If you’ve been following me for a while, you’ll probably know I always emphasize the importance of lifting weights. It is not the only way to gain muscle, it also helps you to lose weight sustainably through increased metabolism, reduce injuries, diseases, illnesses, improve posture, balance, and sleep, and gives you stronger bones for longevity, to name a few. On the other hand, cardio has its great benefits as well - it burns calories, help in cardiovascular health, improves mood, and has also shown to be highly correlated to reduced diseases and illnesses too.

So this article is not to compare which one is better, because they are used for different goals, but how do we best combine the two. But first, we will look at how they’re different, the tradeoffs, and finally what types of cardio, how much cardio, and when to do them to help with your goals. Let’s dive in.

*Cardio is great - it promotes heart health and burns tons of calories! But how should you combine it with lifting?*

Cardio vs. Lifting

Sometimes it can be hard to distinguish between the two, especially if you are lifting so intensely that it feels like a cardio workout. But it is important to know the difference so you can focus on one or the other to achieve your goals better.

For lifting, the workout produces very high force and fatigue relative to how much work you do. It makes you stronger and quite a bit healthier. It helps you grow and retain muscle. It also burns a decent amount of calories even when you’re putting a lot of effort into it. In terms of calorie burning to fatigue ratio, lifting isn’t good. In other words, you do not burn a lot of calories for the fatigue it causes you.

On the other hand, cardio generally produces low force and moderate level of fatigue. It makes you more endurant and a lot healthier. It risks some muscle loss especially if you are well-trained for a while now and have a good amount of muscle mass. It also burns a lot of calories when you’re putting in effort. In terms of calorie burning to fatigue ratio, cardio is great. In other words, you burn a lot of calories for the moderate fatigue it causes you.

*Lifting is much more fatiguing compared to cardio for the same amount of calories burnt.*

Tradeoffs

At this point you might probably be wondering - if cardio and lifting both have such great benefits, why not just do both and reap its benefits together? However, like anything else, there are tradeoffs for cardio and lifting. They compete with each other on many different ways.

First and most obviously, time. Time spent lifting could be spent on doing cardio, and vice versa. If you’re someone who loves cardio and runs every morning for 30 minutes, that can be a lot of time spent lifting if you choose to head to the gym instead. And this is especially true for people with busy schedules. If you can only fit 1 hour a day for exercise, you might have to choose between the two.

Secondly, fatigue levels, both chronic and acute. For chronic fatigue, your recovery from lifting will be affected by cardio. Similarly, your recovery from cardio especially at a high level would be interfered by heavy and frequently lifting. You can’t do a lot of lifting and a lot of cardio and recover from both at the same time. For acute fatigue, if you do cardio right before lifting, your lifting will be much tougher and much less productive. But if you do lifting before cardio, especially if you’re doing upper body lifting and lower body cardio, it may not affect that much. However, if you’re going hard for a 5km run after doing legs day, then your cardio performance will be highly affected. And acute fatigue may take hours to come down before you’re able to have another productive workout.

Thirdly, cardio also directly signals a reduction in muscle growth in proportion to the amount of cardio that you do. So if you do a lot of cardio, you’ll be impeding your ability to grow muscle, specifically legs if you’re doing a lot of running.

Fourth, the nutrients (or energy) used to fuel cardio could have gone to fuel lifting, and vice versa. For example, if you did an intensive run after a lifting session and drank a post-workout shake, a lot of the nutrients will just fuel the muscles used for the cardio session. So if you want maximum muscle recovery, you should be cutting back on cardio.

Fifth, wear and tear. If you run on a frequent basis, you may have joint (knee, ankle, hip) issues popping up every now and then. But if you minimize cardio and focus on lifting, those issues are less likely. You’ll have to deal with a lot more injury if you want to go intense on both cardio and lifting.

Last, and arguably most importantly, fat loss and muscle loss. Lifting gains and retains muscle. Cardio helps with fat loss, but at a certain point, muscle loss starts to occur.

*The biggest trade-off between the 2 is that too much cardio can cause muscle loss.*

How to Best Combine the Two

Types of Cardio and How much to Do

What are the types of cardio available and which ones interfere with lifting (or gaining muscle and strength) the most? Here are some examples of common forms of cardio ranked from the least interfering to the most interfering.

LEAST INTERFERING TO MOST INTERFERING

NEAT - Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis, or basically you moving around subconsciously. This is usually done by tracking your steps with an activity tracker. It is not high intensity, and it can be spread throughout the day, thus it has very low interference. If lifting is top priority, most of your cardio should come from here.
Purposeful or inclined walking under 120 bpm. Anything more than 120bpm means your muscles would be working hard, which can cause fatigue and will affect lifting. Anything less than 120bpm has minimal fatigue and this can be useful if you’re unable to clock steps (perhaps due to lifestyle) as in point 1 above.
Elliptical, cycling or hard swimming at 140 to 160bpm. These 3 exercises have low impact while still being able to burn fat well. These can be used if fat loss and muscle gain are both equally important to you, as it will affect your lifting.
Jogging, HIIT. This will interfere quite a bit with lifting because it causes high fatigue, especially at the joints. That is because you’ll need to do high volume of these cardio in order to burn significant amount of fat.
Team sport training or competition-paced endurance sport, which are usually quite tough. These training usually consists of bouts of maximal activity together with bouts of submaximal activity, which drains your energy and causes lots of connective tissue disruption.

The first three types of cardio do not really hurt your lifting that much. But the bottom few will really affect your lifting, and if lifting is your top priority, either they need to be used very judiciously, or ideally not at all. Of course that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be jogging or doing team sports training, you just have to manage them properly.

For NEAT, a good number of steps to aim for is 10,000 steps a day. It will make you leaner and healthier without taking a toll on your lifting. 300 calories of elliptical work, or 20 minutes of swimming is fine too. Anything more than that will start a trade-off with lifting performance. Other cardio modalities in any amount will cause a trade-off in most cases.

*10,000 steps a day is a great way to do cardio yet not inetrfering with your lifting performance.*

When to Do Them

If cardio is more important to you, for example you’re a runner or a cyclist, keep lifting as far away from cardio as possible, preferably at least 4 hours. Also lift after cardio, not before. Your big workout of the day, cardio, needs to be started fresh.

If lifting is more important to you (I suppose most of you reading this), again, keep lifting as far away from cardio as possible, preferably at least 4 hours. Also lift before cardio, not after, unless the cardio is very light and easy, as that can warm you up for the lift. But if you want to really maximize muscle gains, you should not even be doing cardio after lifting, but instead be having a good post-workout meal.

If both are equally important to you, keep them as far apart as possible again. Lift before cardio in most cases, as lifting performance takes a bigger hit from cardio than vice-versa.

Best Cardio for Your Goals

If muscle retention while losing fat is your top priority, do the least interfering cardio modality. Start with a small amount of cardio and then ease more in. If you’re doing 3000 steps a day, aiming for 10,000 can be daunting and challenging. Instead, slowly bump it up to 5000 steps and then 8000 and finally 10000. But if you’re on track for weight loss, you don’t even need to add any more in. But if you’re not on track for your weight loss goals, you can either increase cardio or reduce food intake. You will have to decide which one causes more fatigue to you (it can be difficult at the start and takes practice to know). For example, if you are eating quite a bit of food and doing a lot of cardio, a better choice is to cut food intake rather than increase cardio. If both are equally hard, you can increase cardio by a little and reduce food by a little.

If maximum weight loss is your top priority, find the cardio that is least fatiguing yet you can do a lot of it. A lot of it has to do with preference and physiology. Usually you’ll need to swap between a few different types of cardio for variety, and that has shown to help with adherence. And similar to the above, ease more cardio in as time goes by. But remember that you cannot outrun a bad diet. There is no point worrying about cardio if you are not sorting out your diet. So make sure you eat mostly healthy food and watch your portion sizing. Try to do full-body lifting sessions at least twice per week so you’ll look healthy and not just thin.