Aerobic and Strength training order

Assume you want to develop both strength and aerobic capacity and want to do both sorts of exercise.

Options:

Focus each day’s exercise on one or the other but never both in the same session.

Do aerobic focus first followed by your strength work out.

Do your strength training first followed by your aerobic focus work out.

Alternate within the work out circuit style, a few minutes of intervals, a pair of weight lifting sets, a few more minutes of intervals, a few different weight sets, etc.

Which do you believe is better and why? Data supporting your belief is appreciated if available.

I’ll throw this out to get it started. They found that endurance training first followed by strength training resulted in more improvement in the 4 km time trial and aerobic capacity than the opposite order, circuit training, or each of the training programmes performed separately. But they did not report strength gains between the groups.

I use clubbells, works for both.

I have always preferred to keep the two separate.

Generally, I do strength training in the morning and aerobic in the afternoon.

It does depend on your goals, just general fitness without the need to train extremes, you can combine them in one session.

Reporting your preferences is nice but I am more interested in the why and what you base that on. If anything. The question was not intended as a poll.

Sorry about that. I feel that by combining both, it’s more difficult to work each system to the fullest. You either have to cut both short to fit into your schedule or the workout is so long you can’t maintain full intensity.

My weight training is about 1.5-1.75 hours every day and my rides average the same. Riding right after lifting forces me to go slower and trying to lift after a ride is pretty near impossible.

In wrestling we alternated. One day was weights next was running and sprints. Personally, I always wanted to be able to combine the two (like a run and weightlifting session in one) but never had much success with it because of being worn out.

What is your goal? There are a few studies (http://forums.johnstonefitness.com/showthread.php?t=45171) out there, but “better” doesn’t really work without more info. Your goal might be fat burning, overall energy use, muscular fitness, etc.

It also depends on where you are at already – are you trying to achieve a physical peak, or just get in decent shape? And how do you value the gains? Is taking 20 seconds off your mile worth moving your max up 25lbs?

It’s clear that there isn’t an enormous difference between the order of cardio and strength training. If your time is unlimited, and your goal is to simply become as fit as possible, then you should do different workouts 12 hours apart, which gives you the most recovery time when going from strength to cardio, etc.

Just as a data point, a regular Jazzercise class consists of 35 minutes of cardio followed by 25 of strength training.

For those of you who do strength training before or separately from cardio, how do you warm up your muscles? I find I’m always a bit stiff at the beginning of class, but by the time we get to the strength training part I’m warm and loose and I feel like I get more out of it. But I have been wanting to add some more weight training in the evenings at home, but didn’t know how to do it without risking injury.

Well it does beg the question of what is “general fitness” - who is more “fit”? The Ironman triathlete or the sprinter or the weightlifter? But let us assume that someone wants some balance of aerobic capacity, anaerobic capacity, and strength … they want it all. Maybe even flexibility too. Let’s call that “decent shape” but define that as increased muscle mass and strength while achieving a moderately low body fat percentage and good aerobic and anaerobic capacity. But I will take answers that fit for different goals. And that time is not only not unlimited but that few even have the 3 to 3.5 hours a day that Runner Pat has: 45 minutes to an hour most days. Maybe 2 -3 hours once or twice a week.

For my own purposes I generally do either one or the other or like Lanzy a weights work out with lighter weight in high volume and high intensity such that it functions as HIIT if not actually in a Tabata format. But then again weights training for me is generally with aerobic between sets instead of resting. But that is immaterial to the question: I am not asking for guidance but for help understanding the issues involved.

I ask because I hear a wide variety of opinions out there and cannot find a clear consensus in my brief literature search.

The prevailing thought seems to be that the aerobic (cardio, met-con, whatever) should come first when they are combined as the quality of that work out is more impaired by the weight work out than the quality of the weight work out is impaired by aerobics. There are also those however who seem to believe that the depletion of glycogen during the cardio portion will impede the strength work out significantly and some studies that show doing both interferes with strength gains. My guess is that for the typical individual it does not matter much so long as both end up getting done, but that link gave a good synthesis of the kinds of things I was reading, so thank you ivn1188