Running vs. Strength Training: Which Burns More Fat?

There seems to be a lot of discourse online about what exercise helps you lose the most fat. Many people will tell you that strength training is the best way because it elevates your metabolism because of EPOC and increases basal metabolic rate. Others will say that cardio, running specifically, doesn’t burn fat, it just burns calories. Then there are those who say cardio is not efficient because it takes hours of training to lose just a pound of fat. While all of these may be partially or completely true, they don’t tell the whole truth about running and fat loss.

How do you lose fat?

First we must address how fat is both stored and lost. It’s a mostly simple equation of calories-in versus calories-out. If you burn more calories than you ingest, you will lose weight; some of it being fat, some being water, and potentially some of it being muscle.

One pound of fat is the equivalent of about 3,500 calories, so if you want to lose a pound of fat per week, which is traditionally recommended, then you must be in a deficit of 3,500 calories per week, or 500 per day. Thus, if you consume more than you burn, you will gain fat.

Your body can store about 2,500 calories worth of carbohydrates in the form of glycogen. It’s stored in the skeletal muscles and liver, and is used for moderate to high-intensity exercise. After exercise, you must consume carbs to replenish your stores, but if you don’t, your body will perform gluconeogenesis, pulling from fat stores, protein, and lactate produced during exercise to rebuild glycogen. This is one of the precise ways in which a low-carb diet leads to fat loss.

“Running burns calories, not fat”

This is a common phrase used to diminish the benefits of running. Internet trainers use it to sell a plan that caters to the large percentage of people who “don’t like” doing cardio. The problem with this statement isn’t just that it’s misleading; it preys on people wanting the easy way out.

As I described above, calories are a unit of energy. Carbs and fat provide 4 and 9 calories per gram, respectively. These substrates can be replenished by consuming them, but stored carbs can also be restored by gluconeogenesis. So if you burn 500 calories during a run, you are now in a deficit, which is the first step in losing fat.

What makes this claim even weaker is the fact that running relies heavily on glycogen for energy production. Fat is a great source of energy, it provides roughly twice the calories per gram as carbohydrate, but it’s slow to metabolize and used primarily when sedentary or moving slowly. Running relies on a combination of fat and glycogen, and faster running shifts the balance more toward glycogen. When you deplete your glycogen stores, your body has to rebuild them, and gluconeogenesis is part of how that debt gets paid, using fat and other substrates in the process.

Lifting vs. running

I’m not here to argue that running is better than lifting. I think everyone should be doing both cardio and strength training on a regular basis. The idea that strength training is inherently better for fat loss just doesn’t hold up. You can burn far more calories per hour doing cardio, and the recovery is much lighter, making it more manageable to do on a regular basis. Strength training does burn more calories after the session through tissue repair (EPOC), but the recovery cost is steeper, often leaving you with a “weaker” training session for a day or two afterward.

Both are excellent for fitness and fat loss. If I want a client to lose fat quickly, I’ll typically have them do 60 minutes of light-to-moderate intensity cardio 4-5 days a week and perform 3-4 full-body strength sessions of 60 minutes each per week. This keeps the body in a constant state of repair and builds muscle, while low-to-moderate intensity cardio widens the calorie deficit.

So, Which is best?

Fat loss isn’t about picking the “best” exercise, it’s about maintaining a calorie deficit consistently enough that your body has no choice but to tap fat stores. Running does this efficiently: it burns a high volume of calories per session, depletes glycogen, and forces your body to replenish it, drawing on fat stores in the process. Strength training does it differently, building muscle that raises your resting metabolic rate over time. Neither is a shortcut, and neither works in isolation from what’s on your plate.

If you’re chasing fat loss, stop asking which exercise burns the most fat in a vacuum and start asking which combination you’ll actually do 4-5 days a week without breaking down. For most of my clients, that’s a mix of both cardio to drive the deficit, strength to protect and build muscle while it happens. The best exercise is the one that keeps you consistent long enough for the math to work.

About the Author

Josh Kober is co-owner and head coach at Glide Training Co., a personal training and run coaching studio in Bankers Hill, San Diego. He holds a degree in Exercise Science, an ACSM Personal Training Certification, and an RRCA Running Coach Certification, with 15 years of coaching experience helping clients build strength and improve running performance. Learn more at glidetc.com or visit the studio at 2056 1st Ave, San Diego, CA.

Longevity Training: Why It's Not New, You've Just Heard a New Name for It

Longevity training is all the buzz as people want to extend their lifespan, especially the high quality years. Online, we see a major focus on mobility work, eccentric loading, corrective exercises, and recovery. For us at Glide, this is nothing new. We have been training our personal training and group classes in this way for over 10 years, only we call it diversified fitness.

What Longevity Training Actually Means

Scroll through fitness content right now and "longevity training" is everywhere — reformer Pilates, mobility circuits, eccentric training, zone 2 cardio. The marketing is new. The idea is not.

Longevity training is a rebrand of “aging gracefully” which I admit, caters to a broader range of age-demographics. Strip away the trend language and you're left with a simple goal: build a body that moves well, stays strong, and holds up over decades — not just for next month's race or this summer's aesthetic goal. That's not a 2026 innovation. That's just good coaching.

How Glide Has Approached This for 10 Years

We didn't wait for an industry report to tell us longevity mattered. Diversifying fitness between strength training, cardiovascular fitness, mobility, corrective exercise, and recovery have been the foundation of our coaching since we opened.

Diversifying fitness. A body trained one way breaks down over time. We build programs that mix strength, cardio, and mobility work so our members aren't over-relying on the same movement patterns, joints, and muscle groups every session. A runner who only runs and never strength trains is set up for painful knees, feet and hips.

Mobility as a non-negotiable. Strength without range of motion is a ceiling. We build mobility work into programming, not as a warm-up afterthought, but as a real component of the plan because joints that move well are joints that stay pain-free longer. Greater range of motion also promotes more muscle development because the more a muscle fibers that stretch, the more fibers that need to contract.

Corrective exercise. Most people carry compensations: a hip that doesn't fire, a shoulder that rounds forward, an ankle that doesn't dorsiflex. Left alone, these become the injuries that sideline people in their 40s, 50s, and beyond. We assess for these patterns and correct them before they become a problem, not after. Correctives are often associated with rehab from injury, but working on balanced muscle development will help prevent the need for rehab.

Why This Matters More Than the Trend Cycle

Fitness trends come and go. Longevity training will eventually get rebranded again into something else. What doesn't change is the outcome people actually want: to keep doing the things they love; running, golfing, playing with their kids or grandkids, without their body being the limiting factor.

That's the entire premise behind training for the long game instead of training for a short-term look or a single event. It's why our approach hasn't shifted just because the industry found a new word for it.

Longevity training isn't a new discipline — it's a new name for principles rooted in real coaching: diversified movement, mobility, and correcting imbalances before they become injuries. At Glide, this has been the standard for a decade, not a pivot to catch a trend.

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Josh Kober is co-owner and head coach of Glide Training Co. in Bankers Hill, San Diego. He holds an Exercise Science degree, ACSM Personal Training Certification, and RRCA Running Coach Certification, with 15 years of coaching experience.

Are Plated Shoes Good to Wear as Everyday Runners?

Short answer: No, not as your daily trainer. Carbon-plated (or nylon-plated) super shoes are built for racing and speed work, not everyday miles. Used every day, they can blunt the natural strength development in your feet and toes, wear out faster than their price tag justifies, and mask weaknesses that show up later as injuries. They can be a great addition to your rotation, just not as your only pair.

What Plated Shoes Actually Do

A plated shoe pairs a rigid plate (carbon fiber or nylon) with a thick stack of high-rebound foam. The plate acts like a lever, and the foam absorbs impact efficiently while returning energy quickly with it’s insane memory. The result is a shoe that can make you faster with less perceived effort; which is exactly why they've taken over start lines since the marathon super shoe boom began.

That performance benefit is real. It's also the reason these shoes need to be used with intention, not as your default trainer.

What Daily Use Costs You

1. Reduced Muscle Development in the Feet and Toes

Your feet have over 20 muscles designed to stabilize, absorb impact, and propel you forward with every step. A plated shoe does a lot of that work for you. The rigid plate limits the natural flex through the forefoot and toe-off phase of your stride, which means the intrinsic foot muscles and toe flexors get less of a training stimulus every time you run in them. When the ground pushes your toes back, the body responds by flexing the toes, downward into the ground.

Wear them for every run, and you're essentially skipping a workout for your feet on every single mile. Over months, that shows up as weaker toe-off power, less stable arches, and a foot that's more dependent on the shoe to do its job. Some common injuries associated with over usage of super-shoes are plantar fasciitis, Morton’s Neuroma, and posterior tibialis tendinitis.

2. Cost Versus Shoe Life

Super shoes typically run $200–$275, well above the $130–$160 range of a standard daily trainer. That price tag reflects the plate and the premium foam, but that foam is also the first thing to break down.

High-rebound race foams are engineered for peak responsiveness, not durability. Most plated shoes lose meaningful energy return somewhere between 100–200 miles, far sooner than the 300–500 miles you'd expect from a durable daily trainer. Running in them every day means you're paying premium prices for a shoe that's degrading faster than a trainer half the cost.

When Plated Shoes Make Sense

- Race day

- Speed work: tempo runs, intervals, and threshold sessions

- Select long runs when specifically practicing race pace

Everywhere else, a well-cushioned, non-plated daily trainer should be doing the job and doing more to keep your feet strong.

Why Strength Work Is Non-Negotiable If You Use Plated Shoes

If plated shoes are part of your speed work or race rotation, foot and hip strengthening isn't optional, it's what keeps the shoe's benefit from becoming a liability.

For the feet and toes:

- Toe yoga and short-foot exercises to rebuild intrinsic strength

- Single-leg calf raises to reinforce push-off power the plate is compensating for

- Barefoot or minimal-shoe strides a few times a week to keep the forefoot muscles engaged

For the hips:

- Single-leg glute bridges and side-lying hip abduction to maintain the stability plated shoes can mask

- Lateral band walks to keep the glute medius firing, since a stiff plate can reduce the natural hip stabilization work your stride normally demands

The goal isn't to avoid plated shoes. It's to make sure your body is still doing the work they're built to skip, so the speed gain doesn't come at the cost of durability.

The Bottom Line

Plated shoes are a tool, not a lifestyle. Save them for race day and quality sessions, keep a durable daily trainer for everyday miles, and back both up with foot and hip strength work. That combination is what lets you use the performance benefit without paying for it in injuries or premature muscle atrophy.

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Josh Kober is co-owner and head coach of Glide Training Co. in Bankers Hill, San Diego. He holds an Exercise Science degree, ACSM Personal Training Certification, and RRCA Running Coach Certification, with 15 years of coaching experience.

Assisted Stretching vs. Stretching Alone: What’s the Difference and Which One Do You Need?

Let’s be honest — most people finish a workout, tell themselves they’ll stretch after, and then skip it entirely. And even the ones who do stretch are usually doing the same three moves they learned in middle school P.E. There’s nothing wrong with that, but if you’re dealing with recurring tightness or you’ve been trying to improve your mobility with little to show for it, it’s worth understanding why solo stretching has a ceiling — and what assisted stretching actually does differently.

Why Stretching Alone Only Gets You So Far

Solo stretching isn’t useless. Staying consistent with even a basic routine will keep you more mobile than doing nothing, and it builds body awareness over time. But there’s a physiological reason why you can only take yourself so far.

When a muscle is pushed toward its end range of motion, your nervous system triggers a protective reflex that causes it to resist further lengthening. It’s a built-in safety mechanism, not a flaw — but it does mean your body is essentially fighting you every time you try to stretch deeper. No matter how disciplined you are, you can’t manually override that response on your own.

There’s also the issue of compensation. Without someone watching your movement, it’s easy to unknowingly stretch the muscles that are already flexible while the tight ones stay exactly where they are. Your hips feel tight so you stretch your hips, but the real problem is your thoracic spine. Your hamstrings are chronically stiff, but the culprit is hip flexor dominance. These things are hard to self-diagnose, and even harder to fix in isolation.

What Changes When Someone Assists the Stretch

Having a trained professional guide your movement changes the equation in a few important ways.

Your nervous system relaxes. When you’re not in control of the movement, your body lets go in a way that’s genuinely difficult to replicate on your own. The reflex that resists deeper stretching softens, and you access range of motion that solo work simply doesn’t reach.

Someone can actually see what’s happening. At Glide, one of the first things we notice during stretch sessions is where people compensate. The shoulder that hikes up, the hip that rotates to avoid a tight posterior chain — these patterns are invisible to the person experiencing them. A coach can find and target the areas that actually need work.

You can use PNF techniques. Proprioceptive Neuromuscular Facilitation — PNF stretching — involves contracting a muscle just before stretching it, which signals the nervous system to release more deeply. It’s one of the most effective flexibility methods available, and it’s nearly impossible to do properly without a partner. Once you’ve experienced a good PNF stretch, you’ll understand why people keep coming back for sessions.

Who Should Be Doing This?

Honestly, most people. But it tends to make the biggest difference for a few specific groups:

People who sit for the majority of the day and carry chronic tightness through the hips, hip flexors, and lower back — which is a lot of people. Athletes looking to improve performance, reduce injury risk, or recover faster between hard training sessions. Anyone working toward a specific movement goal like improving their squat depth, overhead mobility, or building toward more advanced skills. People returning from injury who need to rebuild range of motion progressively and carefully. And anyone who has been stretching consistently for months without seeing results — that plateau is usually a sign the nervous system needs a different approach, not just more effort.

So Which One Do You Actually Need?

If you’re moving well and just want to maintain what you have, solo stretching done consistently and with decent technique is fine. Keep doing it.

If you’re stuck, stiff, dealing with recurring issues, or you’ve been saying “I need to stretch more” for longer than you can remember — assisted stretching is going to move the needle in a way that self-directed work probably won’t. The two aren’t mutually exclusive either. Most clients use their sessions at Glide to make real breakthroughs and then maintain that progress with better daily habits in between.

Personal Stretch Sessions at Glide Training Co.

Our stretch sessions are one-on-one, held right here in Bankers Hill, and tailored to what your body actually needs. Whether you’re an athlete trying to perform at a higher level, someone managing chronic tightness, or just ready to finally feel good moving around — we’ll meet you where you are.

Book a session here and find out what your body is capable of when it stops fighting itself.

Glide Training Co. is located at 2056 1st Ave, San Diego, CA 92101. We offer personal training, group fitness classes, sports performance programs, and personal stretch sessions for all levels.

The Podium: My Favorite Spring-Time Running Routes in San Diego

San Diego has a plethora of great running routes, ranging from foothills and canyons to beaches and estuaries, and even some amazing multi-use paths. Considering the amount of coastline and our great weather, it’s easy to find a beautiful 3-5 mile stretch at one of our many great beaches. Here is my list of 3 favorite places to run when the weather is starting to warm up, flowers are blooming, and the sun is going down later each day.

1. Sunset Cliffs

   This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone for making my list. It’s one of the most beautiful stretches of beach in all of San Diego. The distance from the start of the cliffs, at the State Park sign, to the end of the road where you can find dozens of surfers waxing their boards, is about 1.5 miles. Once at the parking lot you can meander through the trails to extend your out-and-back another half-mile or so. Just up the hill from the parking lot is Point Loma Nazarene University, where you can find the best track in San Diego. This track is open to the public as long as it’s not being used by one of the PLNU athletic teams. Lastly, possibly my favorite part about running at Sunset Cliffs is Hill St. This street lives up to its name. It’s a beast of a hill, right on the coast. Kill your quads on the way up, and on the way down, try to catch your breath while watching waves roll in. A perfect spot for beginners, masochists, track stars, and even run-date during sunset.

2. Embarcadero

   Again, we are by the water, but this time we are running along the San Diego bay. Harbor Drive is a filled with tourists all year long, but it especially packed during the summer. Spring time provides a bit of relief from dodging families while soaking in the sites and sounds. Running south past the Star of India, cruise ships, and USS Midway, seaport village welcomes you with lots of good people watching. Don’t expect to run your fastest pace because ithere is a lot of distractions. Stop by the Tuna Dockside Fish Market to see what locals are pulling up that day. You might luck out and catch a concert at the Rady Shell, which you can hear as you run around the amphitheater. Keep heading south and over the walking bridge to Petco Park. As long as there isn’t an event, you can run through Gallagher Square and sneak a peak into baseballs best ballpark. Finish your run at waterfront park, cooling off in the fountain. Again, this isn’t a place to go train intervals, but spring time is a great time to explore one of the most tourist friendly areas in San Diego. A true “fun run” experience.

3. Sweetwater River Trail

   San Diego has a lot of great trails for running, mostly due to our lack of elevation. My favorite for running this time of year is the Sweetwater River Trail because it is relatively flat with the opportunity to add incline by taking any of the many offshoots to the main trail. Unlike most of San Diego, fresh water is nearby, hence the name. During the spring time, the river emits cool air, waters the nearby plants, providing for a very pleasant scenery. This trail even has history. At the start of the trail you cross a bridge that was originally built in 1929. While I do love this trail anytime of year, the winter mud, summer heat, and Santa Ana winds can make this a less enjoyable experience in the winter, summer, and fall.

There are plenty more places to run and enjoy all that San Diego has to offer, these are just my 3 favorites for the spring.