Top 8 Health Benefits of Cardio (Plus 4 Perks for Lifters)

Cardio offers more health benefits than you can count, and you should do some, even if your goal is strength and muscle growth.

This article is for informational purposes and is not a substitute for professional care.

I don’t love cardio. At all.

A bum knee prevents me from running (the only type of cardio I don’t actively dislike), and I find cardio machines dull as dirt.

But guess what? I still get my cardio in, 4–5 times a week, at least 20 minutes each session. Why? Because of all the physical and mental benefits I know I’m getting, even though it often feels like the only way I’d willingly do cardio is if I were being chased by bees.

In this article, I break down what I consider to be the eight biggest benefits of doing cardio on a regular basis.

What Is Cardio and How Much Should You Do?

Cardio, or cardiovascular training, is any exercise that gets your heart rate up and keeps it there.

It’s also known as aerobic exercise, which means “with oxygen,” because your body uses oxygen to produce the energy it needs. Strength training, on the other hand, is anaerobic exercise, where your body uses energy stored in the muscles.

For most healthy adults, the general recommendation is at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity cardio per week or 75 minutes of vigorous-intensity cardio per week.

That amount of cardio is the amount all major health organizations, including the World Health Organization, the CDC, and the NHS, agree on.

• Moderate-intensity cardio is when you can hold a conversation, but you’re breathing harder, like when you take a brisk walk where you can still chat with a friend.
• Vigorous-intensity cardio is when you’re breathing rapidly so you can only talk in short phrases.

You can do one or the other or a combination of both.

If you can’t get 150 minutes in, any amount of cardio is better than no cardio.

The best thing about cardio is that it comes in all shapes and sizes. You don’t have to be a marathon runner to get the benefits. Here are a few examples:

• Brisk walking
• Running or jogging
• Cycling
• Swimming
• Dancing
• Hiking

Find something you enjoy. If you hate running, don’t force yourself to do it. The only way to reap the benefits of cardio is to stick with it.

Combine it with strength training ≥2 times per week, and you have laid the foundation for a strong and healthy life.

The Top Health Benefits of Cardio

Ask 10 experts, and I don’t think any of their lists would be exactly alike. But there would be plenty of overlap, I’m sure.

These are the eight I feel are the most significant. I’ve based my list on things that 1) can be a big deal, often life-changing, and 2) have a solid scientific basis.

You’ll find sources for everything I say in the citations in the What the Science Shows boxes at the end of each Benefit section, and I have vetted them so that they are recent (2023–2025) where possible.

As a bonus, I’ll list my fave benefits of cardio for lifters afterward. This is StrengthLog, after all, not CardioLog. And, let’s face it, even if health is most important, performance and body composition benefits are always welcome.

Here we go, in no particular order:

Reduces Heart Disease Risk

Your heart is a muscle, just like your biceps. And just like doing curls builds your biceps, cardio strengthens your heart.

A strong heart can pump more blood with each beat, so it doesn’t have to work as hard to move blood throughout your body.

It also puts less stress on your arteries and lowers blood pressure. High blood pressure is a major risk factor for heart disease, so that is a big benefit (see the next benefit for details).

Cardio reduces the risk of both getting and dying from cardiovascular disease in both healthy people and those already at risk.

It’s better to do something most days of the week than to try to cram it all into one or two long sessions.

To reap all the heart benefits, aim for 150 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic exercise per week. You can split them up however you want, but I bet it’s easier for most to do a little something most days of the week than to try to cram it all into one or two long workouts.

You can start small and build up how much cardio you do; even a 10-minute walk contributes to your weekly goal and makes a difference in your heart health.

Better Blood-Pressure Control

Cardio and hypertension (high blood pressure) are natural enemies. Getting your heart rate up is one of the most effective, non-pharmaceutical ways to lower your blood pressure and keep it in a healthy range.

Like I mentioned with heart disease, a stronger heart can pump more blood without struggling. The force on your arteries decreases, which in turn lowers your blood pressure.

Aerobic exercise also helps your body produce more nitric oxide, a molecule that relaxes and widens your blood vessels. More room for blood to flow means a naturally lower blood pressure, like going from a narrow, clogged pipe to a wide-open one.

The effect of cardio on your blood pressure can be pretty immediate.

Many people experience a temporary drop in blood pressure for several hours after a workout, known as post-exercise hypotension. And over time, you’ll see a lasting improvement in your resting blood pressure.

For many people with mild-to-moderate hypertension, regular cardio can lower blood pressure almost as much as starting a low-dose antihypertensive pill, but with a host of extra health benefits and virtually no side effects.

Aerobic and strength training are both swell for your blood pressure but work through different mechanisms. Combining both forms of exercise is a good idea for most health benefits, and your blood pressure is no different.

Helps With Fat Loss and Weight Maintenance

Not long ago, cardio was the go-to course of action if you needed to lose weight. Lace up your running shoes and leave the pounds behind.

Cardio for Weight and Fat Loss

However, recent research (and real-life observations) has tarnished cardio’s reputation as the king of weight and fat loss. You can even see influencers on social media claiming it’s useless and you shouldn’t be doing it.

The truth? Somewhere in the middle. Cardio can absolutely be effective for losing weight, but relying on it alone to shed pounds is likely not.

When you’re looking to lose weight, you must create a calorie deficit. That means you must burn more calories than you consume. Not every day, but you need to be in a calorie deficit over time.

That is also where cardio helps. Running, cycling, swimming, and even walking burn plenty of calories. The harder and longer you go, the more calories you torch.

The problem for most is that you have to do so much of it to burn enough calories to make a meaningful difference. Too much for many people. And your efforts might fizzle out when you don’t see quick results.

It’s much easier to create a calorie deficit by cutting down on how much you eat than it is to burn off high-calorie meals with exercise. You can eat or drink 500 calories in a minute, but it might take an hour of sweating to burn them with cardio.

That’s why a successful fat loss plan almost always starts in the kitchen. Nearly every trial that combines cardio with a diet that puts you in a calorie deficit shows much greater weight loss than cardio alone.⁶

Cardio is like an accelerator for fat loss, but it is unlikely to do a satisfactory job on its own.

Unless we’re talking about visceral fat, the extra dangerous fat that collects around the organs. One meta-analysis found that aerobic exercise can reduce visceral fat even without a calorie deficit.⁷

For overall body fat, add strength training to the mix, and you make sure you’re losing fat, not muscle. It is what tells your body to hang onto your lean mass as you lose weight.

Cardio for Weight Loss Maintenance

Cardio is more effective for keeping the weight off than it is for losing it in the first place.

Studies on people who have maintained a significant weight loss show that regular exercise is a common denominator. For example, the National Weight Control Registry, a long-term registry of people who have lost 30 lb or more and kept it off for at least a year, found that the vast majority exercise regularly.

Also, when you lose weight, your metabolism slows down a bit. It’s a natural adaptation as your body becomes lighter and more efficient.

With cardio, you can offset your new, slightly slower metabolism by keeping your calorie burn up, allowing you to eat more, and making it easier to maintain your new weight. Because you don’t want to stay on the same low-calorie diet that helped you lose weight forever.

Boosts Mental Health

Is cardio good for mental health? You bet your running shoes it is.

Cardio can be as effective as some antidepressant medications for mild to moderate depression, and it can help you break the cycle of inactivity and negative thoughts that often come with depression.

Aerobic exercise also reduces anxiety and improves your mood. As little as a 5–10 minute burst of cardio has anti-anxiety effects, according to the Anxiety & Depression Association of America. However, it is not as effective as strength training, and current research does not entirely support it as a real treatment for anxiety in adults (but it works better for children and adolescents).

The mechanisms behind cardio’s mental benefits include the release of endorphins, your body’s natural painkillers and mood elevators, lower inflammation, and better blood flow to your brain.

It also boosts serotonin and dopamine, two neurotransmitters that regulate your mood, motivation, and feelings of pleasure. Low levels of these guys are often linked to depression.

In addition, cardio helps you sleep more deeply and better, and few things are better for your mood and cognition, and, in turn, your mental health than good sleep.

Improves Memory and Cognitive Function

Regular cardio measurably improves memory, and the evidence has grown stronger in the past years. It won’t compensate for things like sleep deprivation, chronic stress, or diseases that affect the brain, but it does bring neat benefits, often within weeks.

Cardio gets your heart pumping extra oxygen-rich blood and chemicals like BDNF (brain-derived neurotrophic factor) to the brain.

Over time, regularly soaking the memory-making hippocampus in oxygen, growth signals, and brain fertilizer cocktail allows its cells form stronger links and even grow a bit larger and make remembering things easier.

Gives You Deeper and More High-Quality Sleep

Instead of counting sheep until they start unionizing, try getting your cardio in. It is one of the most consistently supported, non-drug ways of sleeping better and can even be used to treat insomnia.

Not only does cardio help you fall asleep easier, but it also allows you to spend more time in deep sleep, so you can wake up feeling rested for real, not like you’ve been in a coma for eight hours.

How does it work? Hormones and body temperature.

Cardio can help synchronize melatonin, the “sleep hormone,” with your circadian rhythm, help your body get into and stay in a neat sleep-wake cycle, and make you fall asleep faster. It also burns off stress hormones like cortisol, which are notorious for keeping you wide-eyed and staring at the ceiling at 2 AM.

Also, a couple of hours after exercise, when your body cools down, your brain gets a signal that it’s time to wind down and prepare for sleep, like the natural temperature drop that happens before you nod off.

Morning or afternoon cardio is universally sleep-friendly. However, aerobic exercise late in the evening or at night increases your heart rate, stress hormones, and body temperature, which can make it harder, not easier, to fall asleep (for some, not everyone).

If you can only train at night, try to finish high-intensity workouts ≥4 hours before lights-out or keep your late-evening sessions light‐to-moderate. Otherwise, the rev-up can push falling asleep back and fragment your sleep.

You want to exercise for at least 30 minutes, 3–4 times per week to get the most out of it. You’ll see benefits in 4–8 weeks, but the positive effects continue to build for at least six months.

Boosts Your Immune System

A moderate cardio habit is one of the most reliable, side-effect-free ways to keep your immune system in good condition. It reduces the risk of infection (and death if you do get infected with something serious) and can help vaccines work better.

When you start moving, stress hormone bursts push germ-fighting cells (neutrophils and natural-killer cells) into your blood. They circulate for a few hours, looking for trouble, so you get a short-term upgrade to your immune system.

Over time, if you exercise regularly, your immune cells become better at their job, making you less susceptible to picking up a bug. You also slow down the natural decline of the immune system that happens as you get older.

Your muscles also release chemicals that calm down inflammation when you exercise. Do it regularly, and you get constant little tune-ups that keep low-grade inflammation from smoldering in your body.

Too much of a good thing can be, well, too much, though. If you push yourself too hard, too often, you might find yourself with an increased risk of illness instead. I’m talking about the somewhat controversial “open window” theory, where very intense exercise or really long sessions might suppress the immune system and make it easier to catch a cold.

Not all experts agree on the open windows theory, but it’s not a big concern for most people anyway. For example, the 150 minutes of weekly exercise recommended by major health organizations is only beneficial.

Adds Years to Your Life

When you add up all these benefits, you’ll probably find that it’s no surprise that regular cardio is linked to a longer, healthier life.

Many huge studies with millions of participants consistently show that aerobic exercise is associated with a lower risk of dying early from any cause, especially from heart disease, stroke, some cancers, and dementia.

For example, simply meeting the guidelines of ≥150 min week of moderate cardio weekly is tied to a 31% lower death rate at age 40 and up to 49% at age 80. The benefits keep getting bigger with age and the longer you keep going.

And the benefits go beyond keeping your muscles and heart strong and healthy. Cardio, especially high-intensity intervals, is linked to longer telomeres, the protective caps on the ends of your chromosomes.³⁶ Shorter telomeres are associated with aging and disease, while longer ones means staying younger on a cellular level.

By keeping physically active, you’re adding years to your life. But not only that; you’re also adding life to your years.

Benefits of Cardio for Lifters

The principle of specificity is a cornerstone of exercise training.

It says that you get good at what you do. So, a runner should primarily run, a swimmer swim, and a strength athlete lift heavy things.

However, even if your goals primarily focus on max strength, power, or muscle gain, you benefit from including some cardio in your workout plan, not only from a health perspective but also for performance.

But What About My Gains?

Many lifters avoid cardio (or limit it to low-intensity walks) because they fear the dreaded interference effect.

That’s when endurance training blunts the signaling pathways for strength and hypertrophy (the AMPK pathway from cardio vs. the mTOR pathway from lifting).

The effect is real, but only relevant in real life if you combine a lot of high-intensity cardio with heavy lifting.

A few aerobic sessions per week and meeting the weekly 150-minute general physical activity goals will not harm your gains, a sentiment echoed by a 2021 meta-analysis that found that combining both does not interfere with maximal strength development or muscle hypertrophy.⁴⁰

That being said, you can take measures to make even more sure you’re on the safe side.

• The best strategy is to do cardio and lifting on different days. If that’s not possible, separate them by at least 6 hours or longer.
• If you must do them in the same session, lift first. You can attack the weights with full energy and kickstart the anabolic signals (mTOR) without interference.

With those worries brushed under the rug, let’s get into the top reasons a lifter should do cardio.

A Higher Work Capacity

A higher work capacity in the gym means you can handle more sets and reps with heavy weights before gassing out. And more volume (Sets×Reps×Weight) is a primary driver of muscle growth.

If you’re breathing out of your ears after a set of squats, your cardiovascular system might be the limiting factor, not your legs.

You don’t need to be an endurance athlete to handle a heavy weight workout, but a good baseline of cardiovascular capacity is a good idea and allows you to do more work.

Recovery Between Sets

How quickly can you recover and be ready for the next set with full intensity?

A well-trained heart recovers faster and can pump more blood and oxygen to your muscles. A higher aerobic fitness helps you clear metabolic byproducts and recharge phosphocreatine (a molecule involved in your muscles’ energy metabolism) faster.⁴¹

That means your heart rate drops more quickly, you feel less winded, and you’re mentally and physically prepared for your next heavy set sooner.

Improved Insulin Sensitivity

Cardio improves your insulin sensitivity, which makes your body better at using carbohydrates for fuel and recovery.⁴²

When you’re more insulin sensitive, the nutrients you eat are more likely to be shuttled into your muscle cells to restore glycogen and for protein synthesis, and less likely to be stored as body fat.⁴³

During a bulk, burning more calories with cardio allows you to eat more food (=more nutrients) without getting fat, and during a cut, it helps you create a caloric deficit without starving yourself.

In other words, more of the food you eat goes straight to your biceps and less goes to your waistline. More muscle per calorie, less fluff per donut.

Recovery Between Workouts

A good aerobic base improves systemic recovery. Your circulatory system is a kind of delivery and waste-removal service, and some cardio or “active recovery” between strength training sessions increases blood flow to your beat-up muscles.

You deliver fresh nutrients and oxygen and flush out the metabolic waste associated with muscle damage and soreness (DOMS).^{44 45}

The result is better recovery between workouts than lying on the couch.

Frequently Asked Questions About the Benefits of Cardio

Final Rep

Cardio isn’t punishment, even if it can feel that way sometimes (just kidding… or am I?).

Cardio is an investment in your health, your body, and your mood. It offers numerous benefits, from heart health to stress relief to literally adding quality years to your life.

And it’s good for your strength training, too, in moderation.

Big biceps are great, but a strong heart means you can keep flexing them well into old age.

The best cardio is the one you do, so don’t get caught up in finding the perfect routine. Just start moving.

Last reviewed: 2025-08-12

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