If I want to burn fat and be healthier and stronger, should I do cardio then strength train or vice versa?

Question

Today a trainer at the gym told me that I have to strength train before doing my cardio. He said if I reversed it, I'd be destroying my muscles. Other trainers have never told me that it's bad to do cardio then strength training and I read somewhere that if you want to improve your cardio health and lose weight that you should cardio then strength train and if you want to build muscle you should flip that routine. I want to lose some fat (I'm 5'8" and 140 lbs), strengthen my muscles (core in particular), and just be healthier overall. When I've worked out in the past, I've ended up lowering my body fat percentage and gaining weight because I was building muscle. Does what this trainer said make any sense? Have I been doing it all wrong?

Answer 1

For best effect, do your cardio in the morning and lift later in the day. If you do everything together, then intervals with weights interspersed would be ideal.


There is no site specific way of losing fat... the old myth about working your abs to burn belly fat isn't true. To get rid of love handles, you need to lose overall fat. That happens with exercise and watching your diet. More on that below.

The most effective way to lose fat is aerobic exercise in the "moderate" fat-burning range, ideally first thing in the morning before you eat. When you wake your body is ready to burn fat and your levels of growth hormone are highest at that time. Later in the day it can take up to 30 minutes just to put your body into a fat-burning mode.

Another overlooked way to burn fat is by lifting weights. Skeletal muscle has very high caloric needs... almost twice that of adipose (fat) tissue. Put on a little muscle and you will burn calories all day even at rest. Be aware that skeletal muscle weighs more, so with this approach you may see your weight increasing while your body fat is melting away. Not realizing this often stresses folks who think they should be losing weight as a measure of fitness. Forget the scale, look in the mirror and you will be happy.

For diet, keep a diary for a couple of weeks counting calories, grams of protein, and grams of fat intake. It is easy with online sources of nutritional information (type the name of the food and calories into the Google search engine) and packaging labels. That will let you quickly figure out where the fat is coming from in your diet.

Fat gives you 9 calories per gram. So take the number of grams of fat, multiply by 9, then calculate what percentage the fat calories are of your total daily calories. Restricting the calories from fat to about 20% of your total intake is ideal for a maintenance diet... that isn't overly restrictive. Of note, you need some fat in your diet. For instance, the body uses fat to produce hormones. Once you have a picture of how to modify your diet, you can drop the diary and just go back to it occasionally if you are wanting to tweek things further.

There is a subset of questions that goes further and asks about "How to get a six-pack?" The answer is the same. Six-packs are 20% abdominal exercise and 80% diet. There is one caveat... abdominal muscles will form in the position that you exercise them, so be certain to pull them tightly toward your spine while doing crunches, etc. Also, during most lifting, the "core is active" which means that you should be stabilizing with contracted abs then too. Fail to do this and the abs will form, but bulging outward and the result is not attractive.

If you are trying to build muscle as a way to lose fat, then you may need to increase total calories and specifically your protein intake. I target about 0.8 g of protein per pound of body weight each day when actively building. That is far more protein than most people need in their diets.

Hope this is helpful to someone.

Aloha

Answer 2

Try the following : do 200 minutes of cardio a week. Remember fat does not turn into muscle, so you need to lose your fat while putting on muscle. The 45 minute thing is not true, but don't over 60 minutes at a time.

Do 5-10 minutes of cardio to warm up, then do your weight training. Do 30 to 60 minutes more of cardio, then go home.

The best time to eat is just after your workout within an hour when your metabolism is raging. For your muscles, incorporate some isolated soy protein or whey protein. Whey is more potent but the soy tastes better!

Don't look at your scale as the be all and end all, but get a measuring tape to check your progress, and that will show more tangible results.

Read fitness magazines, like Shape and Fitness for motivation and tips.

Good luck and stick at it.

Answer 3

I had twin girls 8 months ago and I am 11 pounds less than I was the day I got pregnant. My advice is a combo of both but with more emphasis on the strength train. I especially have found Pilates, simple dvd's too not classes or equipment, which I think made the biggest difference and def. helped break that plateau, ya know the one I'm talking about. I gained 73 pounds during my pregnancy, I dieted and walked, then eventually started doing more cardio workouts, and the weight came off, slowly. When I added the weights the weight came off a little quicker, when I did more strength training, not heavy though, light weights with lots of reps rather than higher weight and fewer reps, the weight flew off. Then I only had 15 pounds to lose, and it wouldn't budge. I started doing pilates dvd's as a new cardio/stretch, but it was so diff. the moves might be hard or awkward, but that went away by my 5th time. This has made the biggest difference and is what I credit for the last 15 i had to lose and the 11 I lost on top of that!! The best thing is with pilates and light strength training you see and feel the difference way sooner than when you focus on cardio. Losing ten pounds the cardio way would let me drop 1 pant size, or at least make my pants very loose, but the last ten pounds I went down 2!! And they were loose too!! Good Luck I know how hard it can be to stay motivated!!

Answer 4

Cardio then strength train because with cardio you increase your metabolism and get your muscles warmed up then you strength train so you are better able to handle the load also you continue to burn fat during the strength training part faster because your body is already in fat burn mode.

Answer 5

Burning body fat, Targeting body fat belly fat all are just buzz words to get you to buy some new gismo that does not work so they get your money cardio same thing to lose weight eat less move more. once you lose weight that will be a lifestyle from now on you can do some simple exercises to firm up the skin. Their is no magic it is a mindset. Good luck

Answer 6

I really don't think it makes a difference, but doing cardio before strength training will help warm up your muscles which is always a good thing to do.

Answer 7

I've understood that it's better to do cardio first, because it helps you prepare your body for the weight training afterwards and there will be less of a risk that you'll hurt yourself.

Answer 8

some trainers say that is better to do cardio one day and
strength train the next day. Go figures.

Answer 9

Do it the way you want it will turn out the same

Answer 10

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