Cardio for Lifters: A Physio's Guide

Why Every Lifter Should Do Cardio: A Physio’s Take on Training Smarter, Not Just Harder

Aerobic capacity affects how well you recover between sets, how long your tendons stay healthy, and how your body handles cumulative training stress. A lot of lifters don’t do any structured cardio. The concern is usually that it will interfere with strength gains, or that it’s simply unnecessary if the goal is to get stronger. The research gives a fairly clear answer: for most lifters, skipping cardio leaves performance, health, and injury resilience on the table.

If you train primarily for strength, whether that’s powerlifting, CrossFit, Hyrox, or general gym work, and cardio isn’t part of your programme, this article covers why it’s worth reconsidering. TJ, our strength sports specialist and physiotherapist for Team Singapore Powerlifting, wrote this one. Here’s what it covers: the interference effect and why it’s overstated, how aerobic fitness improves lifting performance, the longevity case for cardio, its role in injury prevention, and how to programme it around your lifting.

The “Cardio Kills Gains” Myth

“If I do cardio, I’ll lose muscle.”

The interference effect is a real phenomenon, but it only becomes a significant issue when cardio volume is excessive and programming is poorly structured. Wilson et al. (2012) ran a meta-analysis on concurrent training and found that the impact on hypertrophy is minimal when you control for session order and modality. Murach and Bagley (2016) looked at this more closely and concluded that the evidence for interference is weaker than gym culture generally assumes.

If you’re running long, high-intensity intervals on the same day you squat heavy, you’ll likely see some trade-off. If you’re doing two to three sessions of low-intensity cycling or rowing per week, programmed around your lifting, the impact on your strength gains is negligible. The dose and the context matter far more than the presence of cardio itself.

A Better Aerobic Engine Makes You a Better Lifter

A common limiting factor in strength training is not muscular failure but cardiovascular recovery between sets. When your aerobic system can’t clear metabolic byproducts fast enough, you either cut sets short or extend rest periods beyond what your programme calls for. Over a session, that adds up.

A higher VO2max, your body’s maximum rate of oxygen uptake during exercise, means faster lactate clearance and more efficient energy replenishment between sets. Schumann et al. (2022) reviewed the concurrent training literature and found that lifters with a reasonable aerobic base tend to handle more volume per session without performance dropping off. If you’re regularly stretching rest periods past five minutes just to get through your programme, a low aerobic ceiling is likely part of the problem.

If you’re an endurance athlete wondering how strength training fits into your programme, this article covers that side of the equation.

Your Heart Doesn’t Care How Much You Bench

VO2max is one of the strongest predictors of how long you live, arguably stronger than most of the traditional cardiovascular risk factors we track. Kodama et al. (2009) found it to be a reliable marker of all-cause mortality, and Myers et al. (2002) showed that exercise capacity was a stronger predictor of death risk than the exercise test results themselves. Two to three sessions of 20 to 30 minutes of low-intensity aerobic work per week is enough to start shifting that number.

Lifting improves cardiac function. But Lavie et al. (2015) made the case that combining resistance training with aerobic work produces cardiovascular benefits that strength training alone cannot replicate. If you’re in your 30s or 40s and training hard, you’re building a body that performs well right now. Cardio is how you make sure it holds up over the next 20 years.

Cardio Is One of the Best Injury Prevention Tools We Have

Most gym-goers never think about cardio as an injury prevention tool. It’s one of the biggest gaps we see in clinic.

Zone 2 cardio, roughly conversational pace at about 60 to 70% of your max heart rate, improves blood flow to tendons and ligaments. These are tissues that are already poorly vascularised and slow to heal when they become irritated (Magnusson et al., 2010). Better circulation supports nutrient delivery and creates a better environment for tissue maintenance.

When aerobic capacity is low, technique breaks down faster under load. Gabbett (2016) showed that fatigue-driven movement errors are one of the primary mechanisms behind training injuries. Your back rounds on a deadlift not because you forgot how to hinge, but because you’re too fatigued to hold position.

Many of the overuse injuries we see in clinic, patellar tendinopathy, rotator cuff irritation, low back flare-ups, come down to the total stress on the body exceeding its capacity to recover. Adding low-intensity cardio is one practical way to distribute training stress more sustainably across the week. If you want to understand how load management works and why progressing too fast is one of the most common mistakes we see, start here. And if you’ve been told you just need to stretch more, here’s why that’s usually not the full picture.

How to Programme Cardio Around Your Lifting

You don’t need to overhaul your programme. A few principles will keep your strength work protected while building the aerobic base.

• Lift first, cardio after. On days where you do both, complete your strength work before your aerobic session. This minimises any interference with strength and power adaptations.
• Pick low-impact modalities. Cycling and rowing produce less systemic fatigue and joint stress than running. If joint load is already a concern from your lifting, keep your cardio in something that doesn’t add to it.
• Start with Zone 2. Two to three sessions of 20 to 30 minutes at a pace where you can hold a conversation. That is enough to start building an aerobic base. This is not the place for HIIT layered on top of heavy training days.
• Progress gradually. Treat cardio volume the way you treat lifting volume. Add a session or extend duration before you add intensity.

If you want to learn more about balancing training intensity with recovery, this article covers it in detail.

The Bottom Line

Cardio does not kill your gains. Skipping it means leaving performance, health, and injury resilience on the table.

If you’ve been lifting without any structured aerobic work, start with two sessions of 20 to 30 minutes of low-intensity cycling or rowing per week. Keep it conversational. Build from there.

If you want help fitting cardio into your training block, you can book in with TJ directly here.

Book with TJ

Written by Tian Jie (TJ) Chen | Physiotherapist & Strength Sports Specialist, ActiveX Physio Singapore

References

1. Wilson, J.M. et al. (2012). Concurrent training: a meta-analysis examining interference of aerobic and resistance exercises. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 26(8), 2293-2307.
2. Murach, K.A. and Bagley, J.R. (2016). Skeletal muscle hypertrophy with concurrent exercise training: contrary evidence for an interference effect. Sports Medicine, 46(8), 1029-1039.
3. Schumann, M. et al. (2022). Compatibility of concurrent aerobic and strength training for skeletal muscle size and function: an updated systematic review and meta-analysis. Sports Medicine, 52(3), 601-612.
4. Kodama, S. et al. (2009). Cardiorespiratory fitness as a quantitative predictor of all-cause mortality and cardiovascular events in healthy men and women. JAMA, 301(19), 2024-2035.
5. Myers, J. et al. (2002). Exercise capacity and mortality among men referred for exercise testing. New England Journal of Medicine, 346(11), 793-801.
6. Lavie, C.J. et al. (2015). Exercise and the cardiovascular system: clinical science and cardiovascular outcomes. Circulation Research, 117(2), 207-219.
7. Magnusson, S.P. et al. (2010). The pathogenesis of tendinopathy: balancing the response to loading. Nature Reviews Rheumatology, 6(5), 262-268.
8. Gabbett, T.J. (2016). The training-injury prevention paradox: should athletes be training smarter and harder? British Journal of Sports Medicine, 50(5), 273-280.