MuscleMonsters.com: Cardio AFTER Lifting

Our friends over at MuscleMonsters.com wrote a very nice article about us yesterday. MuscleMonsters.com is a new website that discusses various health and weightlifting tips. They include lots of reviews and results about products they have used. They also create instructional videos for workouts that target muscles that people often miss.

In the article on their site, they focus on the philosophy that you should do your cardio after lifting. Their reasoning is that during your lifts, you need all the energy you can get - and you won't have that energy from carbs if you do heavy cardio before lifting.

More scientifically, this has to do with your glycogen stores. Performing cardio diminishes the glycogen in your muscles, which thus gives you a weaker lift if you perform it after heavier cardio. In our recommended supplements page, we advise this for bodybuilders. We also believe that if you have to do cardio in the same gym session, you should take your post-workout carb shake immediately after lifting.

Moreover, if you put some protein in your carbohydrate drink, studies are showing that these will replenish your glycogen at the fastest rate. Study 1 looks at glycogen reloads 6 hours after workout. Study 2 and Study 3 show that cyclists received a better response when mixing carbs and protein. Study 4 makes adjustments on total carbs as well as total calories vs. the protein drink to see if either of those two were responsible for faster replishment (they are not, getting protein post-workout is simply quicker).

The point being, do your cardio after lifting you must, and get both carbs and protein in after your workout.