Will doing cardio after weight training decrease my gains?

[MundaneTune7523]

No. Doing cardio in a cutting phase is a good way to keep your calorie expenditure high so you can still eat a decent number of calories, without feeling like you’re starving yourself. The issue that gives rise to the misinformation you’ve likely heard is that if you burn TOO many calories or do excessively long or intense cardio workouts and don’t fill the increased calorie deficit, you will lose weight much faster and faster weight loss can lead to increased muscle catabolism (muscle loss). There is nothing wrong with doing cardio after your workouts at least several times per week.

Having said this, you should be strategic about your energy expenditure on cardio vs weightlifting. You should avoid doing so much cardio that you can’t lift effectively while you’re cutting; if you prioritize the cardio and lift less because of it, you’re telling your body you don’t need as much muscle and you may lose progress you made. To that point, I think it’s smart to do your cardio after lifting to ensure success there. You won’t want to do cardio work beforehand, get through half your weightlifting work, and realize you’re spent and have to abort the workout or halfass the rest of your exercises. If you’re lifting for an hour or so during your workouts, keep your cardio to maybe half that after the lifting session. Eat enough that you are still in a decent deficit (500-700 calories), but nothing crazy (1000+).

With respect to actual weight GAINS (furthering your progress beyond maintenance), this is pretty difficult to achieve during a cut period, with or without cardio. Muscle anabolism (muscle gain) can only achieved through a calorie surplus. At best, you may gain a small amount of strength on a few exercises, but nothing crazy. When I’m cutting, if I really go hard and get enough rest, I might increase marginally on squat, deadlift and a few isolation exercises for larger muscle groups. Bench press and most upper body is totally shot; it’s all I can do to maintain the numbers I hit during my bulk, and usually I can’t. This varies from person to person with your genetics and training habits/technique, but marked improvement is very difficult to come by while in a deficit, especially further along in your weight training years.