Appropriate time for cardio

I got a great question from a reader this week about cardio. The question asked what is the optimal time to do cardio, before or after a workout?

This question is very individual and depends on the persons goals. However, there are some guidelines that I hope to outline that will let you decide when the appropriate time to do cardio is.

Similar to the structure and design of your program, when you do cardio depends on your overall goal.

Let's first look at someone who is trying to cut or lose fat. Someone who is looking to cut usually focuses more on cardio and workouts that will increase the heart rate. So, for this person it would be okay to do cardio before a weightlifting session or on off days that you're not lifting. The reason for this is, you want to put most of your energy on the things that are focused on your goal. Your focus here is not to bench 500lbs or make the varsity football team, your focus is cardio. So, you want to do it when you have the most energy, off days or before a weightlifting session.

Now, we look at someone who is trying to gain weight or bulk. This person usually has a focus on gaining size, strength and power. They have increased their caloric intake and is gaining weight. They want to do cardio on a regular basis to maintain their cardiorespiratory fitness, but their goal is muscle gain. The optimal time to do cardio for this person would be on off days you are not lifting. This way, you can put all your energy into the lift on those days, and worry about cardio on off days. Also, if you are doing too much cardio while trying to gain size you are pretty much cancelling the two out. A second option would be after a lifting session, however your energy would be pretty low and your body is going to go to your muscles and glucose to get the energy, thus affecting your results of muscle gaining.

People must have a goal, and they have to stick with it. I can't stress it enough. If your goal is muscle size, stop running 6 days a week and start hitting the weights. If you need to drop 50lbs, then cardio is going to be your best friend.

I'm not going to go into what type of cardio is best, and the other key factor, nutrition. I will save that for a later blog. Both of these will affect your results more then the timing of your cardio.

I hope I was able to distinguish between the two options for cardio. If you have specific questions about how to organize your program, feel free to shoot me an e-mail.

Enjoy the weekend and the nice weather!

Best,

Doug Spurling

Spurling Strength & Speed

dspurling@une.edu