[bellydancewillow]

I just became a certified Personal Trainer. What I've been taught is that you do first what you want to have the most energy for. If you want energy to lift more, then do your weights first. If you want energy to dance more, then do your dance first. There are always people who will say "this is the best way..." There is no best way. There are many ways and it's what works best for you. Routines should be changed frequently anyway, to keep it interesting and keep your muscles constantly "surprised".

If you prefer to dance first, you might have less energy to lift later, which means you might need less weights. But that's fine. It's called "pre-exhaustion". If you pre-exhaust your muscles with either cardio, dance, or light reps, then go into your resistance training, you won't need to lift as much weight to fatigue your muscles.

The reasoning behind doing weights first is this... Your muscles mainly use glycogen (sugar/carbs) to lift weights. If you lift first, you burn up all of your muscle glycogen, then you don't have to do cardio for 20 minutes before you start burning fat. You'll burn fat faster in your cardio workout if you do resistance first. Otherwise, it takes 20 minutes to burn up your muscle glycogen before you start burning fat in cardio exercise.