Should You Do Cardio After Leg Day?

The reality is, truthfully, far much less climactic: Doing cardio after leg day is A-OK, but it surely’s not a magic bullet to any main advantages—and it could include some minor dangers, relying in your targets. So neglect no matter you heard on TikTok. We’re breaking down the precise science under.

Are you able to do cardio after leg day?

Should you sometimes observe up a lower-body power exercise with a lightweight jog, stair climbing, or treadmill strut, the excellent news is that you simply’re doing nothing flawed.

You’ll be able to completely do cardio after leg day, says Dan Churchill, MS, coach and efficiency chef with Centr. “I might suggest conserving the depth on the low to reasonable aspect and never goal to do an intense cardio session proper after a brutal leg session, however as a result of your muscular tissues might be warmed up by this level, it’s secure and may even be useful to work in cardio after power.”

Rumors that cardio will damage your muscle positive factors or produce other opposed results don’t maintain up. To be honest, although, the concept doing cardio after power is dangerous didn’t come out of nowhere. “We beforehand assumed {that a} bout of cardio train that instantly adopted a power coaching exercise would impair the mTOR signaling pathway (the metabolic pathway stimulated by power coaching that stimulates muscle progress),” explains Luke Carlson, MS, CEP, licensed train physiologist and CEO and founding father of Discover Strength. “Nevertheless, we now have little or no analysis to verify this.”

Associated Tales

For instance, a 2022 research review¹ revealed in Sports Medicine discovered that combining cardio and power coaching doesn’t compromise muscle hypertrophy or maximal power improvement, even when included in the identical session. (The researchers did discover that doing each in the identical exercise barely affected explosive strength positive factors, which can be necessary to notice when you’re coaching for an influence sport or constructing a associated talent.)

TL;DR: in case your objective with a leg-day exercise is to maximise muscle power or enhance muscle measurement, it’s advantageous to do cardio afterward, Carlson says.

Advantages of doing cardio after leg day

Cardio train, generally, comes with lots of improbable well being perks that make it essential to include in your workout routine, even when you’re primarily centered on power work.

“All cardio has great and ranging advantages on your efficiency and restoration,” Churchill says. “Should you can goal two to 3 hours of zone 2 (i.e., moderate-intensity) cardio every week, after which some efforts at excessive depth, it’s a superb mixture to construct your velocity, endurance, and enhance longevity well being.” Reasonable-intensity cardio coaching can boost heart health², improve your mental health³ and brain function⁴, enhance overall quality of life⁵, and scale back total early mortality risk⁶—and that is simply scratching the floor of cardio’s health benefits.

Nevertheless, doing cardio after leg day, particularly, doesn’t dramatically change the way it impacts your physique. “Past the customary cardiorespiratory variations and persistent illness safety advantages, there may be most likely no advantage of doing cardio instantly after a leg power exercise,” Carlson says.

Some folks say that doing gentle cardio after power work may help with restoration or scale back delayed-onset muscle soreness (DOMS), however for now, we simply don’t have proof to again up that declare. “Cardio doesn’t influence restoration, positively or negatively, following an intense power exercise,” Carlson says.

Even when post-strength cardio doesn’t have a marked impact on soreness or restoration, the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) nonetheless recommends performing at the very least a couple of minutes of low-intensity cardio train after a exercise as a technique to settle down. This helps you steadily lower your coronary heart price and blood strain and flow into mobile waste merchandise that accumulate in muscular tissues throughout train, in accordance with the ACSM. So, when you’re doing mild cardio to wind down from an intense lifting session, there may be some profit there.

Potential dangers of doing cardio after leg day

We repeat: Normally, doing cardio after a leg power exercise isn’t any downside, however there are some potential downsides to learn about.

For one, in case your muscular tissues are fairly fatigued after a lower-body lifting session, tacking on a high-intensity cardio exercise like a dash exercise or aggressive indoor biking class may put you liable to harm. “If we prepare the legs onerous after which transition right into a run, we is perhaps at a higher susceptibility to harm through the run,” Carlson says.

One other draw back of doing cardio after leg day is that it may hinder your cardio efficiency. Should you’re hopping on a tread as a post-workout cooldown or simply to satisfy your cardio quota, that is perhaps advantageous—but when your predominant health objective is cardio-focused, prioritizing power above cardio may have detrimental repercussions.

“For instance, when you’re a distance runner coaching for an upcoming half marathon, performing a strength-training exercise instantly earlier than your key operating exercise will compromise your means to execute that run,” Carlson says.

A 2016 study⁷ within the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research exhibits that separating your exercises by at the very least six hours diminishes the potential interference results, however doing them on separate days is even higher. “Thus, in case your objective is to arrange for an endurance occasion, both schedule the cardio before the strength workout or on a non-strength coaching day,” Carlson says.

There’s one exception: Should you’re coaching for a contest that requires each power and cardio, comparable to Hyrox or an impediment race, doing cardio post-strength is a good way to simulate operating beneath fatigued legs, Churchill says. “However you will need to be aware that overdoing this may result in harm,” he provides. “I might solely suggest doing this if you’re a complicated runner. Should you’re simply beginning, I’d permit time for relaxation in between.”

One of the best kind of cardio to do after leg day

As Churchill talked about above, an important factor to think about is your degree of exertion. It doesn’t matter as a lot whether or not you’re hopping on the elliptical, strolling or operating on a tread, biking, or stair climbing but it surely’s greatest to maintain post-leg-day cardio to a low or reasonable depth to cut back any danger of harm.

That entails working at an effort degree of six (or much less) out of 10, the place zero is the extent of effort required to take a seat and 10 is giving it your maximal effort, in accordance with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). It’s also possible to use the “speak check” to gauge your cardio train depth: Should you can speak throughout your exercise however not sing, which means you’re hovering round reasonable depth. Should you can’t say quite a lot of phrases with out pausing for a breath, you’re working at a vigorous depth.

Learn how to get better after leg day

It is perhaps a bummer to listen to that some post-leg day cardio doesn’t assist scale back your DOMS. If it feels good to you to get blood pumping after you’ve torched your legs, that’s purpose sufficient to maintain doing it—simply consider these different restoration suggestions to assist facilitate muscle progress and restore.

“The most important influences on restoration following intense power coaching are enough protein and enough sleep,” Carlson says. Daily protein intake between 1.2 to 2 grams per kilogram of physique weight is usually sufficient to help post-workout restoration, in accordance with a joint statement⁸ from the ACSM, American Academy of Diet and Dietetics, and Dietitians of Canada. As for sleep, the ACSM recommends getting at the very least eight hours an evening for optimum restoration. Sure folks may need even more sleep⁹ or protein, relying on their physique, life-style, and targets.

Different research-backed recovery methods¹⁰ embrace therapeutic massage, compression clothes, distinction water remedy, cryotherapy, and lively restoration (i.e., going for a walk). “I’m an enormous believer in distinction remedy, and getting in compression boots,” Churchill provides. Therapeutic massage appears to be the best at decreasing DOMS and perceived fatigue, and you will get the perks by yourself with therapeutic massage instruments like a foam roller or lacrosse ball.

You probably have wildly, terribly sore muscles to the purpose the place you’ll be able to’t stroll for days, it could be an indication you’re doing an excessive amount of too quick. “In case your objective is to mitigate DOMS, you may as well keep away from novelty and selection within the exercise since soreness is basically brought on by doing one thing new,” Carlson says.

Truthfully, that’s one other perk of doing cardio work proper after your leg workout: If you understand you’ll be sore within the days following a difficult leg exercise, it is perhaps sensible to get your cardio performed when you can nonetheless stroll.