Is it better to do aerobic before strength training or after training?

There is no one-size-fits-all answer. How you choose depends entirely on your training goals, physical condition, and exercise priorities.

Oh, by the way, let’s clarify the concept first so that everyone won’t talk about it at the same time. What we ordinary fitness ers call "formal aerobic" refers to steady-state exercise that lasts for more than 10 minutes and keeps the heart rate at 60%-70% of the maximum heart rate, or high-intensity intervals of more than 5 minutes. Jumping jacks, high leg raises, and joint activation during warm-up do not count. Don't lift the bar.

Let me first tell you about the students I taught last year. Programmer Xiao Zhou 175 is 78 kilograms tall and has a body fat of 22%. His demands are very clear: to increase the size of his chest muscles and arms, and at the same time reduce the belly fat caused by sitting down. He first heard on the Internet that "burn fat first and then build muscle". Every time he went to the gym, he ran for 40 minutes. He was sweating profusely and his legs were weak before he started to lift weights. He couldn't even press 40 kilograms on the bench. After two months of training, his arm length did not increase by half a millimeter, and he only lost 1% of his body fat. He was still so tired every day that he felt sleepy at work. Later, I adjusted the order for him. He first did 40 minutes of strength training. He could bench press 50 kilograms for a set, and finally he walked at an incline for 20 minutes. After a month and a half, his arms increased by 1.5 centimeters, his body fat dropped to 19%, and his belly visibly shrunk.

If your core goal at this stage is to maximize muscle gain and increase strength and weight, then really don’t put long-term aerobic exercise first. This is not empiricism, but is supported by experimental data: Steady-state aerobic exercise for more than 20 minutes will first consume the muscle glycogen stored in the muscles. When glycogen is insufficient, your muscle recruitment ability will decrease by 15%-20% during strength training. You can only do 5 weights when you could do 8 reps. The muscles will not get enough stimulation, and the efficiency of muscle growth will naturally be greatly reduced. I was chatting with a powerlifting coach of a provincial team before. The rule in his team is that there is absolutely no aerobic activity on strength training days. All aerobic training should be done on rest days, that is, slowly riding a bicycle for half an hour or taking a walk, for fear of affecting the state of weight-pressing.

Speaking of this, some people must ask, so I am mainly focused on losing fat. I have enough muscle mass and don’t want to gain any more. Do I have to put aerobics at the back? Not entirely. Indeed, some studies have shown that after strength training, most of the glycogen reserves have been consumed. At this time, the proportion of aerobic fat energy supply will be about 30% higher than before training. However, another school of research believes that as long as the total consumption of a day is greater than the intake, the time of aerobic training and whether it is separated from strength training will have minimal impact on the final fat loss effect. I have a self-media friend who runs 5 kilometers on an empty stomach every morning and then does strength training for an hour in the evening. In three months, his body fat has dropped from 24% to 16%, and he has not lost much muscle. He is used to running in the morning. If you insist on asking him to move aerobic to strength, he will feel uncomfortable and unable to persevere.

The rule is that the dead are alive, so there is really no need to stick to the standard order. For example, if you are tired after a long day at work and go to the gym, your whole body feels heavy and you can't think straight. Riding a bicycle for 10 minutes to wake you up will be better than carrying heavy weights and injuring yourself. For example, for friends with bad knees, their legs will become weak after strength training. If they go climbing or running again, they will easily injure their knees due to incorrect exertion of force. It is better to put aerobics before strength and do it when they are in the best physical condition, which is safer. If you are a runner or cycling enthusiast, and the purpose of strength training is to improve sports performance and avoid injuries, then running a few kilometers to warm up before training your core and lower limbs is completely correct logic. You don’t need to listen to what others say, “doing aerobic exercises first is a waste of time.”

Oh, by the way, don’t believe in the anxiety that “you will lose muscle if you do aerobics before training.” If you really want to lose muscle, you have to hit several pitfalls at the same time: the aerobic duration exceeds 40 minutes, the intensity reaches more than 80% of the maximum heart rate, and the protein intake of the day is less than 1.6g per kilogram of body weight. It is so easy for ordinary people to step on all the traps. Don’t scare yourself.

Don’t get hung up on such minutiae for too long. When it comes to fitness, your body’s feelings will always be more reliable than the standard answers online. Try aerobic before training for two weeks, and then try aerobic after training for two weeks. Whichever method makes you comfortable, makes rapid progress, and persists, choose whichever method is better than anything else.