In yesterday’s post, Part One of the series, we talked about all the benefits of choosing to do your cardio before doing your strength training workout. To be fair I wanted to go over the benefits of choosing to do your cardio after your strength training workout as well.
At NordicTrackCoupons.com want you to be the most informed to our ability on your exercise regimens to be able to choose the one that works best for you. So in case yesterday’s benefits did not entice you enough, check out the benefits of choosing cardio after your weights.
If your main goal is to increase muscle mass you are going to want to do cardio after weights. Just like I said yesterday how doing cardio first gives you the most energy for your cardio, doing weights first is going to give you the most strength to power through your weight lifting exercises before being burnt out on cardio.
As stated in this article from builtlean.com, when you are exercising your body and muscles are using stored glycogen for energy. If you do cardio before your workout you are using up all your body’s preferred energy source, so there will not be any more available to you to lift heavy weights. This is compromising your ability to increase strength and even your ability to maximize calorie burn through weight lifting.
Jillian Michaels states in this video that weight training before cardio is best for a higher percentage of fat loss. When you are doing weight training you are burning through the stored blood sugar making for a more powerful contraction and workout all together. Then once you move onto cardio you have burned through that stored blood sugar and you are not going into a higher percentage of stored fat loss.
Another benefit of cardio after weights from the builtlean.com article is due to the hormonal changes going on in your body during the two workouts. During cardio, “cortisol is released without a concurrent increase in testosterone. Cortisol breaks down muscle in order to give your body the continued energy to workout.” Without this concurrent increase in testosterone, it is harder for you to gain any muscle.
During strength training, cortisol levels go up as well as testosterone levels. “This hormonal shift not only allows you to have energy for the workout, but also helps to rebuild muscle after the session.”
Don’t get hung up too much with the order, if you prefer weights before cardio do so, if you prefer cardio before weights do that! If you like to mix and match, or set specific days for specific workouts that is great too! Do whatever is going to get you out there and psyched for your workout, whatever order that may be!
Better yet you can try combining the two with this treadmill-dumbbell workout.
Written By: Jentry
