A question has been asked for ages, which should be done cardio or weight lifting? There are many theories on this same topic. Some think about their fitness while others may look for body strengthening. It comes down to the fact what the personal fitness goals are of the person.
What is Your Goal?
It is good to start with your goals when it comes to deciding what you want to do. Do you want to lose weight or gain muscle weight? Or want to improve your strength or build big muscles. It is often said that cardio is very important for losing weight but both cardio and weight lifting are important. So, what is better to do- cardio before or after weight exercises to lose weight.
What Should You Prefer to Lose Weight?
Cardio and weight training are the basic foundation of strengthening and losing body weight programs. Cardio exercises and strength training have their own merits. If you are working regularly, it is your preference to whether hit cardio exercises or do weight training. You can easily combine both exercises in a single frame. It all comes down to goals how people split their workout sessions between strength and cardio to fit their goals.
When it comes to losing weight, it doesn’t matter whether you do cardio or weight first. Most people focus on doing more cardio exercises when they are trying to burn fat as it burns calories fast.
Cardio is well effective at burning calories. If you lift weight for some time and do any cardio activity for the same amount of time, cardio exercises will burn more calories. Having such an advantage, you may want to start your workout with cardio exercises to prepare your heart for the zone needed for burning fat, after doing cardio you can shift to weight lifting exercises that help to burn calories.
Cardiovascular exercises at a low intensity will help you lose weight but it needs to be sustained for a longer period. Doing weight first may also be helpful to lose fat when combined with cardio exercises.
Strength conquers cardio when it comes to general importance. Doing strength training up to three days a week is far better to do first for weight loss. Strength training helps to maintain lean body mass that will help to burn more calories for a long time. When you do heavy weight training for a short interval of time, they produce excess post-exercise oxygen consumption (EPOC) which results in burning calories after workout.
If you want to lose weight, it is also important for you to increase your non-exercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT). Any physical activity that you prefer to do outside gyms. For Example, taking more walks, taking stairs instead of elevators will increase your calorie burn.
With all the workout routine you need to come up with a nutritional plan that gets you all the essential nutrients and vitamins that you need to work for your basics and build your tissues.