Treatment Table Podcast

Mini Consult | Should You Do Cardio After Weights? The Truth About Combining Strength & Cardio

• Mathew Ah Chow • Season 1 • Episode 23

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0:00 | 11:07

Should you do cardio after lifting weights, or are you undoing all your hard work?

It's one of the most common questions in the gym—and one of the biggest fitness myths that continues to circulate.

In this Mini Consult, Physiotherapist Mathew Ah Chow explains why the answer isn't as simple as "always separate them". Whether you're training for a marathon, chasing a PB in Hyrox, building strength, or simply trying to stay healthy, the key is understanding how to match your training to your goal.

You'll also learn how athletes should approach strength training before competition, why complete rest isn't always the best strategy, and how to maximise results without increasing your injury risk.

In this episode, you'll learn:

  •  Why the old "never mix cardio and weights" advice came from bodybuilding. 
  •  Whether cardio after weights reduces muscle growth. 
  •  The best order for strength and cardio depends on your goals. 
  •  How Hyrox athletes successfully combine strength and endurance. 
  •  Programming tips for runners versus strength athletes. 
  •  How everyday people should structure gym sessions for maximum results. 
  •  Should you lift weights on game day? 
  •  How to prepare your body in the days leading up to competition. 

Key takeaway:

Don't organise your training around myths. Organise it around your goal. Focus your best energy on the quality that matters most to you, then use the rest of your session to build everything else.

If you've ever wondered whether you're training the "right" way, this episode will help you train smarter, not just harder. 

🎧 Episode Resources & Links

See you next week on the Treatment Table!

SPEAKER_00

Welcome to the Treatment Table Podcast. This is your mini consult where I get to take one question or one topic and really just break it down into one easy takeaway. I'm your host, Dr. Physiotherapy, Matthew Archow. Let's get into today's mini consult. Hey Renal, have you got the question for this week?

SPEAKER_01

I do. It comes from George and he says, I've always wondered, I normally separate strength sessions from cardio. Is it bad to combine them? Say, do 30 minutes of cardio after a weight sesh? And I guess we could also come at it from a sports perspective. Do I strength train the day of a game or should I stay rested?

SPEAKER_00

Good question. So I did my personal training course back when I was 18. It's a long time ago. 2006, I think it was. Um and I remember this question coming up, and one of the trainers or educators then was a bodybuilder. And a lot of personal training, gym-based, has come from bodybuilding. And that's where the a lot of gym moments has come from. And one of the things I still remember is them being because they were trying to build as much muscle and get as big as they can, they were very specific about not doing weights and cardio at the same time. Because they didn't want to reduce the benefits of building all that big muscle and taking it away by reducing. They were trying to eat as much as they can to build, and cardio would result in, if specifically if it's high intensity, potentially limiting them getting as big as they can. Now, unfortunately, a lot of that has carried through, and the difference is unless you're trying to be a bodybuilder, that's not necessarily true. And so I'll break down a little bit in terms of when to combine it, when to do strength, how to use both, and also how to kind of make sure that you're not getting injured and how to relate that specifically to your goals. Okay, so what I want you to think about is is your goal to build more muscle to get stronger, or is your goal to run faster or run longer? So someone that is training for a marathon, the way that I program their and structure their program during the week or in each session is gonna be specific to that goal. So someone that wants to get stronger, maybe a power lifter or someone that does martial arts and wants to be able to produce as much power as quickly as possible, that program is gonna be different. And so they might still do cardio and weights on the same day, but the focus of where we put all that energy is really, really important. We want to save as much of our energy for what we want to invest in. And so it's invested into those exercises that are gonna get us closer to our goal. And then you might still finish off if you have a bit of energy left with some cardio. Now that's very different to runners. So with a lot of the runners that I'm seeing in terms of half marathon, marathon, ultra marathon runners, obviously our focus isn't to get really big, to build muscles, to be a bodybuilder. That's not gonna be helpful for us running long distance, but we still want the strength. So what I tend to do is give them specific exercises to warm up that's strength based. And so you can see how we've flipped it. We're not doing the cardio of the running first, we're doing a little bit of activation first, and so they might do some single leg squats, some lunges, some calf raises, and they might do one or two sets at the start, and then they'll finish off their run by doing a little bit more of that strength work as well. So we're not focusing our core energy on the strength for those runners, we're keeping that for building running.

SPEAKER_01

So, what if you're not really a runner or a like a power lifter, but you're just trying to stay healthy? Is it the same? Like what kind of balance should you have?

SPEAKER_00

So you're talking about all the high rocks athletes out there and everyone that's joining high rocks. Shout out to everyone that's doing high rocks in Sydney.

SPEAKER_01

Um how about people who would at the level of doing high rocks and people that are like not that ambitious, just trying to just trying to move more and do the the uh the fundamentals of the store, you know, moving well, eating well, sleeping well.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, that's it. Um yeah, the reason why I mentioned high rocks is because they combine everything. So they combine the strength and the endurance, the run-in, the power lifting, the explosiveness. And so that that's a great example of it can be done. And when you look at some of these high-level high rocks athletes, they do have big muscles and they're super, super fit. So you can do both. It is just a lot lot harder. Now, when we come back to general population and our stay-to-day, who are trying to just get through the day, trying to get fitter, trying to be healthier, what we want to do is maximize our time that we do spend at the gym. And so if there's no point you breaking up one gym session of just cardio, one just gym session of weights, if it means that you're less likely to go to the gym. So if you're only got two or three sessions, I would focus on doing some cardio as a warm-up. Get your weight session in because we don't want to load you when you're too tired. So I wouldn't necessarily do some HIIT work, high-intensity interval training, and then try and go do some strength training. You're gonna be fatigued, your muscles are already gonna be burning, and you're more likely to overload. So get those big powerful movements out first, and then you can also finish off with some 30, 40 second sprints at the end for a bit of fun, burn off all that energy, and that way you've had a really solid workout, you're feeling really good, you're gonna get the endolphins going, you've burnt lots of energy, you've put some what we call stimulus or stress on the muscles that are gonna give you stronger, more muscles, and your recovery is gonna be a lot better after that. So let's answer the second part of the question, which is a very, very good question. I do get this a fair bit. Um, so particularly for sports, what we want to do the day that you're training is gonna be very different, right? So when we're thinking about performance and trying to be at our best, we don't want to overfatigue ourselves. But there is a line where we want everything really warmed up and really, really firing at that point of time. So, particularly when I was competing, what I would focus on and speaking to different sports exercise physiologists and sports scientists, what's really important into the lead up of that match day or competition is that everything is firing at 100%. So some of the common things that I see is that people will either not do anything and just completely rest, which is not great because you're not going to be warm, you're not gonna be moving, or they'll just do a little bit of weights at really light weights. Now, what's important is what we talk about is load. And so load is how much stress is on your body, right? And so when you think of it from an exercise point of view, and we think of weight training, if you did the regular, what you'd normally do is say three to four sets of 10 to 12 reps at really high intensity, that's a lot of load. You wouldn't do that on the same day of your competition. But one or two days before, what I used to do that worked really, really well, is say you might do one set but five or six reps at high, high intensity. So you're trying to get every muscle in your body firing as heavy and as fast as you can go, and you put all your energy into that one set, but it's still relatively a small load of what you would normally do on a gym session. So rather than doing your gym workout, your strength session on the day that you're competing, pick two or three days before and do less of it, but at high intensity. So go as hard as you can for one or two sets so that you're recovered by the time your competition day is on.

SPEAKER_01

So then what are you doing on the day of and the day before, maybe?

SPEAKER_00

Yes. So this is what I then think about is what I used to do is particularly when we're flying internationally, we get in there a few days before, we would do a warm-up the day before, and we would go through specific movements or techniques. And this is about getting your brain and body connection firing. And what we call the motor control or our movement, we we don't want to be thinking about that. We want that to be automatic. So trying to be sport specific, get your muscles moving, getting them activated, and rebuilding that movement and the coordination. More of that you can do again at high intensity. So warm up the day before, go through. It doesn't have to be very long. We used to do short 15, 20 minute sessions. You'd be sweating, you'd be feeling really, really good, you'd still have heaps of energy afterwards, and that would be it. On the day of competition, you want to gently wake your body up in the morning, right? So this is where I do some mobility, get things moving, just because you're gonna be a little bit stiff, and that also helps with the nerves just to get your body moving, get everything flowing. That feels great. Once you get into the grounds or where you're competing, that's when you want to get your heart rate up, start warming up. And that might be through some more cardio, some more movements. Again, trying to be as specific to your sport that you're doing, then allow your body to recover, rest again. So that might be half an hour, an hour before, and then make sure you hydrate really well, get a little bit of um carbohydrates if you had simple carbohydrates. So somebody's gonna give you that energy hit, and then off you go. So thanks again for your question and one that is a little bit of a myth. You can train weights and cardio on the same day. It's not gonna be detrimental, but focus your energy on where your goal is, right? So the main takeaway today, focus on putting as maximal energy if your goal is to improve your cardio, to run further, run faster, focus on that. If your goal is to get stronger, more powerful, focus on that. You can still do both, but key is to focus that energy through there. Thank you guys. Please keep sending through these questions. It's really helpful and it keeps us on our toes to answering questions that are relevant to you and things that you guys really care about. So make sure you send them through. And also please help us by liking and subscribing, leaving us a review. This just helps us get out more information to people that might also need it. We'll see you next week on the treatment table.