How to program cardio and weights in your workout

If you do cardio and weights in the same week, you're probably doing it wrong. After coaching over 25,000 clients, I've seen the same mistakes wreck people's progress over and over. But if you fix them and follow this exact system, you will lose fat, build muscle, and improve your cardio all at the same time. And before we get into the exact system, you need to know what you're probably doing wrong. And these 3 mistakes are why most people fail at trying to do cardio and weights. So mistake number 1 is something I am sure you have done before. Let's say you're lifting weights 4 days a week, and during all 4 of those workouts, you're really trying to push yourself, lift heavier. You're working out for at least an hour at a time. And then when you do your cardio, you're also pushing yourself really hard. Your heart rate is getting super high. Maybe you're doing a spin spin class or running on the treadmill after your workout. And so 6 or 7 days a week you're having really high-intensity workouts, and then the next week you wonder why you can't squat as heavy as you did the week before, or you're starting to notice injuries pile up like your knees or your shoulder. And then you get frustrated because you're like, I'm working so hard but I'm not seeing the progress that I want. I want you to think of your recovery like a gas tank. When you Lift heavy weights and push yourself, you are using gas in the gas tank. And then when you go and do high-intensity cardio, you are also using gas in the gas tank. So 6 or 7 days a week, you're emptying the gas tank. You're not currently following the system to replenish the gas. So you empty the tank and you wonder why your car isn't going anywhere. So the lesson we need to understand is that just because you're not lifting weights that day, your cardio days aren't free days. They still drain gas. And the harder you go, the less you'll be able to push yourself with your weights. And so when I give you the system to follow, you'll know exactly how hard to push in cardio and weights. But right before I give you that, mistake number 2 is also what a lot of people do. And you think, I'm going to hop on the treadmill. For 20 to 30 minutes before my workout. I'm gonna warm myself up by doing some speed walking, maybe even some running, get my heart rate up. And you think that's a proper warm-up to go lift weights, but I want you to think about your muscles like a balloon. A balloon only has so much air inside of it. When you do this cardio before your workout, you're letting the air out of the balloon. So when you go to lift your weights, you have less air, and the weightlifting lets the air out of the balloon as well. So you're not able to push yourself as hard, you're not able to lift as heavy, and then your results suffer, and you might even get injured because you've let all the air out and now you're trying to just work out with like a flabby, soggy balloon. So the timing of your cardio matters. And if you're going to do cardio and weights on the same day, it should always be done after you lift weights, not before. And when I give you the system, you'll know on what days of the week you should do cardio and weights on the same day. But there's one last mistake I want to make sure you know before I give you the full system. And that's something that is rampant right now with social media. You are scrolling on Instagram or TikTok and you're seeing people tell you their workout splits. Somebody's doing glutes on Monday, shoulders on Tuesday, running on Wednesday, and you think, oh, this person is in shape, this person looks good, I should just follow their exact plan. But what you don't know is that person might be training for a half marathon and you might be training to lose 30 pounds. Those are 2 separate goals. It's like if 2 cars were in a driveway. One car is taking a road trip to the beach and one car is taking a road trip to the mountains. Both are taking a road trip, but they're going to completely different destinations. And if the person who wants to go to the beach puts in the GPS destination of the mountains, they are not going to get where they want to go. And so your plan has to match your goal, not a stranger's on the internet. And so now the whole system I'm about to give you starts with one question. And if you get it wrong, nothing else matters. So before you program a single workout, answer this: what is your goal for the next 12 weeks? There are 2 paths. Path A, if you want to lose fat and build muscle, you want to look leaner, stronger, have more abs. And path B is performance. You want to run a race. Maybe it's a half marathon, maybe it's a HYROX race, maybe it's a 5K, or you just want to be a more well-rounded athlete. Either you want to go to the beach or you want to go to the mountains. Both are great, you just can't follow the same GPS or pack the same clothes for those trips. So once you pick your path, the next 4 steps I'm gonna give you split. So I'm gonna show you what each step will look like for both paths, starting with step 2, setting up your weekly volume. And all this means is how much cardio are you doing versus how much weightlifting are you doing? And I want you to think of your week like a budget. Both paths have 7 days to spend, they're just going to spend it differently. So path A, if you want to lose fat and build muscle as your primary goal, you are going to lift weights 3 to 4 days a week. You are going to do 1 to 3 days a week of zone 2 cardio. And don't worry, I'm going to tell you and explain what zone 2 cardio means in a second. And last, you're going to set your steps to 7,000 to 10,000 per day. And a perfect example of this is our online coaching client James. James likes to play soccer 2 times per week. That is his cardio that he wants to do. But his main goal was to initially lose body fat. So we built him a plan where he lifted 3 days a week, he did his soccer 2 times a week, and he hit his daily steps. Now, as you can see, James is down over 20 kilos. That's That's well over 40 pounds for us in the States. And his soccer game got better and improved while he got stronger, built muscle, and lost fat. So on path A, you're going to want to prioritize lifting weights. If you happen to be short on time, I would rather you cut a cardio day than cut a lifting day. Now for path B, if you're focused on performance, you're still going to lift weights 3 to 4 times a week. But you're going to do lower volume than Path A. What does that mean? Because with Path B, you're not going to be building a ton of muscle, you don't have to do as many sets per exercise, and you don't have to do as many reps per exercise. So if in Path A you were doing 3 sets of 8 to 12 reps, in Path B you might do 2 sets of 6 to 8 reps. And the reason this is important is because you'll be doing more cardio days with path B, and to be able to recover from the more cardio, you will slightly pull back on your weightlifting. You'll still do it, it just won't be as much. And then for how much cardio you should do in path B, this will be 2 to 5 days a week where you will likely work in not only zone 2 cardio but Also zone 3, zone 4, and zone 5. So in total, you'll have 5 to 6 days per week of higher intensity training, both between the workouts and the cardio. But an important caveat, you should have at least 1 day a week of low intensity exercise where you do not get your heart rate high and you do not push yourself hard because you still need to be able to recover from the workouts that you're doing. And if you train hard 7 days a week, you will not be able to do that. And a perfect example of this is one of our clients, Shelly. Shelly runs half marathons, she does HYROX races, and she lifts heavy and pushes herself in her workouts. And some people wonder, well, how can she do all of that? It's because she has set up her plan in the way I just mentioned to be able to push hard, but also be able to match that with the recovery. And so now you are hearing me talk about zone 2 cardio, zone 3 cardio. So let's talk about exactly what that means for each path. And honestly, this is where most people sabotage themselves because they think harder cardio means faster results for either path, and it doesn't. Think of cardio like a dimmer switch for the lights. Path A, you're going to keep that dimmer switch on one setting. And path B, you're going to change it to all different types of settings, but it doesn't just stay on the highest setting, the most intense setting, the entire time. So for path A, the one setting you're going to keep your dimmer on is what we call zone 2 cardio. This is 60 to 70% of your max heart rate. And the way you find your max heart rate, if you take 220 minus your current age, that is your max heart rate. So when you're doing zone 2 cardio, it should be 60 to 70% of that number. And if you just want an easier way to know if you're in zone 2, you should be able to hold a conversation, still breathe through your nose while you're doing the cardio. So you're intentionally not letting your heart rate get high. And the reason this is, this Zone 2 cardio does not take away from your lifting weights recovery. In fact, it actually adds to your recovery from lifting weights. Also, this kind of cardio does not add hunger, appetite, or cravings, which if you're trying to be in a calorie deficit to lose fat, you wouldn't want those things to be higher because it would make it harder to stick to your deficit. And by the way, if you need to know how many calories you should be eating, I have a free calorie calculator if you click the link in the description of the video. So when you're doing your cardio, either after a workout or on a rest day from lifting, which we'll talk about in the next step of the system, keep it at zone 2 for path A. Now path B, you should be going through the different zones. So zone 2 is what we just talked about. Zone 3 is where you're working a little bit harder It's sustained effort, but this becomes a little bit more uncomfortable. You won't be able to maintain a conversation. Zone 4 is hard intervals where you are getting your heart rate up, and then zone 5 is all-out max effort. At different points in the week, you'll go through these different zones, but you should try not to stack these really hard cardio days back to back. So that means if you're pushing hard on a Tuesday with cardio, you should not be pushing hard on Wednesday a day with cardio. And this matters because in path B, this is where people will get burnt out or injured because they're trying to do too much all the time. And so now that we know how to set it up, we know how intense to go, what order do you do all of this in? And this is the make-or-break step when you're combining weights and cardio, because how you sequence the week matters. So rule number 1 is what we talked about earlier. Cardio should always come after you lift weights if you're doing it on the same day. Now, this can either be right after— I recommend this if you're doing lower intensity cardio right after your workout, that would be the zone 2— or if you're doing a super intense workout lifting and a super intense cardio, I would make sure to split them up at least 4 hours apart. Rule number 2, never do a super hard cardio day before a leg day. So if you're going for a long run or an intense spin class on Thursday, you shouldn't then do a leg day on Friday. Put the longer duration or higher intensity cardio after a leg day, because having tired legs when you do cardio doesn't really increase your risk of injury as much as if you were to go into a heavy squat day with your legs already exhausted. And so here's what a week's worth of workouts might look like for both paths. For Path A, losing fat and building muscle, Sunday would be a lower body day. Monday would be a zone 2 cardio day. Tuesday would be an upper body day. Wednesday would be a zone 2 cardio day. Thursday would be a complete rest day. You just hit your daily steps. Friday would be a full-body workout day, and Saturday would be a rest day where you just hit your daily steps. And that workout split combined with the calorie deficit will guarantee you are losing fat and building muscle. Now, path B, I'm actually going to tell you my exact workout split because this is what I'm doing right now because I am currently training for a HYROX race in about 4 months. So Sunday is a lower body day where I try to lift heavy. Monday, I am doing run intervals. This is typically in the zone 3 to zone 4. Tuesday, I'm doing upper body, once again trying to lift heavy. Wednesday, I'm doing zone 2 cardio, which is 45 minutes of an incline treadmill walk. Thursday, I'm lifting lower body again. Friday, I'm doing a HIIT style circuit where I will run 0.62 miles and then I'll do 1,000 meters on the SkiErg. I'll run 0.62 miles, 1,000 meters on the rower, run again, do 100 wall balls, run again, and then do burpees. And that cardio is usually between zone 4 and zone 5. I'll say I spend most of the time in zone 3, but it varies throughout the session. And then Saturday I'm doing upper body workout again. So for me, I do have the one day a week where I Do not do any sort of high-intensity exercise. And notice the hard cardio comes after a leg day, never before. And this allows me and you, if you're going to follow this, to still push yourself and lift heavy in the workouts while recovering and improving your cardio. But with this system, how do you know if it's actually working? Well, there are some red flags. If these things are happening, your body is telling you you're not recovering enough and you have to change And flag number 1 is if your sleep is continuing to get worse over time. Now, 1 or 2 days of bad sleep here and there is going to happen, but if it's consistently happening where you're training hard but you're more tired, you're more restless at night, if you're tracking your sleep, you're seeing your HRV is going down, your resting heart rate is going up, your deep sleep is going down, this is your body telling you you're doing too much high intensity and you have to pull back. So you would either take some of the higher intensity cardio days and make them zone 2 days, or you would take the workouts, weightlifting workouts that you're doing, and you would decrease the volume. So if you're doing 3 sets, you would go to 2 sets. And flag number 2, if your strength is going backwards and down more than 2 weeks In a row, because again, we're all going to have bad workouts here and there. You shouldn't freak out over that. But if you're seeing a trend that your strength is going down, like last week you did 185 for 8, and then this week you can only get 6, and next week you can only get 4, that's a sign you're not recovering enough and you either need to drop the intensity of the cardio or drop the volume in your workouts. And flag number 3, if you have those heavy leg feelings That just don't go away. Now again, if you're sore for a day or 2 or 3, that's normal. But if you're having this feeling of your legs being tree trunks and they're always sore and it never seems to get better, that's not you crushing your workouts, that's you not recovering properly. And for this, I would pull back on the intensity of the, of the cardio the entire week, or I may even cut it out for a week to allow your body to over-recover back to your baseline. You can think of it like a burner in a kitchen. If you turn the burner heat up so high, it just starts to make the entire kitchen hot. You're gonna have to turn that burner down a bit. And now I know I just threw a lot at you, and I'll be transparent, I made this video for somebody like yourself who isn't a complete beginner to all of this. So if you're still here, I'm glad you got value from the video. But If you want somebody to just build this entire plan for you, to pick your path, to set your volume, to tell you how much cardio to do versus how much weights to do, and to be there every single week to hold you accountable, guide you, make adjustments, this is exactly what we do in my online coaching program. You can click the link in the description of the video below to learn more. And if you're wondering what this kind of system looks like if you were to do a real HYROX race, for example, I actually did a full video going over everything of my first HYROX race experience. So if you're interested in watching that, you can click this video here.