Cardio and strength training are both important to your fitness, a fact I’ve always known, but currently haven’t been able to shut up. I am mainly a strength trainer (a Weightlifterto be precise), and for a long time I thought that a lot of lifting was enough. But as I added more cardio to my routine, I saw my lift improve. Cardio is good for you who knew.
However, there is a common misconception about combining these two areas of fitness. The cardio interference effect, as a trained gym brother may tell you, is scientific evidence that cardio is killing your gains. The less cardio you do, the more muscle you will build.
This is not true, although there are some grains of truth that have led to this belief. Let’s go through them and see where they really apply.
Time management is important
Any time you spend doing cardio is time not squatting under a barbell. With that in mind, the more cardio you do, the less time you have to lift.
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Runners have a similar reason for avoiding weight training: they’d rather spend an hour on the go than an hour in a stuffy gym. That doesn’t change the fact that Runners really need to do weight trainingand lifters need to enable their hearts and lungs to work too.
How to solve this problem: Better plan. If you hit the gym on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, you likely have some time on Tuesdays and Thursdays to get on an exercise bike, do a cardio dance video, or go for a hike. (If walking is exhausting enough, it counts.)
Even if you don’t have time for a full cardio workout, you can likely find a few minutes each day for a mini workout or a quick HIIT session (ideally) real HIIT, not the wrong stuffbut anything is better than nothing).
You must eat enough for both of you
As you build muscle, you may be trying to help the process by eating enough to gain weight. Some lifters may be afraid of cardio because it burns calories and makes it harder to gain weight.
The solution to this problem is simple: just make sure you are eating enough. The total amount of calories you eat should be weighed appropriately against the total amount you burn between your daily exercise and your intentional exercise. If your weight is going the wrong way, adjust your food or exercise to get back on track.
Cardio can affect gains, but only with extreme loads
The grain of truth in this myth is that there have been studies showing people who exercise for both strength and cardio have less strength gains than people who exercise only for strength. You can find an overview of some of them here.
But the case is not closed there. There are also studies that show untrained people improve their strength despite cardioand this show Cycling may not be as bothering as walking, if at all. And unless you are extremely specialized in your sport, the interference effect may not play a role at all.
The effect is also quite small where it exists: Cardio does not prevent anyone from building muscle, it is only a possible compromise. Even if the interference effect is true and applies to you personally, your gains will not be affected by it – im in the worst case scenario, they will only be slightly injured.
We can also take a sensible approach here. On the one hand, nobody was an elite marathon runner and an elite powerlifter at the same time. For these goals you need completely different body types and training plans anyway.
On the other hand, there are many athletes who combine impressive strength with incredible endurance. Check out the Crossfit games if you don’t believe me. It’s possible that the world’s best crossfitters are a little stronger when they don’t have to sprint bikes too, or that they run faster when they don’t have to lift too. But their education clearly enabled them to get good at both areas.
Cardio is actually good for lifting
Maybe there is a little interference effect, or maybe not. You might be tempted to play it safe and just not do cardio and focus solely on strength training, but this is not a risk-free decision. Let’s talk about what you leave on the table when you completely neglect your cardio: work capacity.
Exercising cardio (or “conditioning,” if you want a more lift-friendly word) makes your heart bigger and stronger, and increases the size and quantity of your blood vessels. It makes your body better at bringing oxygen and nutrients into your muscles and flushing metabolic wastes out of your muscles. These are all things that will help you recover faster between sets of exercises.
Since I’ve personally added more cardio to my life, I’ve noticed that I can work a lot more in the gym. I used to have to sit in between heavy squats for five minutes. If I worked on a big deadlift, I could wait a little longer. If my routine included three times the cleanliness and jerkiness, my lungs would burn as hard as my muscles by the time I graduated. Which all makes sense since heavy lifts put a strain on your whole body.
But now I run a few times a week and make it a point to get my extra workouts (the lighter lifts like curls) done with as little rest time as possible. I also incorporate some conditioning items into my routine, like sandbag carriers and kettlebell swings. These movements give my heart and lungs a workout similar to that of an interval cardio session.
And now I’m blasting through my workouts. Three minutes is enough between squat sets. I can build a cycle of presses, curls and rows and get through it with hardly a break. The result is that my workouts are shorter than before. 20 rep sets are more challenging than impossible. If I have to ride two lifts in quick succession in a competition, I don’t have to worry that I might not be ready for the second one. And importantly, since my workouts are easier, I can use the same amount of time to get more work done. I am sure that I am gaining strength and muscles more effectively now than when I had to take those long breaks. Try a little cardio – it might help you too.
