“Cardio Before Or After Weight Training?”

You see, both types of exercise, cardio and weight training differ in the kinds of energy systems that each uses. Cardio is an aerobic exercise. Aerobic activities such as jogging, cycling, and swimming, require a great deal of oxygen to generate the energy needed for prolonged exercise.

Aerobic training can be any type of exercise that causes your heart rate to increase and makes you breath harder than normal. You see, the body has two sources of energy; sugar and fat. Sugar or glycogen is stored in the liver and muscle and is the easiest from of energy for your body to use. Glycogen is the bodies preferred source of energy. Fat on the other hand, requires more work to be used as energy.

Why? The problem is that fat can be broken down only as long as oxygen is available. Oxygen must be present for your body to burn fat for energy, but not to burn glycogen. In the initial stages of exercise, oxygen is not yet available.

It can take anywhere from 20 to 35 minutes of constant exercise before fat is fully available to the muscles as fuel. Depending on your current conditioning will determine how efficiently your body burns fat. This is how cardio (aerobic) uses fat as an energy source.

The second type of exercise is called “anaerobic exercise” and an example of this type of activity is weight training. Basically, oxygen is not needed to generate energy from this type of activity. Anaerobic activities uses two types of energy systems. The first system, the ATP (adenosine triphosphate) system and relies on creatine phosphate as it’s energy source. *If you simply want to find out the best possible time to do cardio and get those six pack abs, go to Mike Geary's site, called "The Truth About 6 Pack Abs. This is a full fat loss program that goes for about $40. It's well worth the money.Click here to go to his site.

This type of energy system last for about 5 to 10 seconds, and is a blast of short term energy. Creatine phosphate is used for very short term energy bursts for such activities like strength training and other sports that require short, fast bursts of activity. How does it do this? Creatine phosphate aids in replenishing your reserves of ATP. Adenosine triphosphate -ATP is the molecular fuel that provides the power for muscular contractions.

So, whenever you do an activity that requires short term burst of energy such as strength training and weight lifting, your body relies on ATP. ATP is used as the primary fuel source for short term energy bursts that lasts for about 5 to 10 seconds (Of maximum muscular output). However, after this time period elapses, your stuck with little ATP reserves which means low fuel.

Your ATP reserves need to be replenished after the first 5 to 10 seconds of intense muscular contractions. This is where the second type of energy source kicks in, the lactic acid system. After the first 10 seconds of maximum output, you body is low on it’s primary fuel ATP, and requires another energy source to keep going. Your body turns to sugar as it’s secondary fuel source. Glucose is stored in your liver and muscles and will convert to ATP, but only after the first 10 or 20 seconds and takes longer to convert to energy than creatine phosphate.

Glucose converts to ATP which provides the energy needed for muscular contraction but this process takes time (At least 20 seconds to kick in). In the meantime, your body turns to creatine phosphate it stores in the muscle for immediate fuel. Creatine phosphate can be converted to ATP very quickly (This process takes only a fraction of a second). This is why creatine is so popular with strength athletes because it adds more short term energy to your maximum output (That’s another story which you can check out here).

Ok, I seem to be getting off topic here. Now, you understand that weight training and cardio exercises use two different energy systems. Alright, personally, I never use cardio before weight training, unless I’m warming up. Why? Well, it comes down to personal experience. I’ve done about a hundred different experiments with cardio to see what is the best time to do it and I always experience my best results after my weight training sessions.

It doesn’t matter if I’m trying to add strength and size to my body or trying to cut off some fat, this seems like the best time for me to do it.

You see, weight training requires 100% of my mental and physical focus and if I’m off by just 1%, it can mean one of two things, poor performance or injury.

Yes, injury. When I show up to the gym, I’m pretty much in a focussed mental state and I know what I have to do.

I’ll hop on the treadmill for about 5 minutes to warm up my body, but afterwards, it’s all business with the weights. As soon as my weight training is done, I’ll do my cardio.

You see, if I have a heavy squat day, I need to concentrate and save every last ounce of energy to try and do 8 repetitions with 400 pounds on my back. This is my sole focus. If I hop on the treadmill for 40 minutes prior to working out, it does two things to me.

First, it gives me too much time to think about the crap that’s happening at work which takes me out of my head and takes my concentration off of the heavy work that’s about to come. This can lead to injuries.

Secondly, although it can give my legs a good work out, I need every last ounce of energy to get that weight up. I’m not doing the treadmill to build my legs, I’m doing squats for that and this is my priority. Doing 40 minutes of cardio can be a little taxing on both, my legs and my wind. I need both to squat with 400 pounds on my back.

Now, if I’m off by just a bit in my physical and mental focus, I’m not going to have a good workout, especially if I’m about to do some heavy compound movements such as the dead lift, squat, or bench press.

However, once my workout is completed, I’ll do my cardio work because I know that this exercise is about endurance and time. It’s at this time that I’ll hop on the treadmill and thing about all the crap at work :(

Does this burn more calories or fat? Not sure because it will all depend on the amount of overall calories you expend with weight training. The debate is up in the air about whether or not doing cardio is better for fat loss after a weight training session, but for me, I personally feel that it does.

I mean, really, after you’ve just lifted maximum amounts of weight (for you), your ATP and glucose stores are down. I’m not going to tell you they’re not because if you go hard and heavy for about 45 minutes to an hour, your going to be very depleted in glucose (hence the popularity of post workout drinks).

Afterwards, it will take even more energy to get your ass off the gym floor and crawl over to the exercise bike to do 40 minutes of cardio. I personally think that after a hard and heavy weight training session, followed up by a 20 to 40 minute cardio exercise, your going to expend more energy, and hence more calories.

Wouldn’t doing cardio prior weight training burn just as much calories? Maybe, but personally, I get much better results by doing weight training first followed up by cardio. Some may argue that you still have energy to do weight training after cardio but I know that I don’t because I’ve tried it. I simply can’t devote the required mental and physical focus to intense weight training workouts after a 40 minute cardio session.

I know, some of you will argue that you can do the same kind of weight training workouts if you do cardio first but I’m gonna tell you right now that doing 40 minutes on the treadmill will deplete some of your physical resource because what’s the use of this exercise if it didn’t? If you’re tying to get stronger, why not devote all of your energy to exercises that will directly help with this? If your trying to tone up and build some muscle, why not expend your energy on exercises that will have a direct impact on this goal?

The most important thing that I can say to you is to experiment. Your going to find 20 different answers on the internet to this question but my advice to you is to try doing both for two, one week periods. That is, for one week, try doing cardio prior to weight training and for another week, try doing weight training first. Only you’ll be able to tell what works best for you.

Alright, now you know when the best time is if your looking to build muscle and do cardio. There is a resource that takes this strategy one step further. The resource is called "The Truth About 6 Pack Abs" and the author, Mike Geary targets optimal times to do cardio in order to burn the maximum amount of fat. I strongly recommend you take a look at this book if your serious about getting those 6 pack of abs. Click here to go to the site.