A personal trainer explains why you should always do your weight training before your cardio at the gym

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The idea that cardio should be done at the beginning of a workout is apparently a myth.

That is, according to Max Lowery, a personal trainer and founder of the 2 Meal Day intermittent fasting plan, who is adamant that people should be doing the opposite.

"It's a huge mistake doing your cardio and exhausting yourself before you do weights," Lowery said. "If you want the weight session to be 100% effective, you need to be fresh."

"Cardio will deplete your muscle glycogen stores which is essentially your stored energy for explosive activity," he added. "This means your strength and weight training will be much less effective."

Lowery said that when it comes to weight lifting, form is the most important thing you need to master.

If you're tired before you even begin a weight session, you'll feel the exercise in all the wrong places, making injury more likely.

"Long steady state cardio is one of the worst ways to transform your physique," he went on.

"Cardio — aerobic exercise — is great for health reasons, and you will burn calories while doing it. But your biggest concern when you’re trying to lose weight is muscle loss.

"If you lose fat and muscle along with it, it becomes harder to keep the weight off in the long run. That’s because the more muscle you have, the higher your metabolism is."

If you want to see real results in your body, weights are the only way forward, according to Lowery, and most other personal trainers out there for that matter. "Lifting weights is a far more effective way to sculpt the body," he said.

Anaerobic activities, such as weight training and sprinting, are most effective for building lean muscle mass, which will increase your metabolism and decrease fat.

"The ‘strong, not skinny’ movement is slowly changing the misconception people have that just by looking at a dumbbell, they will turn into the Hulk.

"To get the toned look most of my female clients aspire to, you need to build muscle and the best way to do this is to lift weights."

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