Blog · 2 min · figures checked on 9 November 2026
Does cardio make you lose muscle?
By Nicolas Papon, founder of Live For Fit ·
On average, no. Adding cardio does not reduce muscle or strength gains. The effect shows up mostly with a lot of running, or cardio in the same session as the weights.
What the research says
A meta-analysis by Schumann et al. (2022) finds that adding cardio does not, on average, reduce hypertrophy or strength.
Wilson et al. (2012) show that interference depends on the dose: frequency, intensity, and running weighs more than cycling.
Petré et al. (2021): the effect on strength appears within the same session, not when the sessions are separate.
What Live For Fit does
At Live For Fit: Your other sport or your cardio is never counted as strength sets.
At Live For Fit: The app places your sessions to let the muscles already worked by your sport recover.
- How many sets per muscle per week to build muscle? ›
- Full body or split: which set-up should you choose to build muscle? ›
We publish Live For Fit. This information does not replace medical advice.