My brother asked me a great question today, one I’ve been asked before but not in a while.
“When I go to the gym, is it better to do cardio first or resistance first?”
Chances are you can probably find arguments for both ways depending on who’s doing the talking. My brother told me his friend said it was better to do resistance first because it was better for one’s metabolism. I have no idea where that information comes from but it doesn’t strike me as particularly sound information.
As far as I know, metabolism has nothing to do with whether you do cardio first or resistance first. It has to do with a combination of your genes and your muscle mass. Generally speaking, the more muscle you have, the higher your metabolism. But I also remember a college mate at Uni who used to eat and eat and eat and was still as skinny as a stick – he struggled to keep the weight on. He said his Dad was exactly the same – that is where genetics plays a part too.
So, the answer to the question? Well, in my opinion it really depends firstly on what your goals are for a particular exercise session. Ideally, most of us will have several exercise sessions a week. If it’s more than 3 sessions, then not all exercise sessions would necessarily incorporate resistance training, some might be cardio only.
Which way around you do it depends on your goals. If you are time poor and trying to maximise on your session, I would suggest cardio first, because if you do resistance first, you still have to do some form of warming up before you begin (even though I know some of you probably don’t warm up first and just launch straight into it – naughty, naughty!). If you do cardio first then the warming up prior to resistance work is taken care of, killing two birds with one stone.
If your goal for the month is to really hammer your legs and get them stronger, then you might be concerned that your legs would be too tired from doing cardio first. Well then you might firstly want to consider going lighter on the cardio and skipping things like sprint work or the stair master, in favour of the cross trainer or bike (on a lower level to save your leg strength). If on the other hand you’re going for an upper body workout, then the bike or treadmill might be more favourable than the cross-trainer.
Probably another thing to bear in mind when trying to figure out which way works for you is that most people can’t really do it all in a single exercise session. Most people can’t do a tough cardio workout followed by a tough resistance workout – it’s usually one or the other. So perhaps think about setting different goals for different sessions – Monday might be resistance-focussed and therefore lighter on the cardio workout, but Tuesday might be tougher in the cardio arena, with no resistance.
I personally tend to favour cardio before resistance if I am going to do both, but in an ideal world I would actually alternate my sessions and have all cardio one day, and mainly resistance the next with my cardio activity being only about ten minutes long for the purpose of warming up.
I also had another phase in my life where I couldn’t visit the gym as many times, but when I did go I had more time, so at that stage I would do a cardio session followed by a resistance session for every visit, but I would alternate my resistance exercises, ie. one day cardio with upper body resistance, the next time cardio with lower body resistance.
***
edit: Just wanted to quickly add that I’m a bit sleep deprived as I write tonight… so hopefully my post makes sense. But I think I forgot to answer the question properly —> in a nutshell, if you’re not sure which one to do, try both, and do the one you like better, or the one that works better for you! I truly believe that with this one that there isn’t a right or wrong way 🙂
A Healthy Mumma 