When getting started with fitness, should a novice do aerobic or anaerobic exercise first?

There is no single standard answer when getting started with fitness for beginners: "You must do aerobic first/anaerobic first." The choice depends entirely on your core goals, current physical condition, and even your mood that day. Many times, interspersing the two is much more efficient than sticking to a certain order.

I encountered this pitfall when I first applied for my first fitness card. At that time, the tour coach pulled me and told me earnestly that I must run for 40 minutes to do aerobic fat brushing before touching the equipment. I ran for two weeks in a row, and my knees were so painful that I was shaking when I went up and down the stairs.

Later, after chatting with coaches from different schools in the industry and veterans who have been practicing for five or six years, I found out why there are two completely opposite terms: "aerobic first" and "anaerobic first". Essentially, they target completely different groups of people.

When it comes to doing aerobics first, most of them are for friends who don’t exercise at all and have a high body fat rate (BMI over 28). Such friends have poor cardiopulmonary foundation and start lifting irons as soon as they start. They may get black eyes after doing two sets of deadlifts and gasp for breath and can’t straighten their waists. The deformed movements may also easily injure the waist and knees. It’s better to do it first. Start with the elliptical machine, brisk walking, and low-intensity aerobics to improve your cardiopulmonary function and reduce the discomfort during exercise. Moreover, if the body fat is too high, the visual changes in muscle gain in the early stage are not obvious. If you lose some fat through aerobics first, your waist circumference will be reduced by two centimeters, and your motivation will increase immediately, making it easier to persist.

But this is completely untrue when it comes to a skinny newbie with a BMI of less than 18.5. I used to know a colleague who worked in the backend. He was only 108 pounds at 176, and his shoulders were as narrow as bean sprouts. I originally wanted to build some muscles to hold up my clothes, but I heard others said that I should do aerobics first. After running for a month, I dropped to 102 pounds. When the wind was strong, I had to hold on to the telephone poles when walking on the road. For this type of novice who is on the thin side and wants to gain muscle and shape, or who likes to play ball or run, and has a good cardiorespiratory foundation, you can start with anaerobic training with fixed equipment. First, increase the basic muscle mass of the shoulders, back, core, and lower limbs. The basal metabolism will be high, and it will not be easy to get stuck whether you want to lose fat or get in shape later.

There is really no need to regard the order of aerobic and anaerobic as an unshakable iron rule. I have seen many people who only have 40 minutes of fitness time after get off work. They waste 10 minutes by worrying about the order of 20 minutes. In the end, they are in a panic and have a very poor experience. It is better to do two sets of shoulder presses with light weight dumbbells to warm up the body, interspersed with a few sets of jumping jacks and high leg raises, and finally walk on the elliptical machine for 5 minutes to relax, which can still achieve the same exercise effect.

There is a lot of quarrel on the Internet about the sayings that "aerobic glycogen consumption first affects anaerobic performance" and "anaerobic first and then aerobic fat loss is faster" actually have their premise. If you have just eaten a banana and two slices of whole wheat bread half an hour before training and have sufficient glycogen reserves, doing 20 minutes of low-intensity aerobic first will not affect the state of the subsequent ironing at all. Instead, it is equivalent to activating the muscles in advance, which can reduce the probability of injury.； On the other hand, if you haven’t eaten much that day and go to the gym on an empty stomach, and then pump iron for 40 minutes before running, you will most likely feel dizzy after running for 10 minutes, which will lead to low blood sugar.

If you are really not sure, first think about why you are exercising - if you want to run a half marathon with a friend next time, then you must prioritize aerobic running, and just add core training two days a week.； If you want to have obvious lines on your arms when wearing sleeveless clothes in the summer and wear jeans without sagging your crotch, then focus on anaerobic strength training. Just run 3 kilometers two or three times a week to sweat.

Among the seven or eight novice friends I took care of, none of them were able to keep practicing for more than half a year. None of them stuck to a fixed sequence. Some girls loved to dance Pamela's Happy Exercises from the beginning. After dancing for two months, they found that lifting light dumbbells was no longer strenuous, so they naturally started to increase strength training.； Some boys love to exercise from the beginning. After two months of exercising and playing basketball for half an hour, they become breathless, so they take the initiative to do aerobic exercise twice a week.

To put it bluntly, when it comes to fitness, the order in which you can stick to it is the best order. It is much better than sitting in the locker room for half an hour wondering "what should I do first?"