body uses energy during different types of workouts. During strength training, you consume ATP and creatine phosphate for quick energy; for slightly longer efforts, the body switches to glycogen. The combination of these systems enables you to sustain intensive strength training and supports muscle growth, strength and fat burning through the afterburn effect.
Cardio burns a mix of glycogen and fat, depending on the intensity and duration. During intense exertion, it uses glycogen first for quick energy, followed by fats if the workout continues for a long time or the intensity remains low. This alternation between energy sources makes cardio effective for improving fitness and burning fat, especially if the training is repeated regularly and consistently.
Effect of cardio before strength training
When you do cardio before resistance training, it can help to warm up your body and stimulate your circulation. For many people, a short cardio session works well as a warm-up. At Beyond, we therefore always have the client warm up for about 5 minutes before the training begins; this helps to prevent injuries. However, the downside of cardio before resistance training is that it already partially depletes your glycogen stores, which can affect your strength performance. As a result, you have less energy left for heavy exercises such as squats, deadlifts or bench presses. This can be disadvantageous if you are primarily focusing on muscle growth or strength gains, because your performance in these areas may decrease due to fatigue.
Effect of cardio after strength training
If muscle building and fat loss are your primary goals, it can be more beneficial to do cardio after your strength training. By doing strength training first, you consume a large part of the glycogen, which can lead to you burning fat faster during cardio. This principle can be interesting for people who their wanting to lower body fat percentage. Additionally, strength training ensures that more blood flows to your muscles, which already keeps your body in an active state. As a result, the transition to cardio after strength training is smoother and you can benefit from a higher fat burn. Yet, doing cardio after strength training can also entail disadvantages, such as fatigue, hindered muscle recovery, an increased risk of overtraining and potential muscle breakdown.
Training intensity and weekly schedule
An important factor that plays a role is the intensity of your workouts. To minimise the aforementioned drawbacks, you can opt for a shorter or less intensive form of whatever you are starting with. For example, choose gentle cycling or walking if you do your cardio before your strength training. And perform bodyweight exercises or use resistance bands if you do your strength training before your cardio. That way, the types of training will get in each other's way the least. If your goal is to improve both strength and fitness, it can be smart to schedule these workouts on different days. This allows you to benefit to the maximum from both types of training without putting excessive strain on the body. Naturally, building in adequate rest between sessions essential.
What does science say?
Various studies show that the order of cardio and strength training affects muscle growth and fat burning. Research indicates that when you do cardio before strength training, performance in strength training may be lower because you have already used up energy. Conversely, doing cardio after strength training has no negative impact on your strength performance, and may even stimulate fat burning. Even so, the effect is often small and heavily dependent on personal factors, such as your training experience, recovery capacity and goals.
Align the sequence with your physical goals
The most important thing is to start with what is your priority; do you initially want to improve your fitness? Then begin your training with cardio. Rather get big and strong? Then start with weight training. Also listen to your own body: sometimes varying the order of your workouts can actually help to stay motivated and prevent overload. Try both orders at Beyond and discover what works best for your body and goals.
