To achieve the ideal body, there must be a balance of the correct amount lifting and cardio.

There are many questions regarding this topic, but the most common one is whether it’s better to do cardio before or after lifting.

Here are the facts from a common sense perspective: whatever task is more important to you, do it first. This means that if you want to specifically improve your running ability, biking ability, rowing ability or anything like that, do it first because that is the time that you have the maximum amount of energy to exert on that task. The same logic can be applied to this dilemma. If you feel as though your cardio needs work, then I speak from my own personal experience when I say that it doesn’t hurt to do cardio before lifting.

            

Based on my experience, I felt as though I got a lot more toned from doing cardio before lifting. What I used to do was intense cardio exercise such as jump rope, interval sprinting, biking or rowing anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes, I would then lift whatever muscle group I planned to hit that day. I can’t say that I gained a tremendous amount of muscle from doing this, but it did help me get stronger and more defined.

            

On the other hand, research has shown that there are a lot of benefits to doing cardio after lifting. One benefit that has been shown is that when you do cardio after lifting, you receive the same cardio benefits of having a healthy heart, while actually burning an increased amount of fat. The same can’t be said, however, about doing cardio before you lift. Doing cardio before lifting drains your energy and in a way limits your ability to make muscular gains. I will say that based on my experience, it is much harder to lift when you are tired from having a good cardio workout, but that was the exact reason that I did it.

            

What I do today is save the cardio for after the workout. I feel a lot less drained from not having to work twice as hard to lift the same amount of weight as I would be able to do if I were fresh. While this whole topic is very arguable based upon the stipulations, I would argue that in general lifting should be the first thing that you do. You receive all of the same benefits, while maintaining the ability to increase the amount of weight that you lift. 

Now that you have read this article, act upon it. And when that tool asks you “do you even lift?” you can reply with “yeah bro, and I do cardio after I lift so it doesn’t mess with my gains.”