Does running build muscle?
Yes, running can build muscle. You’ll build a small amount in your legs through most kids of running. If you really want to gain strength, it needs to be mostly high end sprints. If you look at top sprinters they are very muscular. That’s because they do high intensity work on a large muscle group. This causes an increase in muscle building hormones. If muscle is your main goal, you need to work all the major groups, but fast running can definitely be a contributing factor to strength and fitness.
Running will build some muscle but keep in mind that you possess both slow twitch (endurance) and fast twitch (maximal force) muscle fibers and that running, unless your talking sprints only, is almost solely going to develop your slow twitch muscle fibers which means that if your ultimate goal is to see some hypertrophy (to get big) or to develop powerful legs like a lineman in american football, these things are not going to happen through running alone. Additional bad news if you are looking for a weightlifter physique is that extended sessions of cardio produce stress hormones that can put your body into a catabolic state where you actually can burn some muscle, this can be offset by limiting your runs to no longer than 45 minutes and by consuming a protein shake and some carbohydrate immediatly after completing your cooldown——>But don’t stop running eiher because ultimately the condition of your heart is more important than the shape of your biceps, it’s just that ultimately f
