Cardio first or weights first? I get this question a lot, and when you ask me, the answer is almost always going to be weight training first. Here’s why:
Your body is basically best at what it does first. If you are someone that wants to lose body fat and/or build muscle, then strength training first is by far your best option. To put it as simply as possible, you have the most readily accessible and usable energy before you workout. So if most of that is used up by strength training first, then you will be capable of building the most muscle and losing the most fat possible. If you do cardio first, you won’t have that same type of energy available after cardio for your strength training. Which is obviously not ideal if muscle and fat loss is your goal.
If you do your cardio after strength training, any energy your body has left can be used for low impact cardio to burn extra calories after you’ve used up all the quickly accessible energy to get the max benefit from muscle building and fat loss.
On the other hand- if your main priority is simply weight loss and you’re not concerned with losing muscle, then cardio first may be your option since that accessible energy can be used for strenuous cardio if that is your goal.
To sum it all up- build muscle and be in a small caloric deficit if you want to change our body composition. Is cardio still important? Absolutely. But do it after your training, or at a completely separate time of the day unless you’re only concerned with weight loss alone.
