dimanche 25 août 2013

Is It Better To Do Cardio Before Or After Resistance Training?

By Howe Russ


When you are trying to build lean muscle in the gym, should you do cardio before or after weights for maximum results? This is a question often asked and rarely answered with anything more than personal opinion. If you are trying to figure out how to lose weight or build muscle, you're about to discover the facts on this topic.

For many years, this was a subject which was usually answered with personal opinion. There was no real proof whether it was more effective to perform cardiovascular activity before or after a workout, so most people would simply do what worked for their own body and pass on their findings to others.

Now science has provided the answers people were previously unable to get. We'll be looking at the findings of two studies in particular and analyzing why performing cardiovascular activity before a resistance workout was recently proven to be far more effective. []

That's not to say you can't get results the other way too, obviously. But recent studies at the James Maddison University found that case studies doing their resistance workout first were unable to keep up with case studies who were getting through their aerobic exercise first. When it came to building lean muscle, the 'weights first' group found that their progress was substantially blunted in comparison.

For those who are training for fat loss, the findings were also highly in favor of doing aerobic exercise prior to any barbell work. The Journal Of Strength And Conditioning discovered that weight loss, specifically fat loss, was increased greatly in individuals who did their aerobic exercise first.

Of course, it is highly important to remember that if you are regularly training with weights and getting a good deal of cardiovascular activity into your life then you will still see positive results no matter which order you perform them in....

Two enzymes released during exercise will play an important factor here:

* AMPK

* mTOR

You may have heard these two enzymes discussed in fitness magazines and bodybuilding gyms in the past. If you are performing aerobic activity the body increases the release of the AMPK enzyme to help your muscles adjust to endurance activity, while signals the beginning of the muscle recovery process at the end of a workout. For about an hour after you hit the weights, you'll have a surge of mTOR in your body and this is perfect for consuming post-workout nutrition. After six hours, the spike in mTOR wears off and your body returns to normal. []

If you finish your weight training and then sit on a bike for 45 minutes you have not only wasted the bulk of your golden nutrition window, you have also made a fatal mistake. When the body releases AMPK, i.e. during cardiovascular exercise, this hormone doesn't co-exist with mTOR and actually kills it off.

So, should you do cardio before or after weights? Whether you want to learn how to lose weight or how to pack on lean muscle, recent science is heavily on the side of performing your aerobic activity before you pick up a dumbbell.




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