<strong>Does Running Build Muscle?</strong>

Reported by Women's Health Magazine.

Running does a lot of things well — strengthens your heart, builds bone density, improves sleep, cuts stress. But if you've been logging miles hoping to also pack on muscle, the honest answer is: not really. Running uses muscle, but that's different from building it. According to Women's Health Magazine, the sport simply doesn't generate enough mechanical demand to drive meaningful muscle growth — at least not for long.

There's one exception worth noting. Trainers Gabrielle Savary, CPT, founder of Grow With Gab Fitness, and Gab Resnick, CPT, ISSA run coach and Tone House Head Coach, both point out that beginners and returning runners can see genuine muscle gains early on — particularly in the glutes, quads, hamstrings, and calves. The stimulus is new, the body adapts. But once your body acclimates to the mileage, you hit a ceiling. Muscle growth requires progressive overload — increasingly heavier challenges that create microtears in the fibers, forcing them to rebuild stronger. A steady-state run just doesn't deliver that.

How to Make Running Work Harder for Your Muscles

Not all runs are equal, and some are genuinely closer to strength training than others. Hill sprints and incline treadmill work recruit the glutes, hamstrings, and quads in ways that echo resistance training. Sprint intervals and strides — short, maximal-effort bursts of 15 to 30 seconds — target fast-twitch muscle fibers critical for power and strength. Trail running is Resnick's personal favorite: uneven terrain demands constant stabilization from the glutes, core, and lower legs. And if you have access to sleds or resistance bands, resisted running drills can push muscle stimulus even further.

Still, the experts are clear: if building muscle is the actual goal, running alone won't get you there. Two to four strength training sessions per week — alongside your runs, not instead of them — is the real formula. "Strength training and running are complementary, not competing," Resnick says. A well-integrated program improves body composition, reduces injury risk, and makes you a more powerful, efficient runner over time. The fear that lifting will kill your cardio gains (or vice versa) is a myth worth retiring.

Think of it this way: running is an extraordinary tool for longevity and cardiovascular health, but muscle is built in the weight room — and the smartest athletes are doing both.

Read the original at Women's Health Magazine.