How to Keep Muscle While Running Long Distances

Nikkiey: You have to be strength training. You're not going to build muscle through cardio.

What's up, you guys? Welcome back to The WarriorBabe Show with Nikkiey Stott, co-founder of WarriorBabe. Here on this podcast, we talk about mindset, methodology, and tactics that will help you lose body fat, build muscle, be strong, and feel insanely confident. I am your host, Nikkiey Stott, and welcome to episode number 32. Let's go.

So the other day, this woman popped up in my DMs on Instagram, and she was like, "I would love for you to bring an episode to the podcast that explains how to maintain muscle mass while running long distances." And I was like, amen, lady. Amen, babe. Appreciate you. I appreciate you guys showing up in my DMs telling me what y'all want to hear, because guess what? I'm here to deliver that.

I know that there's probably a plethora of other women listening to this podcast that run long distances but also want to have an amazing physique, build muscle and change your body composition. So how do you maintain that mass while doing the activity that you enjoy doing? It's a great question, and that's what I'm going to elaborate on today.

But first, back in episode number 10, I spoke about how strength training burns more calories than cardio, and I broke down the science and the proof. In that episode, I talked about how you're either doing one or the other, right? And your body adapts to the type of training that you're putting it through. Your body will adapt to strength training. Your body will adapt to cardio. They use different aspects of your body to burn the calories and to get different types of results, right?

So today, I'm going to talk about how you can combine both of them, because you truly can. You can combine both strength training and cardio. The ultimate outcome here is not necessarily burning the calories. You're looking for an ultimate result, right? You want to know how to maintain the muscle mass you have on your body and/or build more of it, while also enjoying the things that you do enjoy, like running long distances. And you can do both, guys. It's literally science, and it's literally putting into action what I'm going to talk about today. So let's just get right into it.

First and foremost, in order to achieve that outcome, you have to be strength training. Point blank. It's a basic, but I just want to drill that into your head. If you want to maintain muscle mass or build muscle mass, you have to be strength training. You're not going to build muscle through cardio, okay? Strength training is an effective way to maintain muscle mass while you're running long distances. And also, when you squat, when you deadlift, when you do leg exercises in your strength training routine, that's only going to help you do better in your runs, okay?

So we know that running is a form of cardiovascular exercise. It primarily burns calories and fat. But like I just mentioned, it doesn't build muscle mass, okay? Cardio is a form of activity that's really good for your heart, really good for cardiovascular health and your overall health. But it doesn't build muscle. You're not going to build better arms and better shoulders by doing cardio. I just want to drive that home, because I literally thought that at the beginning of my journey. I thought, the more cardio I do, the more toned I'm going to be. Guys, it doesn't get you the results that you want with changing your body composition and building more muscle. Because in order to change your body composition, you have to build more muscle. In order to be toned, you have to build more muscle, okay?

So, to preserve muscle mass, meaning to hold on to it. Let's say that you've done the years of strength training. You've done the work and you've built some muscle, right? I'm going to talk about how to do both if you're not there yet. But let's say you've done the years and you've put on some muscle, and now you're wanting to get into long distance running. In order to preserve and hold on to it, you have to incorporate resistance training, exercise that challenges your muscles to grow stronger and bigger, and just to maintain what you've already built.

But you can do both. Like I said at the beginning of the podcast, you can build muscle. You can run long distances. But it literally comes down to what you're eating, and I'm going to get to that in a little bit here. Even the basics: you've got to get enough protein. You've got to eat your body weight in protein, maybe a little bit more depending on how much you are running. It's very unique. How long are your long runs? Are we doing marathons? Are we doing eight miles? Are we doing 18 miles? That could make a totally significant difference in the amount of food that you are taking in on a daily basis. It's very individual.

But you want to make sure you're eating enough protein. Point blank, no matter what. Protein is king. Protein is going to help you preserve that lean muscle. It's going to help keep you from tapping into it while you're doing all these long distance runs. So you want to make sure that you're getting at least your body weight in grams of protein per day. For example, if you weigh 150 pounds, you want to be eating 150 grams of protein per day.

And then another basic: you want to make sure that you're incorporating enough rest from your long runs and your strength training. You've got to make sure you're getting at least six to eight hours of sleep a night. I talked about that in an earlier podcast, how important sleep is when you're wanting to build muscle, maintain muscle and change your body composition. It's so important. You guys, you have to get enough rest. You can't just be someone who's training six to seven days a week and expect to have the optimal results that you want. It's not going to happen. You've got to incorporate rest. You've got to take rest time. You're doing your body a service by taking that rest, and you're going to get more results by taking that rest.

Those are just some of the basics, right? You've got to strength train. You've got to eat enough protein. You've got to get enough rest. But there's one thing I want to really, really drill home before I dive into the tactics of what you can do on a daily basis with what you're eating, how you're eating, and the timeline that you're eating. I want to dive into that so that you can feel and see the immediate effects of making sure you're fueled up properly for your long run and that you're maintaining your muscle mass during your long run. I'm going to get into those tactics.

But really quick, I want to drill this home. There are so many women out there who think that cardio is the way, who think that running long distances is what's going to achieve a result. And on top of that, a lot of people, because they're just not aware of this yet, are not eating enough. They're not eating enough to fuel that type of exercise. If you want to be more aware of the food that you're eating on a daily basis and see how much you truly are not eating, yet you're doing all of these ridiculous long distance runs, log your food in MyFitnessPal for literally seven days on top of doing your long distance runs and see how much you really are consuming. I guarantee you're not eating enough, because it's challenging to get the nutrition that you need in order to support these long distance runs.

You need to avoid calorie deficits here. I just want to let that sink in for a second. People think, I'm going to go do long distance runs, but I want to lean up and tone up. And I know people think that in order to do that, you have to be in a calorie deficit. And while, yes, you do, a lot of people who are in calorie deficits going toward that goal aren't incorporating long distance runs. So if you are incorporating long distance runs and you still want to tone up, dude, you are already naturally putting yourself in a calorie deficit by doing those long distance runs.

So please avoid being in a calorie deficit. Avoid being in a cut phase or a fat loss phase when you're doing long distance runs. Please, for the sake of me sharing this information with you on this podcast, if you are a long distance runner. I'm imagining I'm speaking right to the individual that asked me this question, because it could be that she's not eating enough. Maybe she is, and that's awesome. But somebody else out there may not be eating enough. They may be in a caloric deficit.

Dude, running long distances puts your body in a caloric deficit, which means that the body is burning more calories than it's consuming, okay? And that's probably the case for the majority of people doing long distance runs who aren't paying attention and really putting in the effort and the work that's required to eat a lot when you're doing this. Because eating a lot is challenging. Nutrition is challenging, guys, right? Knowing how much and what to eat is challenging. And like I said earlier, it's very individual to the person. So I can't sit here on this podcast and say, "Oh, you're running 16 miles a couple days a week, this is what your nutrition needs to look like." This is where I recommend getting a coach. We talk about this inside of our WarriorBabe Blueprint program. This is literally a module that I'm taking today and sharing with you on this podcast, okay?

So if you're in a caloric deficit and you're running long distances, this can cause your body to turn to its own muscle tissue as a source of energy, okay? That leads to muscle breakdown and the loss of muscle mass, which is counterproductive to the results that you want to see, right? Think about the people that do run long distances. Think about how they look fit, but they're frail, right? They look in shape. They look defined, right? But they could have more muscle mass on their body if they ate in alignment with that activity.

So to maintain muscle mass while running long distances, it is important to avoid calorie deficits and to give your body enough energy to support your training and recovery needs. What I tell women to do when they're doing these activities is to be at maintenance, or even a little bit of a lean bulk, depending on where you're at in your journey.

This is just an example, and I'll put it toward me. This could be an extreme, but if I was running long distances while strength training, I'm going to be at around 2,600 calories a day, maybe even pushing 2,800 to 3,000, okay? And for some people I can think of in the WarriorBabe community, that I've coached or that our coaches have coached, some people are probably sitting around 2,200 to 2,400 calories while doing long distance runs. And guys, it takes work to get that many calories in a day.

So I know that a lot of people don't recognize how important their nutrition is when it comes to doing this type of thing, maintaining muscle mass and running long distances. I know the majority of you are probably in calorie deficits and not eating enough. And therefore you're not maintaining the muscle mass, and you're not getting the results that you want to see, because your nutrition isn't where it needs to be.

So that's what I want to dive into in terms of the tactics. I want to share the tactics, like I said, to help you feel and see the immediate effects of making sure you're fueled up properly, that you're doing the right things, that you're eating the right things, and that you're maintaining your muscle mass. Take what I'm about to share with you and start implementing it. Again, it's very individual. So if you want a little bit more handholding here, definitely check out WarriorBabe. Check out VIP one-on-one coaching, or Blueprint, which gives you this module, and you can have our coaches on the back end. If you want that individualized touch, that's where you're going to get it.

But here I'm going to share some tactics that I would recommend for people just like you who may be doing long distance running and need to have some idea. Then you can put these to the test for yourself and see what kind of results you're getting from this type of advice.

So let's dive into the rules of thumb in terms of tactics. The first is for when you're doing over three hours of activity. Let's say you're doing a half marathon or you're training for a full marathon, and your training days consist of three-plus hours of activity. So you're spending three-plus hours doing this cardio, doing this long distance run.

Personally, my recommendation for you is that this day would be a refuel day. I call it a cheat meal or a refeed day, where you're eating around 70 more grams of carbs for your full day and around 15 more grams of fat for your full day. Your protein stays the same no matter what, right? You're just giving yourself a refuel day, because in order to maintain muscle mass, you have to be eating around the same levels of what you're burning in a day, or even a little bit more if you want to build, okay? So that's my rule of thumb for your really long distances.

The next rule of thumb is for every 50-plus minutes of activity doing long distance runs. If you're outside for less than three hours but more than 50 minutes, then for every hour that you're outside doing that activity, I want you to refuel your body with 25 extra grams of carbohydrates. So, for example, if you're doing one hour of long distance running, add 25 grams of carbohydrates to your overall day for every hour you're doing that. Two hours, 50 grams of carbs, right? Three hours, like I just mentioned with the three-hour activity, 75 grams of carbs.

Guys, this is so freaking important for you to understand. These are tactics that, if you implement them, I promise you, you're going to have more fuel during your run. You're going to have more fuel for your lifting sessions. You're going to get more results with your body composition that you weren't getting when you weren't focusing on the nutrition piece.

It's easy to strength train. It's easy to set up a weekly training program that supports both, right? You do four days of strength training, and then you factor in your runs two or three days. Some of them will fall on the same days as strength training, so you're lifting and running. But you definitely make sure you have rest days in there as well. A lot of people hire marathon training coaches for this if they're doing long distance running. But this is something that I have recommended for women inside our programs and women that I've coached. I've coached women who have run marathons and helped them get ready for those marathons, and these are the exact strategies I used.

So those are some rules of thumb. Again, for 50-plus minutes, if you're spending an hour out there, you're tacking on 25 grams of carbs for every hour that you're doing it. And for super long, very intense long distance runs, you're focusing on a refeed or refuel day, or a cheat meal, adding in the fats and the carbs that I recommended.

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Now, I want to speak to the placement of those carbs, right? You're adding carbs into your day, whether you're doing the cheat meal or the refeed, or you're just tacking them on for every hour of activity that day. Going into your day, you have an idea of what your run is going to look like, how many hours you're going to spend on it, how long the distance is and how long that takes you. You should be pretty much aware of that.

So with the carbohydrates, what I would recommend is to either distribute them throughout your entire day's worth of meals or place them in the meals around your activity. And if you're doing those long distance runs where you're out there for more than three hours, have little snacks with you, like the little gel packets. I see marathon runners squeeze those things into their mouths, or any type of quick sugar candy. It's not the best choice, but it works for the glucose, restoring that and making sure you have enough energy to last through your run.

So for the placement of carbs, like I said, you're either going to distribute them throughout your entire day's worth of meals or you're going to place them around your activities. Let's say it's a strength training day and a run day. Then I would distribute the carbs throughout all of your meals for the whole day, so that you have enough energy to sustain you for the whole day. But let's say you're just doing your run. Then I would place the carbs around your run, some carbs before and some carbs after. That way you're giving your body the fuel that it needs prior to your run, and then you're rejuvenating your body with fuel from those carbohydrates afterward.

So these are some tactics that I would recommend in order to maintain muscle mass while doing the long distance runs you want to do. I know there are people who love to run, and you can do both. But the most important part you're going to need to focus on when working toward this goal, while incorporating what you love to do so much and not giving it up, is nutrition. You have to be eating enough to fuel this exercise and also to maintain the muscle mass.

Your muscle mass is active tissue. It's always running. It's always active. It needs energy to sustain itself. If you're doing this long distance running and you're not giving your body the energy to sustain it, then you're going to tap into it, and you're going to start using that muscle tissue as a source of energy to get through your long runs. And that could be why you're not seeing the results you want, like a fuller, more muscular or toned body, while you're doing this exercise.

So, again, you can do both, my friends. You can totally do both. It just comes down to the fact that this is very individual to the person. How much are you running? What does your running schedule look like on a weekly basis? Man, I remember I worked with a client who was training for a half marathon, and I had her getting ready about eight to ten weeks before. Every week she was increasing her miles. It was five miles and six miles, and then it was six, eight, three, right? So what does that look like for you?

And then you want to make sure that you're incorporating the strength training in with those run days. Here's another pointer: you're not going to put a leg day right before one of your long runs, because you're going to feel so fatigued, and you're going to be so sore during your long distance run when you just had a leg day before. So that's the way that I would structure it. I would think, okay, I'm training four days a week, this is what my training schedule looks like. Strategically put the muscle groups in alignment with where your long distance runs are. Put legs earlier. Maybe do shoulders the day before a long distance run. It comes down to finagling that.

And then just use those tactics that I shared, like adding in a refeed day so that you're eating the same amount that you're burning in a day. That's the way you're going to maintain that muscle mass, guys. So it's really important. I can't drill this home enough: you've got to avoid calorie deficits while being a long distance runner and wanting to maintain muscle mass, because you're naturally putting your body into a caloric deficit. So make sure you're eating at a maintenance threshold for yourself, whatever your maintenance calories and macros will be, and then follow through on that on a daily basis. I promise you, you're going to be able to maintain that muscle mass, and you're going to be able to enjoy your long distance runs.

All right, guys. I hope that helps. That was a really, really good question that I got asked. If you have any other questions, please DM me. I am so active on Instagram at Nikkiey Stott, and I'm so happy to hear what you want to learn here on this podcast, because I will for sure bring it to you if it's in alignment with what I know all of you will gain knowledge from. All right, y'all, I hope you enjoyed it, and I'll see you in the next podcast. Peace.

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