Hi everybody, this is my first post! Sorry if this has been already discussed.

What do you guys think it's the optimal for loosing weight, doing cardio before or after lifting? I've read somewhere that, for the first 20 minutes of cardio activity, you are burning sugar and, only after that, fat is started to be used for energy. With that in mind, isn't it better to use the sugar you have to lift weights while you still have most of your strength? At the moment you start you cardio, you will be at the point of burning fat. A friend of mine says he likes doing cardio before because he likes warming up before lifting. What about starting with a 5 minute cardio just for warming up? - didn't convince my friend. Here it is what I like doing: 5-minute cardio, 3 minute stretching, 30 to 45 minutes lifting and 45 minutes of non intensive cardio. What do you guys think?

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Already thanks to all of you who contribute so much for this great website, especially to John. Reading through a lot of yours posts got me a handful of information and your experiences have been extremely inspiring to me. Soon, I will be building my Journal so you guys can give me some more feed back.

A search of the forums will bring up about 100,000 threads on this subject. Happy reading! ;)

IMO - - OPTIMAL is cardio on a separate day than weights. Next would be separating them by 8 or so hours (cardio AM, weights PM). If you MUST combine, I would choose to do cardio after weights, as I like to lift with high intensity and I don't need my energy drained from cardio before I try to do heavy squats (or whatever).

I agree with what 1FastGTX said.

However, there was a good period of time that I needed to combine the two and I ALWAYS did cardio immediately following lifting for the exact reason(s) you mentioned. You don't want to drain your energy and glycogen before you lift, and after you lift, glycogen stores are depleted putting you in a great state to burn fat.

A search of the forums will bring up about 100,000 threads on this subject. Happy reading! ;)


Believe, me I've tried it! If you don't have good specific key words for the search, you get 100,000 results but not what you are looking for. Is there a way to search for exact phrases like in "cardio before" or "cardio after"? If I do that, I get all posts where those two words exist separately also...

IMO - - OPTIMAL is cardio on a separate day than weights. Next would be separating them by 8 or so hours (cardio AM, weights PM). If you MUST combine, I would choose to do cardio after weights, as I like to lift with high intensity and I don't need my energy drained from cardio before I try to do heavy squats (or whatever).
I really don't have the luxury(will?) of going to the gym twice a day so I guess I'll have to do both at the same time. I've read about this before (~8 hours apart between cardio and lifting) but never got a good explanation or scientific reasons for it. In my case, in what way it would not be beneficial to do cardio after lifting weights as compared to doing one in the AM and the other PM?

I'm not going to cite scientific studies or jump into a debate or even say I'm right. The only thing I have to go on is my experience with coaching people to collectively lose hundreds of pounds over the past several years. Based on that bit of knowledge, I've always found that if you need to combine the two, doing the cardio AFTER the weight training is ideal. Again, that's only based on what I've found success doing ... I'm sure others have found their success in other ways.

Jeremy

Hi everybody, this is my first post! Sorry if this has been already discussed.

What do you guys think it's the optimal for loosing weight, doing cardio before or after lifting? I've read somewhere that, for the first 20 minutes of cardio activity, you are burning sugar and, only after that, fat is started to be used for energy. With that in mind, isn't it better to use the sugar you have to lift weights while you still have most of your strength? At the moment you start you cardio, you will be at the point of burning fat. A friend of mine says he likes doing cardio before because he likes warming up before lifting. What about starting with a 5 minute cardio just for warming up? - didn't convince my friend. Here it is what I like doing: 5-minute cardio, 3 minute stretching, 30 to 45 minutes lifting and 45 minutes of non intensive cardio. What do you guys think?

--//--

Already thanks to all of you who contribute so much for this great website, especially to John. Reading through a lot of yours posts got me a handful of information and your experiences have been extremely inspiring to me. Soon, I will be building my Journal so you guys can give me some more feed back.

Always after.. if you compromise anything let it be the cardio.. Cardio burns fat during cardio... but more muscle burns fat 24/7..