Arise the question about Cardiovascular exercise: one of the questions that I have had to correct more times and that many people still ask me, both on Facebook and on Twitter, is when to do cardiovascular exercise if you want to combine it with weights if it should be before or after themselves.
I had always thought it was a very simple and public domain answer: why you should always do weight training or anaerobic exercise before cardiovascular or aerobic exercise. Still, I have stopped to observe people who attend the same gym as me for some time.
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Coincidentally, on the one hand, there are those who only perform weights and warm up with a few low-level sets and rarely perform cardio because they go with just the right amount of time, and many people who reach the weight zone sweaty after performing their cardiovascular session While those of us who do love after weights are very few, and even less those of us who do HIIT, but this is another issue.
With this post we are going to try to put some order in what refers to the order in which cardiovascular exercise should be performed combining it with weights, although it should be clear that it should always be done after them if you care about the amount of muscle, explaining the reason for this decision.
Cardio Before or After Weight Training
When we talk about doing weights, within fitness, we are referring to exercises that are performed mainly thanks to glycogen and amino acids that are in the muscles where oxygen is not necessary to perform them, hence it is called anaerobic.
They are strength exercises, where the intensity of the execution prevails, this is the key to fitness, in each movement of each repetition a high intensity must be maintained, where the heart rate of the individual who practices it is raised to the maximum even until reaching the muscle failure.
Cardiovascular exercise: Cardio
As a rule, when we talk about cardio in fitness we are referring to a cardiovascular exercise at a low or moderate pace in which fat is used as energy (mainly it is what is sought), and also muscle glycogen, always in the presence of oxygen, hence it is aerobic.
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It should be borne in mind that if cardiovascular exercise is performed at a very high intensity it becomes anaerobic exercise, this occurs when it passes 80% of our maximum heart rate, which is more or less what is known as the anaerobic threshold.
In Fitness, Cardio Always After Weights
When we do weights, fat is not used as fuel, glycogen is always used since quick energy is needed and this cannot come from fat so quickly. While weight training does not burn many calories (not as many as cardio) what is used are calories from glycogen.
Therefore it is important to have full energy stores (glycogen) just before starting to perform the weights, to be able to be at the top of it and thus achieve a weight routine as intense as possible, within our real possibilities.
If we do the cardio before weights, and this is such fat-burning cardio, which is how cardio is usually understood in fitness, we would mainly lose fat but also glycogen, so we would begin to empty the glycogen stores arriving with less energy to the weight session.
And of course, if the cardio is intense it is not advisable either, realize that doing intense cardiovascular exercise makes it anaerobic exercise which uses almost exclusively muscle glycogen so it would waste energy and you could not do the weight routine at 100%.
The Mistake of Doing cardio Before in Fitness
You may think that doing cardiovascular exercise before weights is not a big mistake since all you do is burn some glycogen and the only problem that entails is that the weight session is not going to be so intense or so long.
You may think that doing cardiovascular exercise before weights is not a big mistake since all you do is burn some glycogen and the only problem that entails is that the weight session is not going to be so intense or so long.
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But in addition, when glycogen stores are depleted, one thing that should be avoided in fitness happens, and it is the use of the amino acid chains that make up muscle proteins to get energy, what we all know as muscle catabolism, that is say, lose muscle mass.
When Cardio Should be Done the Other Way Around
Personally, I would never advise doing the cardio before, but if the main objective is only fat loss, regardless of the muscle it can be done the other way around, it is even good to do it before since it serves as a warm-up to do the weights, since surely not we have a good technique of carrying out the exercises and avoid possible injuries.