For the past 6 months or so, I’ve been doing my elliptical cardio workouts prior to my weight lifting sessions. I do 15 minutes on the elliptical at a cardio target HR immediately followed by a quick weight lifting session focused on 2 body parts. This is certainly not my ideal workout routine, but I do it to accommodate my work schedule.
Needless to say, I feel somewhat depleted going into my weight training workouts immediately after a high intensity cardio session on the elliptical. It certainly stands to reason because I’ve burned up most of my available glycogen during the cardio portion thus leaving nothing in reserve for the weights. One of the advantages for me by doing cardio prior to the weights is that I get a nice warm up, however it seems to be at the expense of my energy reserves.
So in yet another rework of my training routine, I’ve just begun to do a very short warm up on the stationary bike (of all things) prior to hitting the weights. I’ve immediately noticed the benefits as I now have a lot more energy as well as enthusiasm for my weight workouts.
The other advantage is that my HR is already elevated and it doesn’t take as long to get up to my target HR once on the elliptical. Now, whether or not this is just a momentum effect with little cardio benefit remains to be seen, but I think it will prove to be beneficial to both my weight training and cardio workouts.