The number one priority for anyone who wants to build muscle is to perform intense workouts in the gym and to eat. Cramming down protein shakes and doing deadlifts will get you a long way in your muscle building goals. However, ultimately weight lifters want to have healthy, good looking bodies – they are not necessarily getting muscle for muscle’s sake. Thus, there are other activities and actions that should be performed if you want to keep your body healthy while you are building muscle.
One reason to run while lifting is to keep fat at bay. You’ll have to eat a lot of food to help tack on mass, and you will gain some fat during this process. Running will help you minimize the extra fat that you gain while help preserving your muscle gains.
Another benefit of running while lifting is to help your muscles recover. When you lift, you do microscopic damage to your muscles; when this damage heals, you get stronger. Doing light activity can help accelerate this healing process as blood and nutrients flow into the tissue during exercise. Certainly, rest is crucial, but ‘active rest’ is a necessary ingredient of a well-planned routine.
Another crucial reason to run is to keep your heart healthy. Too many lifters focus all on muscle building and how they look on the outside, and they ignore how healthy or unhealthy they are inside. They eat tons of fatty food, high in cholesterol, to help grow their muscles, and they don’t realize the damage that does to their heart and cardiovascular system as their cholesterol and other negative markers increase. Thus, running is a great way to give you heart the workout it needs to stay healthy and guard against heart disease.
In fact, running is crucial for keeping your body in good general shape. Too many muscular guys and gals look ‘strong’ on the outside, but are actually very weak in terms of fitness. If you run consistently, you’ll build your cardio system, allowing you to perform better in the gym and thus increasing your gains. Plus, fitness training will give you the energy and power to complete all your daily tasks without getting tired. And, if you play a sport, you’ll gain an edge on the field or ice, as you’ll have both great strength and great cardio and athletic ability. Running is easy, as it doesn’t require any special fitness equipment, so you don’t have to take time out of your normal routines to complete the workout.