Cardio Timing? A.M. or post-workout?

[BigBadBoss]

Which do you find more effective? Doing cardio first thing in the morning or after your work out?

 

[mposster]

depends on what time of the day you workout.....if you get up at 5 am and and do your cardio from 5 - 6 in the morning....i think its more productive,,,,,
but then again doing cardio in the evening after your workout is good as well after all the glycogenb has been burned throughout your workout.....

 

[BigBadBoss]

That is kinda what I was thinking. I lift at 5pm. So I was thinking of getting up at 7am and running until 7:30 then shower and get to work.

 

[Synpax]

Depends on your goals. Mornings are better for reducing BF.

 

[Tom Treutlein]

Synpax, isn't that faulty? I mean, what really matters in terms of burning bodyfat is being in a caloric deficiency, correct? I may be wrong, but if I am, I'd like to know why morning is a better time to do cardio is losing bodyfat is the goal.

I figured that if you train in the AM with nothing in your system, you'll sarifice muscle tissue for energy, as well as fat.

 

[Synpax]

Synpax, isn't that faulty? I mean, what really matters in terms of burning bodyfat is being in a caloric deficiency, correct? I may be wrong, but if I am, I'd like to know why morning is a better time to do cardio is losing bodyfat is the goal.

I figured that if you train in the AM with nothing in your system, you'll sarifice muscle tissue for energy, as well as fat.

You will not loose muscle if you have protein in your diet. I do a shake after my morning cardio.

The idea is that you are on a relatively empty stomach, so your body turns to fat stores for energy in the morning. Your body uses these fat stores for energy faster than it takes the current carbohydrates you recently ate and turns them into fat, although it uses these recent carbs/glucose at the same rate as it uses fat from your body.

IE - your body has 100 calories stored as fat. This fat happened by eating 100 calories a day for 10 days. Notice that not all of the calories you ate were turned into fat. When you wake up in the morning, this is all your body has to get.

Compare that to: You eat 100 calories and go for a run in the afternoon. Your body takes that 100 calories and uses it. But that really only saved you 1/10th the body fat you would have lost had your body used fat in the morning instead.

Essentially, burning body fat is more efficient than limiting the carbohydrates that turn into fat by burning them immediatly.

I'm quoting from memory from Robert Glover's The Competitive Runners Handbook.

The other advantage of running in the morning is that, as long as you can get up for it, it is unlikelyt to be interrupted by social occasions that normally interrupt evening based schedueles.

 

[Tom Treutlein]

I've heard all that before, and it makes sense, I've just also heard talk of how you'll just waste away muscle tissue needlessly. Eh, there's not enough research to say which is really true, I'd guess. Thanks for the reply, though.

 

[mposster]

Synpax, isn't that faulty? I mean, what really matters in terms of burning bodyfat is being in a caloric deficiency, correct? I may be wrong, but if I am, I'd like to know why morning is a better time to do cardio is losing bodyfat is the goal.

I figured that if you train in the AM with nothing in your system, you'll sarifice muscle tissue for energy, as well as fat.

buring stored glycogen for energy instead of glycogen(carbs) that have been taken in throughout the day

 

[anthrax]

My concern with cardio is that it delays recovery for weight lifting

+ can be hard on the CNS

 

[brunette]

not on the same day! disaster for the,or my, body