One question we get a lot is whether you should do cardio before or after doing a resistance training routine for strength and/or tone. The answer to that question depends on what a person's exact goals are, but our favorite is a combination of both. In this workout video we built a workout routine for those who don't have a lot of time and can't necessarily do a full cardio workout followed by a full strength training routine.

In this workout we have taken cardio exercises and coupled them with strength exercises to keep your overall heart rate up, allowing you to turn each strength exercise into a medium intensity cardio exercise. What this does is allow you to burn more calories overall with less time and get a cardio workout at the same time as working on strength and tone.

We have selected 6 cardio exercises and 6 strength exercises to make up this routine. The cardio exercises focus on the legs and the strength exercises focus on the upper body with a lower body component. This allows you to target the entire body with one workout saving you time while burning calories at a very high rate. We have selected 10 repetitions for our strength exercises as it is the middle ground for strength training making it easy for you to modify this routine by taking out or adding in a couple repetitions to get a different effect.

For example if you want to focus more on strength then you can easily cut out two reps by moving more slowly and increasing the weight you use to get more of a muscle building effect. On the other hand if you want to focus more on toning then you can easily add a couple repetitions (or more) by moving slightly faster and using lighter hand weights causing you to focus more on endurance - this will also increase the cardio component of this workout.

Also keep in mind that if you do not have dumbbells then you can easily replace them with some other type of weighted object such as cans of food, water bottles, weighted backpack or bag, etc.

The following is a transcript of the exercises and order used in the video above. The cardio exercise is the first exercise in each group and is done for 20 seconds then you switch to the strength exercise for 10 repetitions. Repeat each group twice before moving to the next group and performing it with the same time and repetitions.


Total Body Strength and Cardio Blend

Jumping Jacks
Bridge with Chest Presses

High Knees
Dead Lifts with Wide Rows

Lateral Jumps
Rear Crossover Lunges with Lateral Raises

Squat Hops
Toe Toe Crunches with Dumbbell Pullovers

V - Hops
Ski Squats with Tricep Kick Backs

Jumping Oblique Twists
Sumo Squats with Dumbbell Curls


Because of the combination of cardio and strength in this workout the calories burned are significantly higher than doing either medium cardio or strength training on their own. This routine burns 8-12 calories per minute depending on how hard you are pushing yourself and how much weight you use, giving this workout a total burn of 150-225 calories. Also because this workout includes strength training you also will get the benefit of the “after burn” effect, which will increase your metabolism for up to 24-48 hours, which can easily bring your overall calorie burn from this workout up by 100-200 calories.