How do you combine leg day with cardio? Can you do strength training for the legs on the same day as cardio? Or should you wait, and if so, for how long?
Combining Leg Day with Cardio?
My third article for today and once again the inspiration seems to come from Australia by coincidence. The exhausting effect of leg strength training is notorious. Walking down the stairs at the end of the training can be annoying, but often pales in comparison to the two days after. Simple activities like sitting in a chair can suddenly be torture. If sitting in a chair is painful, how can you expect to be able to go for a run without negative effects? You shouldn’t imagine poor Leo now has to walk a few kilometers while he can barely get into his car.Legs Exhausted and Then Cardio?
However, there are many trainers and coaches who like to combine strength training and cardio. Researchers at James Cook University in Australia wanted to learn more about this combination [1]. How much recovery time should you consider and what is the right order? The research was led by Dr. Kenji Doma. His own work and that of other researchers has shown that strength training prior to cardio can impair performance during that cardio, both on the same day or on a later day. Decreased performance is often a sign of overloading or even overtraining. Not only are the performances then lower, but the result of the training can also be disappointing. Instead of improving by going for a run, it can actually have the opposite effect. Dr. Doma points out that after a typical strength training session (e.g., 40 to 60 minutes), you need more time to recover. This can be several days while full recovery after cardio can already be possible within 24 hours.Advice: How to Combine Leg Day with Cardio?
With their research, Doma and colleagues want to raise awareness of the necessary recovery time. They hope that coaches will therefore think more about the required recovery time, the order of the training, the duration, and the intensity. According to the team, there are several variables that influence the effect of strength training on the quality of subsequent cardio. Most are obvious. How long the training lasted, how heavy, how quickly the exercises were performed, the order strength-cardio or vice versa, and of course the recovery time between both workouts.“By understanding the influence these variables have, it means that both resistance and endurance training can be prescribed in such a way that minimises fatigue between modes of training, which could optimise the quality of endurance training sessions,” Dr. Doma, James Cook UniversityThe researchers have developed flowcharts with practical tips to improve this combination of training and optimize endurance development.
Strength First and Then Cardio or Vice Versa?
These advices are not very surprising. For example, Doma states that fatigue between the two types of training should be monitored and that the recovery time should be adjusted to the intensity of the workouts. If strength and cardio really have to be combined on the same day, according to Doma, the advice is to do cardio first and then strength training. But with at least half a day of rest in between. I have emphasized the sentence “optimize endurance development” above because it points out an important point. The researchers provide advice on how the combination strength-cardio should look if cardio is the most important. I have previously written a two-part article about the combination of strength training and cardio, although then in general and not specifically for the legs. From that article, it emerged that the order should depend on the priority. If strength training (and thus muscle strength and muscle growth) is the most important, start with this. If cardio is the most important, start with that. In both cases, it appears that you sacrifice results in both types of training by combining them, but that the disadvantage for the second training is greatest.References
- Kenji Doma, Glen B. Deakin, Mortiz Schumann, David J. Bentley. Training Considerations for Optimising Endurance Development: An Alternate Concurrent Training Perspective. Sports Medicine, 2019; 49 (5): 669 DOI: 10.1007/s40279-019-01072-2
