With all of the various fitness personalities and vast numbers of aerobic activity videos and programs featuring low-intensity workouts claiming to maximize fat burning, it’s no wonder that you’re second guessing your workout regimen.

The argument behind this supposed theory is that low-intensity aerobic training authorizes your body to use more fat as an energy source as opposed to energy from carbohydrates, accelerating the loss of body fat.

There is a difference in the percentage of calories utilized from fat versus carbohydrates, depending upon the level of exercise intensity.

Individuals expend around 60 percent of their calories from fat based caloric reserves while performing low-intensity exercise. This number lowers to 35 percent when performing high-intensity exercise.

However, individuals will still utilize more overall calories and sum calories from fat when exercising at a high intensity level than at a low intensity level for the same time.

Having said this, your body does not burn all of the available calories from carbohydrates and then move on to burning calories from fat. Your body utilizes both at the same time.

The suggested order for completing a workout needs to consist of a short warm-up, some resistance training, a cardio aspect, and a brief cool-down.

The warm-up and cool-down can include stretching, cardio, or both. When you do the cardio portion of your workout simply depends upon if you want to have either more energy or pre-fatigue your muscles for your resistance training.

For example, you are able to do a bit of cardio to warm-up the muscles, do your resistance training, and then complete a more strenuous cardio portion, cooling down at the end with some stretching.

On the contrary, you can do all your cardio at the starting of your exercise session to pre-fatigue your muscles, do your weight training, and then cool-down with stretching.

For a more personalized consultation, you might want to talk with a licensed trainer at your fitness center concerning the latest in fitness research and on the best program design for what you’re trying to accomplish in the fitness center

Bottom line – since you’re exercising, including warming up at the beginning and cooling down at the end with some stretching, the order of your cardio and weight training in between does not really matter.