Which came first, weights or cardio......

I read an article in a magazine (Fitness Mag) that for weight loss, you should do cardio first and lift second. For increasing strength, you should lift first, then do your cardio. Any truth to any of this....? Just curious, as I am trying to lose fat. I lift first for about 20-30 mintues, then do my 30-40 minutes of cardio. Thanks for help!

I'd stick to the way you are doing it.  I think it is the consensus on this forum that to effectively do weights for true effectiveness is to do them first so you aren't as fatigued. 

There are many here who will also say for true fat loss weights is all that's needed - but I like cardio too so I'm one who does both

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Original Post by albob22:

I read an article in a magazine (Fitness Mag) that for weight loss, you should do cardio first and lift second.

 

 OH MY F'ING GOD this is why these magazines are worthless. This is the complete opposite for EVERYONE.

I just had an aneurysm reading that.

Well, if you are a college-age male endurance athlete, it doesn't much matter for your results which order you do things in. But extending that study to the rest of us flies in the face of the other studies that have shown weigths->cardio to be the more efficient order for anyone who isn't a male college-age endurance athlete.

 Not quite worthless, but sort of misguided. Hard to sell magazines if you can't come up with something revolutionizing every now and again, I suppose.

Original Post by melkor:

 Not quite worthless, but sort of misguided. Hard to sell magazines if you can't come up with something revolutionizing every now and again, I suppose.

 But doesn't it seem like we keep hearing the same myths in the magazines that are "misguided" and rarely, if ever, do we hear the good information - by now, wouldn't the truth be "revolutionizing"?

 You'd think so - "The cardio-free diet", "The new rules of lifting for women", "the female body sculpting bible", "The Abs diet", "The new rules of lifting for men" are all books that have come out in the past few years with the good stuff.

 I suppose there's an element of not wanting to annoy the customer base by admitting that they've been misleading you since the very first issue was published?

Did the article speak about the order of cardio and weight lifting in a single workout, or over a broad period of time.

I have always been told that the best strategy for losing weight and getting lean is to first do cardio to burn fat. I am talking about just cardio for long periods of time until the fat comes off. As the weight is lost, you can then incorporate weight lifting to start building lean muscle.  

I have always been told that weight lifting when your body fat is too high will only build muscle under the fat and lead to less weight loss.  

Am I totally wrong here? Have I been misled?? 

ikexango - i believe you've been misled.

Read http://www.t-nation.com/readTopic.do?id=15265 39 to see the explanation - I won't do it justice if I try to sum it up.

I just died a little inside. Thanks amethystgirl for posting that link!

Truth exsists only in the mind of the reader.

Keep in mind that a) Cosgrove wrote that article to provide a rationale for what he's experienced during his nearly two decades of owning a gym and logging every single workout done in the facility, and b) the article doesn't say to not do cardio or that it won't help you reach your goals.

 On the contrary, most of the options listed there are some sort of cardio - there's a decided limit to how much strength training is useful to do in a week.

 The hierarchy is meant as a help to how to best spend your time according to the efficiency of each mode of exercise for fat loss, and to make your own goals vs. time assesment. If you don't have a lot of time to spend each week you'll get more bang for your buck with weight training, but the advantage quickly tapers off- any time you have beyond 3 hours/week is best spent doing cardio of one sort or another. 3 hours/week of strength training is also enough to prevent the muscle loss associated with dieting and dieting+cardio according to the studies Cosgrove references - even in the face of rather extreme conditions.

 But cardio absolutely will not hinder your efforts, the combination of cardio and weight training will give you faster results than weights alone.

The reverse however, appears to not be true - weights without cardio works reasonably well for pure fat loss, cardio without weights costs you relatively significant amounts of muscle mass along with the fat loss.

 But again: for results over the long term efficiency is secondary to consistency.

 Every time. And for whatever acticvity you care to name. So prioritize according to what you can be consistent about as well, when you think about how to apply this to your own life.

I didn't even know this was such a topic of debate...I do my cardio in the morning because I'm an early riser, and I've always subscribed to the whole theory of benefitting from early morning cardio. I do my weights in the evenings. I've almost always split them up into different portions of the day. I've never really considered the effects of doing one or the other first within the same workout.

ive justbeen to the gym and actualy read a poster about this!

i cant remember exactly how but it said weights raise your metabolism for 5-6 hours post workout so by doing weights first you raise your metabolism and burn more fat if you do cardio after!!

so if fat loss is your goal youre going about it the right way :)

I was told by a trainer that it takes 20 minutes of activity before your heart rate gets up to the point that you are burning calories most efficiently. Therefore if you do your weights first, by the time you are done your heart rate is up and ready to go at an optimum level when you start your cardio. If you don't have that weight warm up your 30 minute cardio work-out isn't efficient until you've done 20 minutes- so you really only get 10 minutes of good cardio.

 

So...weights first-get your heart rate going-then cardio at your optimal level! I do it this way and my heart rate is totally going by the time I am done all my weights and I am not that tired. Also, who wants to do weights when you are all sweaty from cardio? Do your weights first....

Well, I'm know expert, but what I do is run first and then lift. It seems to be working for me. I also like to run do circuit training and then go for a few laps in the pool when its all done. It's just all about keeping your heart rate up if you want to lose fat. If you want to gain or keep muscle lifting before or after shouldn't matter is long as your lifting properly. Don't be like the guys that put tons of weight on the machine and have to contort their back in all sorts of weird ways just to lift the weight.