Do any of you do cardio before you work out?

I hear that you have to do cardio (i.e. jogging, playing basketball, or any type of exercise that increases your heart rate) for a couple of minutes before you start to weight train.
Would there be any short OR long term health risks if one simply skips cardio before they lift weights?
Could stretching my muscles be just as efficient?
What do you guys do before you start lifting weights?

Nope, I just do some warmup sets with light wieghts before lifting heavy. If you go straight to heavy you could pull a muscle. The point is, you need to warm up your muscles before hand to prevent injury.

Jump on a treadmill for 10 mins or some other equipment like that. It gets your heart working and the blood flowing through your body. Use the advice from the poster above also. Just do something that will get your body warmed up before you start the weights. Good luck

Doing cardio is a work out for me.

i usually do some light cardio (10 minutes on bike) to warm up, then go do my weights. then do my hard cardio (30-45 min)

just do some light weight warm up....
eg. 20lb DB bench presses or start curling them @ high reps.
That way it'll get you warmed up and you hit 2 birds with 1 stone... You get some extra weight training in there (even if it isnt intense).

thanks guyz,
I normally jog for 15 mins or so before working out.
I didn't like doing it though because it eventually got repetitive and boring.
So now, I've decided that I'll simply jog during some work out sessions. However, if I'm running short on time, I'll do some light weights with high reps and then move on to the heavier stuff.

save cardio for your off days.
That way you can put 100% towards weights when your training, and 100% towards cardio...

That way you keep your weight training intensity high for maximum growth.

Originally Posted by UrbanPoet

save cardio for your off days.
That way you can put 100% towards weights when your training, and 100% towards cardio...

That way you keep your weight training intensity high for maximum growth.

okay, I'll give that a try;
thanks

Yep, just got out of the shower after doing treadmill and elliptical machine and then weights.

Originally Posted by 7Stryder7

I hear that you have to do cardio (i.e. jogging, playing basketball, or any type of exercise that increases your heart rate) for a couple of minutes before you start to weight train.
Would there be any short OR long term health risks if one simply skips cardio before they lift weights?
Could stretching my muscles be just as efficient?
What do you guys do before you start lifting weights?

10 min. cardio, then weights, then 15-25 min. of cardio. seems to work okay.

Originally Posted by konfusion666

10 min. cardio, then weights, then 15-25 min. of cardio. seems to work okay.

Also depends on what your goals are...some want muscle some just want to lose some fat

Stretch full body, lift light for specific muscle on that day = 5 mins.
Lift heavy = 40 mins
HIIT cardio = 15 mins.

^ My routine

Someone told me that cardio before resistance training is bad for overall muscle growth. To me a jogging warmup still counts as cardio so I don't do it.

Originally Posted by mrlooneytoon

Someone told me that cardio before resistance training is bad for overall muscle growth. To me a jogging warmup still counts as cardio so I don't do it.

oh realli?
that's the thing, i've been doing cardio before weight+resistance training and I wanted to increase my muscle mass.

I'm going to try cardio after working out as you suggested (if i have time).
If not, I'll save cardio for a rest day (as the above post advised).

Thanks RFDers, these are helping a lot.

alittle cardio(say 5-10mins) is a good thing, just to warm you up. But as some have said, leaving cardio on seperate days(off days) to lose weight, i too use HIIT.