You arrive at the gym and find yourself at a familiar crossroads: Turn this way for the weight room, or turn that way for the cardio deck. You plan to do both—but what should you do first? Does it even matter?
Spoiler alert: not really. Generally, that is.
“The simple answer is that it probably doesn’t matter,” says Luke Carlson, founder and CEO of . discover strength. “There may be some mechanistic rationale for why it should matter. But, in studies, we never see it mattering.”
“It’s mostly a matter of preference,” says Alex Rothstein, EdD, MS, CSCSExercise physiologist and coordinator of the exercise science program at the New York Institute of Technology. “There’s such minimal difference that I wouldn’t argue that one is better versus the other.”
That said, both Carlson and Rothstein point out that there are certain factors that may influence you one way or the other depending on your goals, behavioral tendencies, and more. Here’s what you need to know.
Start with what matters most to you
All things being equal, it doesn’t matter whether you do cardio before or after lifting weights. But if, for whatever reason, one is more important to you than the other – for example, if your cardio is to prepare for a race, or if your lifting sessions involve attempting to set a personal record – then you should go with that one. “Start with the thing you want to get better at,” says Rothstein.
“If you’re training for a half marathon, you’ll want to do cardio before increasing strength,” says Carlson. “This is because, if you do strength first and then move to cardio, you’ll be exhausted from strength and you won’t be able to perform a running workout at the same level. You’re going to compromise your ability to hit speed on your tempo runs, your interval sessions, or whatever your running workout is that day.”
Similarly, if you’re on a mission to achieve a specific strength benchmark, you should start your workout in the weight room, says Carlson. “If you’re making it a priority, you’ll want to do strength training workouts first and then cardio.” (Note that we said Strengthno more muscle. This is because exhausting yourself on cardio may impact your ability to perform larger numbers, but it won’t hurt your muscle-building goals. More details on that below.)
Avoid stacking strength and cardio if possible
Although on a physical level it may not matter much whether you do cardio before or after lifting weights, Carlson and Rothstein both agree that ideally you should do these workouts in separate sessions, mostly because of the risk of injury that increases with fatigue.
“Fatigue only makes the appearance worse,” says Rothstein. “Your form will never improve because you are more tired.”
Even if it seems like your lifting and cardio workouts are targeting completely different parts of your body — for example, running followed by a shoulder workout — either type of exercise puts a burden on the body’s systems as a whole, not to mention your mental focus.
“Just because muscles weren’t recruited in your overhead press doesn’t mean that your core and your glutes and your quads weren’t firing, because you still need to brace your lower half, stabilize your core, and transfer energy from the ground,” says Rothstein. “And even though you’re using a specific local area, it doesn’t mean that the nervous system as a whole isn’t being recruited.”
