Weights Before Cardio: Stop Working Against Yourself

Cardio Exercises

Just because you’re working hard, doesn’t mean that you’re working

smart. I see it every day. People come into the gym and hop on a

treadmill for 30-60 minutes and then head over to the weights to do their

resistance training. Even though my initial reaction is to walk up and

smack them in the back of the head, the reality in the matter is… How

would they know any better? Which is why I thought this article was so

appropriate. After all, for years I’ve heard people say that if you do your

cardio first, you’ll burn more fat during your weight training. Making your

weight training an extension of your cardio.

Let’s look at why this isn’t true and see if we can save some people a

little wasted effort. We’ll start out by looking at how your body uses the

food you consume for fuel. You may have heard that you will burn more

fat if you do your cardio on an empty stomach. The truth is that you will

actually burn more fat during cardio if you have depleted your body of

carbohydrates. You can eat

proteins and dietary fats without affecting the way your body burns fat. In

other words, you could eat some egg whites, chicken breast, or even a

protein shake without any carbs in it, and still burn the same amount of

fat during your cardio session as you would if you did it on an empty

stomach. But if you ate an apple or a piece of bread before your cardio,

you wouldn’t.

When you eat carbohydrates, your body stores them as

glycogen in your liver and waits for your body to use them as fuel. When

performing an aerobic activity, like walking or running on a treadmill,

your body has the option of using glycogen stores or fat stores. The

problem is that your body won’t use any fat stores until your glycogen

stores are used up. On the other hand, during anaerobic exercise, like

weight lifting, your body can only use glycogen as fuel.

So here’s how

it plays out. Studies have shown that it can take as much as 29 minutes

of cardio to burn your glycogen stores. So if you start your workout off

with 30 minutes of cardio, not only did you burn fat for a whopping one

minute, but you also depleted your body of the fuel it needs (glycogen)

to do your resistance training. Now, in order to manufacture glucose

(glycogen) during your weight training session, your body may actually

break down muscle tissue to use certain amino acids as your fuel. You

could end up losing muscle instead of gaining.

To make things

simple, if you do your weight training first, you can use your glycogen

stores as fuel. Then, when you move over to your cardio, you’re right

where you want to be… with depleted glycogen stores, giving your body

the opportunity to burn fat as a fuel source.

To learn more on how to

use these facts for your “cardio only” days, read “Use Nutrition to Boost

Your Cardio” here: [http://www.shapeyou.com/weights_first.html]

You may reprint or publish this article freely as long as you include a

visible, active link to http://www.shapeyou.com

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