Running is one of the most famous sports today and it has more and more followers. This sport provides a series of benefits to our body and organism that perhaps many are unaware of.
This sport is often closely identified with weight loss, but many wonder if running can help increase muscle mass. Find out if running can actually lead to muscle wasting r.
Can running make you lose muscle mass?
It all depends on how you want to focus your running training, whether to lose or gain muscle mass. For example, your thighs and glutes get bigger if you focus on sprinting, interval training, or hills. You’re basically engaging fast-twitch muscle fibers.
After the initial phase of running, it is likely that you have lost some weight, even if you have not, the muscles and nervous system have adapted to your weight and movements.
Fast-twitch muscles don’t develop from running right away, they do so as we progress through our training. At that point, your legs will probably not grow bigger from running more but from continually working on muscular endurance.
This will make them stronger, but you won’t experience true muscle hypertrophy unless you’re sprinting or climbing hills. Long distance Olympic runners have almost no body fat and it is highly visible, yet they do not have large muscles.
For example, this is Galen Rupp, a silver medalist. See how he developed his tendons and quadriceps, even though he was very thin in appearance.
Here’s the United States relay team. These guys are muscular, but they do weight training and lifting to build fast-twitch muscles. In this way, most of the muscle they develop is from cross training.
Here’s Ryan Hall from America, he doesn’t have a lot of muscle mass, but he’s incredibly fast as his workouts are focused on building endurance.
conclusion
Running can serve to preserve and even increase your muscle mass depending on how you approach your training. It all depends on whether you want to do a specific workout to gain muscle in your legs or lose weight and, from this decision, choose which exercises will help you meet your goals.
Reference
- Bart Loews, How does running build muscle? For quora [Revised March 2016]
