Should I Do Cardio Before or After Weights?
Jake Newby
| 4 min read
Key Takeaways
- If your goals are to get stronger, build muscle, practice good form and recover well, lifting weights before doing cardio to end your workout should be the focus.
- If you’re training for a 5K, trying to improve endurance or have a heart-health goal that matters most to you, then it’s reasonable to prioritize cardio.
- Those with broader fitness goals should start with what they care about most.
A complete workout incorporates both strength training and cardiovascular activity. If you like to go to the gym for an hour or so and do a blend of both, you may have wondered if it is most optimal to hit the treadmill, stair stepper or elliptical before or after you lift weights.
Factors like heart rate, endurance levels during your workout and recovery all play a role. But really, whether you do cardio before or after weights depends on your fitness goals. Let’s see what the science says and determine how you should structure workouts moving forward.
How do cardio and strength training affect the body?
First, you should understand how these two types of physical activity work the body.
Cardio is any rhythmic, sustained physical activity that elevates your heart rate and often leaves you breathing heavier. Being physically active in this way – with consistency over time – will improve your endurance and the health of your lungs, heart and circulatory system, according to the National Institute on Aging. If you are someone training for a physical activity that requires a lot of stamina – such as long-distance running, soccer, wrestling and combat sports – regular cardio will be a major part of your fitness routine.
Strength training features short bursts of energy that activate and push the muscles, improving both strength and endurance by forcing muscles to contract against resistance in the form of weights and increased repetitions with those weights. Lifting regularly shouldn’t be viewed as a vanity project – it’s a functional way to preserve and enhance muscle mass at any age. Per the Mayo Clinic, it also helps you:
- Develop strong bones
- Enhance your quality of life
- Manage chronic conditions
- Manage your weight
- Sharpen your thinking skills
The case for lifting weights first: Are you trying to build strength or stamina?
If your goals are to get stronger, build muscle, practice good form and recover well, lifting weights before doing cardio to end your workout should be the focus, according to the Cleveland Clinic, which states that beginning a lifting session with fresh muscles is key to maximizing strength gains. This is because the best strength-training results usually come from progressive overload, which occurs when you gradually ask your muscles to do more over the course of a lift.
If you burn through your legs on the stair stepper and then try to squat and become fatigued, for example, you may not have the most optimal squatting session. This can also be a matter of safety, as being too fatigued to lift heavy weights or demonstrate good form could result in an injury.
Cardio – especially if it’s long, hard or high-impact like running or intervals – can tire your muscles and nervous system before you ever touch a barbell. That may not sound like a big deal on the surface, but research on concurrent training – which occurs when resistance and endurance work in unison – has found that endurance exercise can interfere with strength and power development, particularly when the cardio is more intense or more frequent.
This doesn’t mean you should rule out a 5- or 10-minute warm-up walk, row or bike ride. An easy warm-up can help prepare your body by increasing blood flow and making muscles and connective tissue more pliable. However, there’s a difference between warming up and doing a full cardio workout before taxing your muscles.
Cardio’s case: Should you run before you lift?
There are clear cases where opening with a cardio session makes more sense. If you’re training for a 5K, trying to improve endurance or have a heart-health goal that matters most to you, then it’s reasonable to put cardio first so you can do it with more energy and focus. Exercise order should reflect your priority.
If your fitness goals are broader – let’s say you want to be healthier, stronger and fitter overall – then it makes sense to start with what you care most about. If you’re trying to build strength, lift first. If you’re focused on building stamina, do cardio first. If neither is a top priority, whichever order helps you stay consistent is probably the right one.
The most ideal setup for performance and recovery may be to separate cardio and weights entirely, either on different days or at least several hours apart, but we don’t all have the dedicated free time to consistently make that happen If you’re squeezing both into one gym session like many of us, do weights before cardio unless endurance is your main goal, then do cardio first.
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