Cardio: Before OR After Muscle Workout

[Ginzburgh]

I hear conflicting information.

I am more comfortable doing my 30 minutes of cardio after my hour-hour and a half muscle work out. My friend said if I do cardio after my work out I am sabotaging my muscle workout because the cardio is "drawing blood and protein away from the muscle".

What's the scoop?

[Ginzburgh]

Nevermind, the physical trainer at my gym told me to keep weight lifting and cardio at least 6 hours apart so I'll just lift 5 days a week and run on Saturday.

[liquidstayce]

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Go with what your trainer said if your getting good results with him already. It all depends on your goals/needs.
Would like to hear what Mop has to say on this subject.

My feelings...
It's more important that you get it done then when you do it. Normally I would say just do what feels good. Some people like to do cardio before weights and some after. I do 10 min warmup before, then bulk of my cardio is usually after - like 20 - 30 min. I also have cardio only days + core workout (abs/back). One day a week I would have a long cardio day at a slower pace.. ie 60-90 min of spinning, running, arch, combo or whatever but keeping my heart rate in the low range as opposed to moderate or high. Well at least that is what I was doing when I was on a roll and prior to my surgery. Excited to get back up to that but it will be sometime and will need to rehab back slowly.

[Ginzburgh]

t's more important that you get it done then when you do it.

I thought the same thing until I read an article in Men's fitness that says to do cardio on off days. That prompted me to start asking a million different people. Apparently, if you do cardio after your work out it's eats the muscle and leaves the fat. So I'll just work out 6 days a week and do cardio on the weekend or something.

[Mop]

t's more important that you get it done then when you do it.

I thought the same thing until I read an article in Men's fitness that says to do cardio on off days. That prompted me to start asking a million different people. Apparently, if you do cardio after your work out it's eats the muscle and leaves the fat. So I'll just work out 6 days a week and do cardio on the weekend or something.

It really depends on your goals and how you are working

If you are in a lower range of HR it wont eat as much muscle. Any cardio 'eats muscle". The easiest most basic way to think about it is if you want Strength goals and muscle goals your str work outs should be 2:1 cardio. The oppisite is true if you want cardiovascular improvment.

Depending on how you work out you could do a variety of things.
for the basic person that doesnt care I suggest they do what they like doing last so that both get done. For people with time and desire ( or athletic training) I suggest cardio in the morning, weights in the afternoon
For those doing marathons, tri's cardio heavy things mabye even socccer power phase, I suggest doing a combo of both ( 30 second jump rope, 1 min of a weight exercise and rest 45 seconds)

It really varies from goal to goal and person to person on what is best.
You can find research out there taht will support any argument out there for the most part.

[Ginzburgh]

Well, I'm 5' 10" and I was 220 when I graduated college. When I came home I wanted to quit smoking but everyone was like, "you'll gain even more weight" so at that point I just decided to change my lifestyle all together.

It took me about 9 months to get down to 165 by eating well and doing 30-45 minutes of cardio 5-6 days a week.

Now that I am down to size I want to build more muscle and tighten up the flap that is associated with rapid weight loss.

I usually do:

Monday: Chest and Tris
Tuesday: Legs
Wednesday: rest
Thursday: Shoulders (and I throw in some forearm movments)
Friday: Back and Bi's (because I need the weekend to recover from deadlifting)

So I figure I'll just throw in 30 minutes of cardio on my offdays, Wednesday and Saturday and I'll rest on Sunday.

And I do abs everyday and about 100 pushups everyday randomly at home (except on chest day).

[liquidstayce]

Sounds like a great program. If I was doing it I would probably also add in one additional day.. even if it was 20 minutes of HIIT cardio after one of your lighter lifting days. As you know from all the Cardio work you have already done that it works similar to weights. Beyond just getting it done... changing it up is a good thing.. that includes times, types, and when you do it but again I will defer to Dana on this one since he does it for a living.

Congrats on all your success! That is an amazing amt of weight to drop. I remember seeing you posting about it before and was impressed with your routine then. I am sure you are going to do just fine with the muscle building. HAWT!!