Yanno, I was thinking on that.

I'm thinking that perhaps it has something to do with it not burning as much fat as the other way around.

The whole deal with endurance exercise is that you are trying to make the body as efficient as possible - in other words, an economy car that can run forever on very little gas.

The exact opposite, of course, is what drives those of us who lift to continue to do so: it makes our bodies INEFFICIENT - in other words, huge, gas-guzzling v-12 engines that sit around burning fat even when we're, well, sitting around.

By doing the lifting first, you allow the anaerobic portion of your workout to use up glycogen for the lifting portion. Having run out of fuel, by the time you do your cardio, you'll tap into fat stores.

If you do your cardio first, you'll be using up blood sugar and glycogen, and be able to do a LOT more cardio, more comfortably, because you are switching fuel systems about a half an hour in, at which point, the fat-burning portion kicks in (the not as fun part). Now, if you lift, you won't be able to do much muscle-building work, because you're tired. I imagine that this also stresses the muscle in a way that will somehow teach the body how to continue to work even under conditions of exhaustion (I don't know how. Beyond this point, there be dragons). I DO know that this kind of training is used for many sports where the ability to perform well even while exhausted is required (overtime for hockey games, for example).
Furthermore, because you're doing your resistance training while tired, you won't be able to destroy enough muscle tissue to stimulate much of an anabolic response. So you won't raise your metabolic rate by much, and you won't build much extra muscle that would need to be carried around - you allow your body to remain an efficient economy car, which will get better and better mileage the more you do this.

I have, of course, just described why I would NEVER do this, but my motivations are, as my sig says, gluttony and vanity - I want to be able to look good while eating MORE food.

If I was interested in performing well in endurance situations, I'm sure I would adjust my training accordingly.



How'd I do LCJ?