A question I often ask myself and have seen many times on message boards on the Internet is whether a person should do a cardiovascular exercise before or after a weight training. Before I go any further, I want to make it clear that my position is for everyone to participate in a cardiovascular exercise of their choice for 5 to 10 minutes before any training, be it cardiovascular training, endurance or flexibility. This is of vital importance for a number of reasons, as a proper light-intensity cardiovascular exercise will warm the muscles, ligaments, joints and tendons that will be used with greater intensity during the next exercise routine. Warming up with cardio also slightly increases the core temperature, increases blood circulation, slightly increases the heart rate and helps prepare the heart for increased workload, helps improve lung function and helps you to focus mentally on your heart. the next. exercise routine. The most important benefit of warming up with low intensity cardio is the substantial reduction in the risk of injury. If the body is not heated properly, it is much more likely that you will be injured in muscles, joints, ligaments or tendons.
Now let's go back to the question of whether or not I should do cardiovascular exercise before or after resistance training. Here, there is no better answer and you should instead evaluate your individual fitness goals. If your goal is to increase endurance, stamina or cardiovascular health in general, I suggest you do your cardiovascular workout before strength training and resistance. By first doing a cardiovascular exercise (of course after your warm-up for 5 to 10 minutes), you can participate in a more intense cardiovascular workout, possibly including intervals when you actually reach your lactic acid threshold or VO2. Maximum Level You are much less likely to be doing high intensity cardiovascular work after participating in a weight training session. In summary, if your goal is to increase your cardiovascular fitness, you must perform cardiovascular exercises before resistance training.
On the other hand, if your goal is to lose fat and weight, a current way of thinking in the exercise community is to do a cardio workout after a resistance workout, you increase the metabolism rate of the body. fat (fat burning, as it is usually called). The theory is that by participating in an intensive resistance training, you will deplete muscle glycogen stores during this training. Once the glycogen stores are depleted, the body starts using body fat as fuel. Endurance athletes have known for a long time, but for this to generally happen during endurance training, an athlete must run continuously for about 90 minutes to completely deplete the glycogen-containing muscles. Therefore, I am a bit skeptical about the fact that many people who exercise are exhausted until they lose glycogen during their resistance training, especially in less-than-standard workouts. one o'clock. For more advanced coaches, I think it's possible and therefore, it can be an effective way to reduce body fat, maybe for those people.
I tend to see it that way. If you do a cardio workout on the same day consecutively, one or the other will naturally have a lower intensity level. Again, evaluate your personal fitness goals before deciding to do your cardiovascular exercises before or after resistance training. If you are trying to develop muscle, you want to have the most muscle strength available for your resistance exercises. Therefore, doing cardio before training with weight would be counter-productive for your muscle building goals. If you want to develop resistance or heart health, focus on cardiovascular exercise and do it first. Remember, no matter what you end up doing first, it's more important to warm up properly with a minimum of 5 to 10 minutes of cardiovascular exercise (even if it's just a fast walk on the treadmill) to prepare the body for the training