Today's question is one of the most popular among those who are trying to learn how to lose weight, should you perform cardio before or after weights? Today you'll discover the factual answer to this often debated topic.

There are numerous areas in the fitness industry which, until recently, were shrouded in mystery. This is one of them. Despite the fact everybody knows someone who has some fitness knowledge, until very recently the answer to this question was based entirely on personal opinion because there weren't sufficient studies to give a definitive answer.

That's no longer the case. Today we'll be looking at a few recent studies and talking about why science has now shown cardiovascular activity to be more effective when performed before resistance exercises, as opposed to afterwards. []

That's not to say you can't get results the other way too, obviously. But recent studies at the James Maddison University found that case studies doing their resistance workout first were unable to keep up with case studies who were getting through their aerobic exercise first. When it came to building lean muscle, the 'weights first' group found that their progress was substantially blunted in comparison.

Furthermore, the Journal of Strength and Conditioning recently carried out a study on this topic to discover the fat loss benefits, too. Their findings were similar. Those who performed aerobic exercise before hitting the iron were able to increase fat loss results considerably over the group of case studies doing it the opposite way around.

Those facts may be controversial to many fitness enthusiasts, who opt to perform their resistance training first. The theory behind that method is that they don't want their muscles to be tired by aerobic exercise when they begin pushing out repetitions. This makes sense and it's an approach which does yield results. However, science suggests that switching them around is far superior for both fat loss and lean muscle development.

The main findings of recent studies focus on the effects of two enzymes:

* Adenosine Monophosphate-Activated Protein Kinase (also called AMPK for short!)

* mTOR

You may have heard of these before. AMPK is the enzyme responsible for helping the body adapt to endurance exercise, while mTOR is considered an 'on' switch in the muscle building process. After you finish a weights workout, your mTOR levels surge for around one hour. This means consuming quality nutrition at this point will ensure quality lean muscle gains. After around six hours, levels of mTOR return to normal. []

By spending that crucial hour still working hard in the gym on a bike or treadmill you do two bad things. Firstly, you waste that golden hour of mTOR release. Secondly, you'll release more AMPK which actually blunts the release of mTOR, too.

So, should you do cardio before or after weights? Whether you want to learn how to lose weight or how to pack on lean muscle, recent science is heavily on the side of performing your aerobic activity before you pick up a dumbbell.