Is Running “Bad” for Gaining Muscle and Strength?

Most people know that running isn’t enough to build a strong and muscular physique.

It’s great for burning calories and fat, but it just doesn’t challenge your muscles enough to cause significant growth.

What isn’t so clear, however, is whether running plus resistance training is worse for improving body composition than just resistance training.

Here’s the bottom line:

Running isn’t “bad” for gaining muscle and strength per se, but if you do too much, you’ll struggle to get bigger and stronger.

There are three primary reasons for this:

1. High-volume running wears you out physically and mentally, making it harder to push yourself in your resistance training. Go run an “easy 8” (miles) and try to squat heavy the next day if you don’t believe me.
2. Running causes a fair amount of muscle damage and soreness that hinders performance in the gym. Your body has to work hard just to recover from intense resistance training, and if you also run a lot, it won’t be able to keep up.
3. Research shows that endurance training causes adaptations at a cellular level that are fundamentally at odds with the adaptations produced by resistance training. This is known as the “interference effect,” and it boils down to this: Our body (and muscles in particular) can’t effectively adapt to both endurance and resistance training at the same time.

Fortunately, there’s an easy way to minimize these downsides of running: just don’t do too much of it.

Specifically, I recommend you limit your running (and cardio in general for that matter) to no more than half of the amount of time you spend training your muscles. For instance, if you lift weights 4 hours per week, don’t do more than 2 hours of cardio in the same period.

That way, you can reap all the metabolic and health benefits endurance training has to offer without cutting into your progress in the gym.

You may also want to consider something other than running because lower-impact options like cycling, rowing, and swimming don’t seem to negatively impact strength or muscle growth as much.

For example, a meta-analysis conducted by scientists at the University of Tampa found that adding cycling to a strength training program didn’t reduce strength or muscle gain and helped decrease body fat and aerobic fitness.

So, in summary:

I’m not “anti-running,” or “anti-cardio,” but I’m “anti-lots-of-cardio-and-especially-running-when-your-main-goal-is-to-gain-muscle-and-strength.”

More:

If you want to learn more about how to combine strength training and cardio for maximum muscle growth and fat loss, you need to read one of my bestselling fitness books:

For men ⇒ https://legionathletics.com/products/books/bigger-leaner-stronger/

For women ⇒ https://legionathletics.com/products/books/thinner-leaner-stronger/

They’ve helped thousands of people of all ages and circumstances build their best body ever, and they can do the same for you.

Go for it!