A personal trainer explains that strength athletes can do cardio without sacrificing gains, as long as they keep volume low and choose low-fatigue options like short sprints or an hour of walking. Better aerobic capacity often correlates with greater strength gains.
Should you do cardio if your goal is strength? Now, as a strength training purist, the answer to that would be no. But anecdotally, what I've seen 9 times out of 10 is that those with a better aerobic capacity do better in terms of building strength. Now, why is that? Is because often guys who go out for runs have a better athletic base versus the guys who don't. So I'm certainly not in the camp of anti-cardio, but I do think that if your goal is predominantly strength, you certainly need to put a cap on how much cardio you're doing and what type of cardio you're doing. If I was to, to do strength training and cardio at the same time, it would be more attuned to sprints or light walking for, you know, an hour, which isn't going to fatigue the nervous system. So it really becomes a question of how do you manage fatigue and how do you manage the nervous system around cardio. Not that cardio and strength training inherently can't go together, but it's understanding those factors. So like most things in life, it depends.
