Faster Fat Loss: Cardio Before Weights or Weights Before Cardio?
Find out the latest news on which works best for fat loss: is it cardio before weights, or weights before cardio?
Ben Greenfield
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Faster Fat Loss: Cardio Before Weights or Weights Before Cardio?
It’s been over a year since I published What’s Best for Fat Loss: Cardio Before Weights or Weights Before Cardio? But recently, a brand new study emerged, which looked into this very question and came to some very interesting conclusions that you should know about if you want to lose fat, but you’re not quite sure how to ideally mix cardiovascular aerobic training and weight lifting.
For many years, cardio has been known to benefit your health and fitness because aerobic exercise increases the density of important cardiovascular components, like tiny blood-carrying capillaries, and also builds your cells’ energy-producing mitochondria, assists with healthy cholesterol levels, increases blood vessel flexibility, helps with fat loss, and more.
On the other hand, resistance training (aka weight training) has also been shown to have a significant impact on cholesterol levels, strength, lean body mass, and fat loss.
So if your goal is fat loss (along with full body fitness), it is clear that it can certainly help to do a combination of both cardio and resistance training—but the question is, which should you do first: weights before cardio, or cardio before weights?
The Research on Cardio Before Weights or Weights Before Cardio
Last year, a study in the Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research looked into whether the order of resistance training and endurance exercise during a workout actually affects fat loss. The Effects of a Combined Resistance Training and Endurance Exercise Program in Inactive College Female Subjects: Does Order Matter? investigated the effects of the ordering of exercise on strength, VO2max, body weight, body fat percentage, and lean body mass over the course of an eight-week exercise program.
During the study, the inactive college females were randomly assigned to perform resistance training either before endurance training or after. Their training program consisted of four workouts per week for eight weeks, with each workout lasting about one hour. The cardio component of the workout consisted of 30 minutes of moderate intensity exercise, at about 70-80% intensity.
For the weights part of the workout, the ladies used a three-way split routine (chest and back, shoulders and arms, and lower body), performing three sets of 8–12 repetitions for 5–6 different exercises. The time between cardio and weights was no more than 5 minutes. So, what were the results?
Overall, the ladies experienced significant improvements in VO2max, strength and lean body mass after the eight weeks of combined endurance and resistance. But there was no effect based on exercise order of weights before cardio or cardio before weights. In addition, the only participants who saw changes in body fat percentage were those who made dietary changes and began to eat better.
So, in other words, what that study showed was that if you’re just getting started in exercise and your goal is fat loss, it ultimately doesn’t matter whether you do strength or cardio first—and no matter which you choose, you simply aren’t going to see results unless you change your diet, too.
Now, let’s look at the latest study: The effect of concurrent training order on hormonal responses and body composition in obese men. In this study, thirty obese young male students were randomly divided into three groups: weights before cardio, cardio before weights, and a control group who didn’t exercise. Training was conducted three times a week for eight weeks, and consisted of running at 70–75% of maximal heart rate for ten minutes, which gradually increased over the course of the study to 80% for 21.5 minutes. The weight training consisted of three sets of eight repetitions at 80% of one repetition maximum using five different exercises: leg extensions, lying leg curl, triceps pushdown, bench press, and lateral pull down. Five minutes recovery duration was set between weights and cardio. The researchers measured serum leptin (a marker of appetite and fat burning regulation), testosterone, cortisol, and body fat.
The results showed that there were no significant differences for testosterone. Cortisol significantly increased with training (no surprises there). There were significant decreases in leptin and testosterone:cortisol ratio after eight weeks training intervention in both experimental groups, both signs of an enhanced fitness response. Both training groups also had a significant decrease in body fat, however, the “weights before cardio” group came off slightly better in every single tested study outcome, including the fat loss.
What the research tells us so far is that, for women seeking fat loss and just getting started in an exercise program, weights before cardio or cardio before weights doesn’t really matter. And in men, it matters slightly in the favor of weights before cardio.
Which Workout Burns the Most Fat?
Weight training requires a great amount of attention paid to proper biomechanics and form…
So how about if you’re an experienced exerciser, and not an “inactive college female subject” or “young obese male student”? In that case, I’d still recommend weight training first. Why?
First, weight training requires a great amount of attention paid to proper biomechanics and form—so if you lift improperly because you’re all tuckered out from that treadmill jaunt prior to your weight training, you’ll have an increased risk of injury.
Second, weight training can actually count as cardio! I discussed this in Does Weight Training Count As Cardio?, in which you found out that if the weight training is of adequate intensity, and is performed in a controlled way that places stress on the muscles (e.g., your heart rate goes up and your muscles are burning), then you get a very similar cardiovascular response and cardiovascular benefit to cardio training.
Finally, if you have time to spare, you can also do cardio. As I describe in Fat Loss: Cardio vs. Weights?, a combination of cardio and weights is ideal for fat loss because you receive the calorie burning benefits of cardio combined with the metabolic and lean muscle-boosting benefits of weight training.
Of course, one important consideration here is the option of mixing strength and cardio together throughout the entire workout, which is what I personally do for most of my workouts. If you can still maintain good form during your weight training exercises, this option involves doing brief bursts of cardio in between each weight training set, making for a very effective time-saving and metabolism-boosting strategy. This is ultimately an extremely effective and prove fat loss method, and I talk about this approach in What Is the Best Workout for Fat Loss?
If you have more questions or comments about cardio before weights or weights before cardio, then head over to Facebook.com/GetFitGuy and join the conversation there.
Image courtesy of Shutterstock.
About the Author
Ben Greenfield received bachelor’s and master’s degrees from University of Idaho in sports science and exercise physiology; personal training and strength and conditioning certifications from the National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA); a sports nutrition certification from the International Society of Sports Nutrition (ISSN), an advanced bicycle fitting certification from Serotta. He has over 11 years’ experience in coaching professional, collegiate, and recreational athletes from all sports, and as helped hundreds of clients achieve weight loss and fitness success.