Does Running Increase Testosterone?

There are many things that can help to increase testosterone levels, and running is one of these.

The majority of exercises will help to increase testosterone. This is due to a number of different reasons.

The main reason why running helps to increase testosterone is that it allows for muscle building. When your body gains muscle, it also gains testosterone. This is because the more body muscle a person has, the more testosterone their body will have.

In addition to running increasing muscle mass, it also helps to maintain weight too. The more exercise someone does, the more likely they are to gain and lose weight.

While there are many factors that you will need to take into consideration too, on the whole the more a person exercises, the healthier they will become. 

When looking at obesity, there are scientific studies which show that obesity can be linked to lower testosterone. Given this, the more running that someone does, the higher chance they have of increasing their levels of testosterone.

While running can increase testosterone, it is important to be aware that it will not dramatically increase your levels. For the vast majority of people, it will only increase these levels slightly.

When looking at men in particular, for the majority of men, they reach peak testosterone levels when they reach 20. After this, the amount of testosterone will begin to decrease slightly each year.

Given this, exercise can help to increase these levels. There are many reasons why someone will want to increase the testosterone levels in their body, such as to improve muscle mass, to help with mental health, energy levels, and sex drive too.

When looking at running and an increase in testosterone in particular, carrying out shorter sprints is going to be more successful in raising it in comparison to long distance running.

While long distance running is great for your body in general, and will help to raise testosterone levels, sprints will improve them at a better percentage.

When it comes to sprints in particular, they very much rely upon muscular strength and power. Given this, they will help to improve your levels, especially when combined with weightlifting.

While running is great for testosterone levels, the best exercise would be weightlifting. Given this, if you combine the two, you will be more likely to alleviate testosterone levels as much as possible.

Is running bad for testosterone?

While all types of exercise do help to increase testosterone levels. If you carry out too much exercise and over exert yourself, this can have a negative effect on testosterone levels and actually cause them to decrease. 

While sprinting and shorter jogs are fantastic at helping to boost your testosterone levels, long distance running can be counterproductive. This is because it is a chronic endurance exercise.

When an exercise is long distance, this causes the athlete or runner to have higher levels of cortisol than the majority of people. 

Cortisol is a form of steroid hormone that helps greatly when performing long distance runs, and it helps to regulate things such as your immune response time.

As it works separately to testosterone, it often has a negative effect on these hormone levels. Instead of working in unison, they will work against each other. 

As you may have noticed, professional athletes that are long distance runners often have a less muscular body in comparison to sprinters.

This is because endurance exercise will break down muscle over time, rather than building it like sprinting and weight lifting does. 

Given this, when this type of exercising occurs regularly, this means that testosterone levels can drop.

However, it is worth noting that on the whole running and even high endurance exercises will not have too great an impact on lowering testosterone levels. This will typically only occur when you carry out endurance training very often. 

Overall, in the majority of cases, running is not bad for testosterone, and you should not allow this to steer you away from high endurance exercises.

However, if you are looking for exercises that are particularly good for improving testosterone levels, sprinting is far better than long distance running. 

Sprinting and weightlifting are both exercises that have been proven to help improve testosterone levels the most.

While the majority of exercise have a positive effect on testosterone levels, the way in which these exercises work the muscles mean that they are better at improving this hormone. 

While exercising and running in general are good at boosting testosterone levels, it should not be solely relied upon.

If you do have any concerns or questions surrounding a lack of testosterone or symptoms surrounding this, you should always seek advice and support from a medical professional. They will be able to advise you on what is best.