How to Combine Cardio and Strength Training

Let’s talk cardio and strength training! In this article, I’ll show you how to combine them for:

• Better health and fitness
• Building muscle and strength
• Improving aerobic fitness

Plus: how much cardio you need, when to do it, whether you should lift or do cardio first, and much more. Plus #2: complete training programs that get the work done.

Short Intro Before the Good Stuff

Cardio is good for you. Strength training is also good for you.

Doing both is even better.

Sounds simple enough, doesn’t it? But lifters still worry that 20 minutes on the stationary bike will evaporate their biceps.

It won’t.

For almost everyone, cardio and strength training make for a fantastic combination. You can build muscle, get stronger, improve your aerobic fitness, and become healthier at the same time.

But you have to decide which one is the most important to you. Because yes, you can improve everything at once, but you can’t always maximize everything at once.

Here’s how you do it.

Can You Combine Cardio and Strength Training?

Yes.

It’s very effective, and something we should strive to do if we want to stay fit and live a healthy life. It’s also what the folks at the World Health Organization and American College of Sports Medicine recommend.

Training for strength and endurance at the same time is what the lab coats call concurrent training.

Lifters have worried about something called the interference effect, the notion that cardio gets in the way of strength and muscle growth, for decades.

There’s a kernel of truth there.

If you train like an endurance athlete and also try to become a competitive powerlifter or bodybuilder at the same time, those goals will start fighting over the same resources.

But that’s not the same thing at all as cardio killing your gains.

The other way around, lifting interfering with endurance training, is not a concern. If anything, every endurance athlete benefits from strength training in reasonable doses. (Note that I’m talking about the actual physiological benefits here. The logistics of doing both and handling recovery can definitely be issues, especially in high-level endurance athletes, and require careful programming.)

For the average person who lifts 2–5 times per week and adds a few cardio sessions?

I’d say you have very little to worry about.

Prioritize Your Main Goal

This is what it boils down to when you combine cardio and strength training:

Do more of the training for your main goal, and build the rest around it.

• If you prioritize muscle and strength, strength training should get most of your training time and your freshest muscles. Makes sense.
• If becoming a better runner (or cyclist, rower, or whatever) or improving your aerobic fitness is the priority, cardio gets the bigger slice of the pie.
• And if you just want to be healthy, strong, fit, and reasonably difficult to kill, you can split things more evenly or switch them up from week to week.

There is no perfect ratio for any of the above, but your focus will be different.

Let’s talk about all three, with my best recommendations on how you can split things up and strength programs suitable for your goal.

Cardio and Strength Training for Health

For general health, you want both.

Major physical-activity guidelines recommend at least:

• 150–300 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic activity per week
• Or 75–150 minutes of vigorous activity
• Plus “muscle-strengthening activities” at least twice per week

The latter could be the gym, but it doesn’t have to be. Bodyweight training or resistance bands or kettlebells would work just fine.

And you don’t have to hit those cardio numbers with “workouts,” either. Walking (fairly brisk walking, perhaps not your leisurely Sunday stroll), cycling to work, hiking, sports, and yard work all count.

I’d set it up something like this:

• 2 full-body strength workouts
• 3 dedicated cardio sessions
• Around 7,000 steps per day

You cover a lot of bases without exercise becoming a second job.

Why 7,000 Steps?

Ten thousand steps is probably the most famous daily step goal, but there is actually nothing special about that number. (Did you know that it comes from a Japanese step-counter ad from the 60s, not from scientific findings?)³

Recent research suggests that you get substantial health benefits somewhere around 7,000 steps per day. That number is associated with a 47% lower risk of dying for any reason, for example.⁴

Compared with people who don’t move much, health risks drop quickly as you add steps, but for several health outcomes, the curve starts flattening somewhere around 5,000–7,000 steps. That doesn’t mean step 7,001 is useless; more movement can still be better, but you quickly get diminishing returns.

So, 7,000 is a neat, practical goal for a lot of people and what I recommend for most. High enough for an active lifestyle without making you pace around the living room at 11:43 p.m. because your watch says 9,812.

If you want to take 10,000 (it’s a nice, even number, I have to admit) steps or more and have time for it, go ahead – you do get potential additional benefits – but don’t feel like you have to.

Also, your cardio contributes to your step count. No need for 7,000 steps plus three cardio workouts plus whatever other movement you do. Your steps are a good way to make sure you’re active throughout the day, but you don’t have to add them to any other cardio you also do.

A Sample Week of Training for General Health

For example:

• Monday: Full-body strength training
• Tuesday: Cardio
• Wednesday: Walk
• Thursday: Full-body strength training
• Friday: Cardio
• Saturday: Cardio or walk
• Sunday: Rest or walk

“Cardio” can be brisk walking, cycling, jogging, rowing, swimming, or whatever else you enjoy enough (or hate little enough) to keep doing.

Two or three 30–60-minute sessions work great. And no, they don’t have to hurt. Most of your cardio can and probably should be at an easy-to-moderate intensity where you can still talk, but perhaps not belt out a tune, as you do it. Breathing harder than on the couch.

Suggested Strength Programs

We have several excellent 2-day training programs in our workout app, StrengthLog, that fit to a T.

I really like the Full-Body Workout Routine here.

Two workouts per week, eight total exercises, and no filler. You build your sessions around the four big movements: a squat, a hip hinge, a push, and a pull and train all your big muscle groups with staple exercises like squats, deadlifts, bench presses, and rows.

Cardio and Strength Training for Muscle and Strength

When your main goal is getting bigger and stronger, your lifting should take the lead.

Something like this:

• 3–5 strength workouts per week
• 2–3 cardio sessions per week
• Around 7,000 daily steps

How often you lift depends on your experience, which training split you prefer, and how much time you want to spend in the gym.

A beginner can make great progress with three full-body workouts per week, while an experienced bodybuilder might be looking at four upper/lower sessions or five bodybuilding bro-split workouts.

The exact split doesn’t matter as much as many think. What matters is that you get enough quality training and can recover. And that it fits into your life.

Cardio Won’t Kill Your Gains

If lifting is your thing, cardio should complement your strength training, not compete with it.

Fortunately, you don’t have to treat the treadmill like it contains radioactive waste. A couple of cardio sessions per week will not sabotage your gains.

They might even make your gym training easier. Better cardio fitness improves your work capacity and helps you recover between sets. Maybe you won’t sound like a bellows after a set of 12 squats.

Now, cardio can kill your gains, but you’d have to go out of your way to make it happen. Twenty or thirty minutes on an exercise bike – no problem. Training for a sub-3-hour marathon while doing a high-volume squat program, weeeell… I wouldn’t recommend it.

(If you actually are training for a marathon, you still want to do both cardio and strength training, but now the first is your main form of training while the second complements it.)

Keep Most of Your Cardio Easy

I recommend you keep most of your cardio at low-to-moderate intensity:

• Brisk walking
• Easy cycling
• Incline treadmill walking
• Elliptical
• Jogging, if you enjoy running
• Rowing

You can do intervals as well if you want to, but you probably don’t need several weekly cardio sessions that leave your legs like noodles.

Hard cardio has a higher recovery cost. And that goes double if you’re on a cut or weight-loss diet.

Some high-intensity cardio can be a good idea for the cardiovascular benefits, but keep most of it moderate.

Running vs. Cycling

Some claim that cycling is fine for lifters and bodybuilders but running eats up your muscle.

But that’s overstating things.

Some research does suggest that running might interfere more with muscle growth than cycling (more eccentric muscle action).⁵ But bigger reviews and the overall evidence don’t agree that running is incompatible with lifting.

There’s another reason why bigger lifters don’t run, though. The joints can take a pounding, especially if you’re 200+ pounds.

If you love running and can do it, run. But again, no marathon sessions.

However, if your goals are muscle and/or strength and you’re doing cardio only for health and aerobic fitness reasons, I’d stick to low-impact stuff like walking, cycling, or an elliptical (I’ve lost count of the hours I’ve spent on the elliptical over the decades). These are easy to do while you’re already at the gym, and they don’t beat up your legs much.

A Sample Week for Muscle and Strength

Here’s one four-day lifting example:

Monday: Upper body
Tuesday: Lower body
Wednesday: Easy cardio
Thursday: Upper body
Friday: Lower body
Saturday: Easy cardio
Sunday: Rest

Or with three full-body workouts:

Monday: Full-body strength
Tuesday: Cardio
Wednesday: Full-body strength
Thursday: Rest or walking
Friday: Full-body strength
Saturday: Cardio
Sunday: Rest

Both work great.

Suggested Strength Programs

In the StrengthLog app, you’ll find those two exact programs: our Upper/Lower Program and our 3-day Full Body Workout Routine. Both are excellent for lifters of all levels and work for both strength and muscle growth. Plus, you could, in theory, run them for decades without ever needing to change.

The upper/lower split, as it looks when you fire up StrengthLog:

And our Full-Body Workout Routine:

For bodybuilders who are in the gym 5–6 days a week, perhaps doing PPLUL, Push/Pull/Legs, or a bro-split like Bodybuilding Ballet, I suggest doing cardio on non-leg days (and on a rest day, if you prefer).

Cardio and Strength Training for Aerobic Fitness

Now we flip things around.

If becoming a better runner, cyclist, rower, or just more aerobically fit in general is your main goal, cardio gets a big priority.

Could look like:

• 3–6 cardio sessions per week
• 2 strength workouts per week
• Around 7,000 daily steps or more

Three cardio workouts could be plenty if you haven’t been moving much, but an experienced endurance athlete can easily train five or six times per week or more.

Again, the numbers are not set in stone, but the balance between cardio and strength work leans toward where you want most of your training energy.

Don’t Stop Lifting (Or Start Now)

Something I’ve noticed is that endurance athletes make the opposite mistake from lifters.

Lifters fear cardio. Endurance athletes, they don’t so much fear strength training (not anymore – it used to be that lifting made you bulky and slow, but I feel that myth is on the way out), but often think of it as optional.

It isn’t, not if you want to perform your best and stay injury-free.

Two strength workouts per week are enough to improve your strength without taking away from your endurance training. And if you compete – run, cycle, ski, whatever – we now know that weight training benefits even long-distance performance.⁶

No need for bodybuilding-style training, just a couple of full-body sessions built around the major movement patterns. We’re talking squats or leg presses, some unilateral (one-legged) squats, some kind of hip-hinge movement, presses, rows or pulldowns, core work, and perhaps some arm training.

Suggested Strength Programs

If you’re looking for a strength training program to support a specific sport, chances are we have it in the StrengthLog app. We’re talking the usual suspects:

• Running
• Cycling
• Swimming

But also sports like cross-country skiing, rowing, triathlon, plus dozens of team and combat sports.

A Sample Week for Aerobic Fitness

Here we go with another example:

Monday: Easy cardio
Tuesday: Full-body strength
Wednesday: Hard cardio or intervals
Thursday: Easy cardio
Friday: Full-body strength
Saturday: Longer cardio session
Sunday: Rest or active recovery

That gives you four cardio sessions and two strength workouts, and you keep your harder days spread out.

Someone more advanced could add another easy cardio day, and someone just getting started could remove one.

Should You Do Cardio or Strength Training First?

If you’re doing them on different days: problem solved.

But if you want to do both during the same workout, do the one that’s most important to you first.

For muscle and strength:

Lift first.

For endurance training:

Do cardio first.

The training you do first gets you when you’re fresh, the one you do second gets whatever’s left.

And if you’re training for general health, the order doesn’t really matter. Do whichever you prefer and can stick with.

One exception to the above: If the “cardio” we’re talking about is a 5–10 minute easy warm-up before your gym workout, that is not really cardio. Go ahead.

Is It Better to Do Cardio and Strength Training on Separate Days?

Yes, if it’s possible, separating hard cardio and strength training is probably the optimal way to go about it (although optimal isn’t always necessary).

The main reason is not some kind of molecular battle inside your muscles, but fatigue.

• If you hammer your legs with high-intensity intervals and then head straight over to the squat rack, I can’t imagine those squats being top quality.
• It works the other way, too: 10 sets of squats and lunges is unlikely to improve the quality of a run right afterward.

When you separate cardio and strength training, you get more workouts with fresh muscles.

And it’s not just legs. A hard upper-body workout can tank your performance if your cardio is rowing, the elliptical, or skiing/SkiErg, perhaps even more so because those muscles are smaller and quickly become a limiting factor when they’re tired.

But if scheduling is about to become an obstacle, do both in the same workout. Just do the most important training first.

Theoretical optimization is rarely worth it when it becomes a chore. Unless you’re an actual competitive athlete or there’s a possible pro card in your future or something like that, of course. Then it could very well be.

If You Separate Cardio and Strength Training, How Long Should You Wait?

Let’s say you want to split things up and you have the time to do so.

In that case, I’d leave several hours between sessions, at least if both involve hard training. Morning and evening, for example. That way, you have time to rest up, eat, and mentally stop hating exercise before it’s go time again.

Based on the above, here’s my hierarchy:

• Best case: different days, ~24 hours apart, especially if we’re talking two hard sessions. But who’s got time for that? There are only so many days in the week.
• Good practical solution: ≥6 hours apart.
• Sufficient: ≥3 hours apart.
• Back-to-back: perfectly workable, but less optimal for high-level athletes, especially for max strength and power.

But you don’t have to do this.

The further away from an Olympic medal or the Mr. Olympia stage your goals are, the less you need to micromanage these things. At that level, tiny details matter, but if you’re trying to be jacked, strong, healthy, and look good naked, they matter way, way less.

Confession: I’ve never separated cardio and strength training. Always did both in the same workout. Then again, I never even qualified for Mr. O either.

What Counts as Cardio?

Say “cardio,” and many of us get a mental image of running, but that doesn’t have to be the case at all.

Anything that uses larger muscle groups and keeps your heart rate up for some time can improve your cardio fitness.

Some examples:

• Walking
• Running
• Cycling
• Rowing
• Swimming
• Elliptical training
• Stair climbing
• Cross-country skiing
• Hiking
• Group fitness classes
• Many sports

Even sex might count as exercise if you really go at it.¹⁰

The best type is the one that fits your goals and that you don’t hate.

If you’re a competitive runner, you obviously need to run a lot. You get good at what you do. But if you’re after a healthier body or use cardio to complement your lifting, just pick something convenient and reasonably enjoyable.

The easier it is for you to do it week after week, the better.

How Hard Should Your Cardio Be?

The biggest mistake when someone who has never done cardio before decides to start is to go all out every time. But every cardio session doesn’t have to be high-intensity. Most of them shouldn’t be.

Fairly easy and moderate cardio is also great for getting the aerobic training you want without building up a looming mountain of fatigue.

If you’re a lifter, you can liken it to your strength training. Just like you don’t max out your deadlift every workout (or do you?), you don’t need to make all your cardio into lung transplant auditions.

Hard intervals are fantastic for improving aerobic capacity, and they work great if you’re a lifter trying to get lean without spending hours on the treadmill. They can have a place in your training for sure, but one or two really hard cardio sessions per week are plenty for most people who aren’t endurance athletes.

And if muscle and strength have top priority, even less all-out cardio might be a good idea.

Do Your Daily Steps Matter If You Already Work Out?

Yes. A daily workout is fantastic, but it doesn’t completely cancel out spending your other 15 waking hours planted in a chair, even if it leaves you in a sweaty heap.

Walking is perhaps the easiest way to keep your total daily physical activity up where you want/need it to be. Easy to recover from, and you can do it anywhere.

That’s one reason why I have 7,000 daily steps as my general recommendation, beyond the health benefits.

Again, it’s not a threshold where suddenly, poof, good things happen.

If you average 2,500 steps right now, going to 5,000 is a great start. 7,000 is a useful target, not a commandment. The point is that even if you train hard when you train, moving about during the day is always a good thing, and what better way to do so than walking?

Boiling It Down

Let’s boil everything we’ve talked about down into a stew of concrete recommendations.

Goal 1: General Health

You train to be healthy, and athletic performance and a nice physique are bonuses.

A good starting point would be:

• 2 strength workouts per week
• 3 cardio sessions per week
• Around 7,000 steps per day

That’s enough strength training to work all major muscle groups and enough cardio to cover the major health bases. You can do more if you enjoy it, but you don’t have to.

Goal 2: Building Muscle and Strength

You don’t say no to a healthy body, but you know it comes with the package. And that package is muscle and strength.

The starting point:

• 3–5 strength workouts per week
• 2–3 mostly easy-to-moderate cardio sessions
• Around 7,000 steps per day

Prioritize your lifting and keep your cardio manageable.

Goal 3: Improving Aerobic Fitness

Cardio’s your game; your arm circumference has a fairly low priority.

Your starting point could look like:

• 3–6 cardio sessions per week
• 2 strength workouts per week
• Around 7,000 or more steps per day

Prioritize cardio quality and lift to stay intact and improve your performance.

Remember to Track Your Training

Regardless of your training goals, make sure you log your training so you can track it.

The key to getting better at anything – including both cardio and strength training – is to try to do a little more or train a little harder over time.

If you don’t know what you did last week, beating it this week will be more difficult than it needs to be. If you’re not tracking, you’re guessing, and guessing your way to your goals is twice the challenge.

You can do all your tracking in our app, StrengthLog. All the basic logging functions are free, as are the programs I talked about above (they are ready to run directly in the app).

Final Rep

Cardio and strength training aren’t enemies trying to stab each other in the back. You can do both. You can even be good at both.

The closer you are to elite athlete status, the more compromises you have to make, but most of us will never have that problem.

You don’t have to choose. Train for both and let them help each other.

Thanks for reading, and good luck with your training.

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Last reviewed: 2026-10-29

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