You arrive at the gym and find yourself at a familiar crossroads: Turn this way for the weight room, or that way for the cardio deck. You planned to do both—but which should you do first? Does it even matter?
Spoiler alert: Not really. Generally speaking, that is.
“The simple answer is it probably doesn’t matter,” says Luke Carlson, founder and CEO of Discover Strength. “There might be some mechanistic rationale for why it should matter. But, in the studies, we just don’t ever see it matter.”
“It’s mostly a matter of preference,” says Alex Rothstein, EdD, MS, CSCS, exercise physiologist and coordinator of the Exercise Science program at New York Institute of Technology. “There’s such a minimal difference that I wouldn’t argue one versus the other is better.”
That said, both Carlson and Rothstein point out that there are a few factors that might sway you one way or another, depending on your goals, behavioral tendencies, and more. Here’s what you need to know.
Start with what matters to you most
All things being equal, it makes no difference whether you do cardio before or after weight lifting. But if, for whatever reason, one is more important to you than the other—say, if your cardio is in preparation for a race, or if your lifting session includes an attempt at a personal record—then that’s what you should lead with. “Start with the thing you want to get better at,” says Rothstein.
“If you’re training for a half marathon, you want to do the cardio before you do the strength,” says Carlson. “The reason for that is, if you do the strength first and then you move into the cardio, you’re going to be fatigued from the strength and you’re not going to be able to perform that running workout at the same level. You’re going to compromise your ability to hit the paces on your tempo run, your interval session, or whatever your running workout is that day.”
Similarly, if you’re on a mission to hit a specific strength benchmark, then you should kick your workout off in the weight room, says Carlson. “If that’s what you’re prioritizing, you’ll want to do the strength training workout first and then do the cardio afterwards.” (Notice that we said strengthand not muscle. That’s because, while tiring yourself out on cardio may impact your ability to put up bigger numbers, it won’t sabotage your muscle-building goals. More on that below.)
Avoid stacking strength and cardio if possible
While it may not matter much on a physiological level whether you do cardio before or after weight lifting lifting, Carlson and Rothstein both agree that ideally you should do these workouts in separate sessions, mostly due to the risk of injury that increases with fatigue.
“Fatigue only makes form worse,” says Rothstein. “You’re never going to have better form, because you’re more fatigued.”
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