Can You Get Stronger and Faster at the Same Time?

Training • July 11, 2026 • By PJ Newton

Three questions come up constantly when military athletes start thinking seriously about their programming.

“Can I get stronger without getting slower?”

“Will lifting bulk me up and kill my run time?”

“How do I get faster without losing what I’ve built in the weight room?”

They’re all the same question dressed differently: Can you get stronger and faster at the same time?

The short answer is yes — but only if the programming is designed for it. Concurrent training done poorly will cost you strength. Concurrent training done well builds both without meaningful trade-offs. The research is messier than most people will admit, but the practical answer is cleaner than the research suggests.

Here’s what the science actually shows, why most concurrent training studies are poorly designed, and how to structure your training to keep getting stronger without becoming a liability when it’s time to move fast.

Why Most People Think You Have to Choose

The conventional wisdom splits into two camps.

The lifters believe running will shrink your muscles and blunt your strength gains. The runners believe heavy lifting will slow you down and make you less efficient. Both camps have a point — but both are also describing what happens when the programming is wrong, not what happens when it’s right.

Most people’s concurrent training looks like this: three hard lifting days, three hard running days, very little structure around recovery, and no thought given to whether those sessions are working against each other. Then they wonder why their squat stalled and their run time didn’t move.

That’s not a concurrent training problem. That’s a programming problem.

What the Research Actually Says — and Why It’s Confusing

A 2012 meta-analysis on concurrent training found that adding aerobic work to a resistance training program produced decreases in strength, hypertrophy, and power compared to lifting alone. That sounds damning until you read the same paper closely.

The same authors noted that a substantial number of the included studies showed no decrements in strength when endurance training was added to the program.

So which is it?

Both.

Depending on how the training was designed.

A study by Nader (2006) found that concurrent training only compromised strength when both modalities were targeting the same muscle groups at the same time — high-frequency lower-body lifting combined with high-volume running, stacked on top of each other with no structural separation. When the training was designed more synergistically, with thought given to what was happening on which day and why, strength losses disappeared.

The interference effect isn’t inevitable.

It’s a programming failure.

The meta-analysis conclusion is worth reading directly: Interference effects of endurance training are a factor of the modality, frequency, and duration of the endurance training.

In other words, it’s not that running hurts your strength. It’s that the wrong kind of running, done too often, for too long, stacked carelessly against your lifting days, hurts your strength. Those are fixable variables.

The Kind of Strong That Actually Matters

Before getting into the structure, it’s worth reframing what “getting stronger” means in this context.

Most people default to picturing a powerlifter — someone optimizing for maximum mass and maximum load. That model works great if the only thing your body needs to do is lift in a controlled setting. It works poorly if you need to move, ruck, run, climb, drag, and perform across a full range of physical demands for months at a stretch.

Think gymnast, not powerlifter.

A well-designed strength program gets you stronger by improving neuromuscular signaling, motor control, and fiber recruitment. You’re using the muscle mass you already have more effectively. Your force production goes up without your bodyweight going up proportionally.

And yea, you’ll gain some mass as well but that’s not a primary focus, however…

The same meta-analysis that raised concerns about concurrent training also found that the interference effect was most pronounced for hypertrophy — muscle size — not strength per se. For military athletes, that’s a feature, not a bug. If you can keep getting stronger without accumulating mass that slows you down or makes you a heavier casualty to carry if things go sideways, that’s exactly the outcome you want.

The goal isn’t to look like you lift.

The goal is to perform like you do.

How to Structure Concurrent Training Without Killing Either Quality

The key variables are modality, frequency, and duration — which is exactly what the research identified as the drivers of interference. Control those three variables and concurrent training works.

Strength: Maximal Loads, Minimum Reps

For the lifting side, design around moving heavy loads for low reps. Five sets of one to three reps. Three sets of two. Variations in that neighborhood. The goal is to tax the nervous system and drive strength adaptations without creating the kind of metabolic fatigue and muscle protein breakdown that accompanies high-volume, moderate-load hypertrophy work.

Supplement that with dynamic effort work — submaximal loads moved as fast as possible. This addresses power and bar speed, and it gives your central nervous system a session it can recover from faster than a max-effort day. Your body can only handle so many true max-effort sessions in a week without digging a hole you can’t climb out of during a high-tempo operational period.

Two to three strength sessions per week is the right range. More than that, done at genuine intensity, will compromise your ability to do quality aerobic work — and will compromise your recovery if you’re operating in a high-stress environment.

Endurance: High-Intensity Intervals, Not Long Slow Miles

For the running side, two to three high-intensity aerobic interval sessions per week. Not long slow distance. Not junk mileage.

High-intensity interval training improves maximal aerobic power — the rate at which your muscles can produce energy through oxidative metabolism — without the same interference signal that long slow distance sends. It also avoids the fatigue, muscle protein breakdown, and chronic recovery debt that accumulates with heavy mileage weeks.

A simple structure that works: one interval session built around shorter, faster efforts (100m to 600m repeats at hard effort with full recovery), one session at a slightly longer tempo effort (a mile or two below your maximum pace, sustainable for 20–30 minutes), and one shorter threshold session depending on your current training block focus. That’s three quality aerobic sessions per week without a single wasted mile.

If you’re running long slow miles every week in addition to lifting three times per week, you are generating the conditions for interference. If you replace the junk miles with structured intervals, you remove most of the risk.

Session Separation and Recovery

The structural fix that most people miss is session separation. Lifting legs and then running the same afternoon is exactly the kind of overlapping stress that produced the negative results in the concurrent training literature.

Where possible, separate your hardest strength session and your hardest interval session by at least 24 hours. If you’re lifting lower body one day, that’s not the day for your hardest interval work. If you’re doing an all-out interval session, give yourself a day before you’re back under a max-effort squat.

This doesn’t require a complex schedule. A rough weekly structure that works for most people:

Monday: Strength — maximal effort day
Tuesday: Intervals — hard aerobic session
Wednesday: Strength — dynamic effort / power work
Thursday: Intervals — tempo or threshold session
Friday: Strength — secondary strength or accessory work
Saturday: Intervals — shorter, moderate aerobic work or active recovery
Sunday: Off

Adjust based on your schedule and operational tempo, but protect the separation between your most demanding sessions in each modality. That separation is the mechanism that prevents interference. It’s not optional.

What This Looks Like in Practice

To give this some grounding: running a sub-18-minute three-mile on the USMC PFT while maintaining 25-plus pull-ups, a 330-plus-pound back squat, and a 380-plus-pound deadlift is achievable under this framework. Those aren’t elite powerlifting numbers. They’re not elite running numbers. But they represent a capable, functional military athlete — someone who can hold their own in the weight room, hold their own on a run, and not become a liability if the mission demands either.

Read that last paragraph again.

The number one critique I’ve seen (and the internet is good at giving unsolicited negative feedback) is that none of those numbers are elite and concurrent training doesn’t work.

Well, that’s kinda correct…

These numbers aren’t that impressive when compared against athletes specializing in one modality or another.

But when you’re looking at a 165# kid who can run sub-6-min miles repeatedly while also squatting and pulling twice his body weight, can slap a 40# pack on his back and walk all day, maxes out his fitness test scores, and is injury free over teh long term, you’re looking at a very capable human.

The programming that gets you there isn’t complicated.

It’s two to three quality lifting sessions a week focused on maximal strength and power.

Two to three quality interval sessions a week focused on aerobic power development.

Deliberate session separation. Consistent execution over months.

What it’s not: six days of lifting plus daily long runs. That’s the program that produces the interference effect, the injury, and the plateau.

Observable Progress Markers

If this approach is working, you should see all of the following moving forward over an 8–12 week cycle:

Strength numbers on your primary compound lifts (squat, deadlift, press) trending upward without significant bodyweight increase
Interval pace improving — the same workout feeling easier or the same effort producing faster times
Recovery between hard sessions improving — you’re not dreading the next session
Bodyweight staying roughly stable or trending slightly upward without feeling heavier on runs
Pull-up and push-up performance holding or improving alongside the lifting

If strength is going up but your run pace is dropping off, your interval sessions may be too long or too frequent.

If your run pace is improving but your strength numbers are stalling, your lifting intensity may need to go up or your session separation may need more attention.

Both qualities can move in the right direction simultaneously. When one is moving the wrong direction, the program needs a structural adjustment — not a complete redesign.

Oh and you’ll probably notice you’re overall durability will improve and some of those nagging injuries will disappear.

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FAQ

How often should I lift and run in the same week without interference?

Two to three sessions of each per week is the practical ceiling for most military athletes. Beyond that, recovery becomes the limiting factor — especially if you’re adding operational or duty demands on top. The more important variable is session separation: don’t stack your hardest lifting day directly against your hardest run day.

Will running really prevent me from getting stronger?

Only if it’s programmed poorly. High-volume, low-intensity running stacked on top of high-frequency lifting creates the interference effect documented in the research. High-intensity interval training two to three times per week, properly separated from heavy strength sessions, does not produce the same compromise. The interference is a programming problem, not an inherent conflict between the two qualities.

How long before I start seeing both strength and speed improve?

Most athletes running a properly structured concurrent program see strength numbers trending upward and interval paces improving within six to eight weeks of consistent training. The first four weeks are largely neurological adaptation — the strength gains you feel won’t always show up immediately on the scale or in the mirror, and that’s fine. By week eight you should have clear data on whether both qualities are moving in the right direction.

Should I be worried about gaining too much muscle mass if I’m lifting heavy?

Low-rep, high-intensity strength work — five sets of one to three reps — drives strength through neuromuscular adaptation more than hypertrophy. The research on concurrent training actually suggests that aerobic work mildly suppresses hypertrophy even when strength continues to improve, which is a useful feature for military athletes who need to perform across a broad range of demands without carrying excess bodyweight.

Can I follow this approach during a deployment or high-operational-tempo period?

Yes, and this framework is specifically designed to hold up under operational stress. Two to three focused strength sessions and two to three quality interval sessions per week leave enough recovery margin to function at a high level without digging a chronic fatigue hole. It’s not a maximum-volume program — it’s a minimal-effective-dose program, which is exactly what you need when the training is competing with the job.

The interference effect is real — but it’s a product of poor programming, not an unavoidable consequence of training both qualities at the same time. Control the modality, the frequency, and the duration of your aerobic work. Separate your hardest sessions. Keep your lifting focused on strength, not size. You don’t have to choose between the barbell and the track.

1% Better Every Day.