You’re a runner, triathlete, cyclist, or some other kind of endurance athlete. You want to be better at your sport, but you also want to maintain your muscle mass. So you’re already doing some strength training, but you’re not sure if you’re doing the right amount, the right exercises, the right weights, and so on.
Well, no more after this article.
Original source: here.
Here, what we’re going to cover:
- Why a runner, or any other endurance athlete should be strength training
- How much strength training a runner should be doing
- Which exercises an endurance athlete should be doing
And if you want to take all the thought, and guesswork out of the process, and just do it right the first time, simply have a professional design your program. You can see if you qualify to work with us by filling out this questionnaire.
Why a Runner Should be Strength Training
You compete in some sort of distance event, whether it’s 5K, 10K, half marathon or full marathon. You only have so much energy to put into your training, so wouldn’t it make sense for all your training to be geared towards your sport? Why “waste” extra energy on something that doesn’t directly contribute to you becoming a better runner or endurance athlete?
There are 3 good reasons to do strength training from a runner’s perspective:
Reason #1: You’ll be Faster
What determines your speed in running? It’s both stride length (how long is each step) and stride frequency (how many steps you take per minute/second). So our formula would look like this:
Speed = stride length x stride frequency
So it stands to reason that to improve your speed, you can either take longer strides, or take faster strides.
How do you take longer strides? By putting more force into the ground. How do you put in more force? By getting stronger. So strength training helps. Not endurance training.
Reason #2: Better Endurance
Wait, what? Strength training giving you more endurance? Shouldn’t you do endurance training to have more endurance? Yes, to both. Both endurance training and strength training can increase endurance, through different mechanisms.
You see, your maximal aerobic capacity (known as your “VO2max”) is made up of 2 components:
- The central component (the heart)
- The peripheral component (the muscles)
The formula for that is:
VO2max = Q x (a – v O2 difference)
Where:
Q is cardiac output (how much blood your heart can pump per minute). That’s your central component.
(a – v O2 difference) is the difference in oxygen between your arteries and your veins. The smaller the difference, the more endurance you’ll have. Essentially, this is your ability to extract oxygen from the blood. This is your peripheral component.
Endurance training improves your cardiac output (central component), but doesn’t do much for the peripheral component. The peripheral component is addressed primarily through strength training (especially high reps of 15-50).
Reason #3: Lower Risk of Injury
Long distance running is notorious for having high injury rates. Especially overuse injuries. Overuse injuries simply happen because the amount of work you did exceeded the amount of work that your tissues (muscles, tendons, and bones) were able to handle. And now you’re injured, so you have to either modify your training, or take time off entirely. Not good.
So by raising your tissues’ tolerance to work, you can do more work before getting injured. More training means better results, and of course, less pain in the long run.
How Much Strength Training a Runner Should be Doing
This sub-section could be a whole article in and of itself, because you’d think there would be a simple answer, but there isn’t. There are several factors to consider here.
Factor #1: Distance
This is a simple one. Overall, the greater the distance that a runner or endurance athlete competes in, the less strength training s/he should be doing. Someone who competes in 5K races should be doing more strength training than someone who competes in marathons.
There is simply a limited ability to adapt to the stress of training, and remember, the goal of strength training for a runner is to make them a better runner. Which is different than the goal of strength training for a strength athlete, which is also different than the goal of strength training for a mixed athlete (soccer, basketball, tennis, etc.), which is still different than the goal of strength training for a non-athlete.
So with limited ability to adapt to the stress of training, it’s better if most of the adaptation happens to the endurance, not the strength side of things.
Of course, you want both strength training and endurance training together, but the proportion of the two changes.
As a very gross average, a 5K runner might do 65% endurance training, and 35% strength training. At the other extreme, a marathon runner might do 85% endurance training, and 15% strength training.
But again, these are averages, and don’t take into account yearly variations in training volume. That’s what the next factor is about.
Factor #2: Phase of Training
The phase of training simply refers to how close you are to a race. Endurance athletes have a competition date, and they work backwards to plan their schedule to peak for a competition. Generally speaking, the farther away an athlete is from a competition, the lower their volume of endurance training. The closer they get to a competition, the higher the volume of endurance training.
And again, because of the limited capacity to adapt to the stress of training, the volume of endurance to strength will fluctuate with the training cycle.
For example, in the beginning of a training cycle, when running volumes are relatively low, this is the time to be doing strength training more seriously. Maybe something like 2-4 sets, or 8-12 reps, 2-3 times per week.
By the time it gets closer to a competition, strength training shifts to more like 1-2 sets of 15-20 reps, 1-2 times per week.
And yes, there are variations in between.
Factor #3: Goal
And the third factor to consider is the individual runner’s goal. The goal in the off-season, when the runner is either not running at all, or running very little, the goal should be to gain the muscle mass lost during the season. This is the time to do more strength training, than endurance training. At this point, our runner may do 3-8 sets of 5-12 reps, 3-4 times per week. In this phase, the runner should shoot for gaining 6-10 pounds of lean tissue if he’s a male, or 3-6 pounds of lean tissue if she’s a female.
Then, for most of the season, the goal should be on muscle maintenance, as opposed to gain. At this point, our runner may do 2-4 sets of 8-15 reps, 2-3 times per week.
And as the mileage goes up, and it gets closer to competition, the goal of strength training should simply be to minimize muscle losses. Muscle will be lost – that’s almost a guarantee. So there’s no point in trying to increase muscle during this phase. Maintenance will also be difficult. So the focus is really on just slowing down the losses in muscle.
Why? Because again, going back to our previous principle: there’s a limited amount of adaptive capacity – you adapt to either strength training, or endurance training. And given that you’re an endurance athlete, it’s preferable to adapt to endurance training. Cardio and strength training are diametrically opposed goals: cardio burns muscle, and strength training builds muscle. Imagine pouring water into a bucket. That’s strength training. Imagine a hole at the bottom of that bucket. That’s cardio. It’s the relationship of how much water is being poured into the bucket and the size of the hole at the bottom of the bucket that determines whether you gain, maintain, or lose muscle.
In fact, having too much muscle mass for an endurance athlete may be detrimental, because big biceps, shoulders and chest are excess mass to carry around that isn’t contributing to your goal.
Exercises for Runners
By far, the biggest mistake runners make is avoiding training their legs. They reason that “I run a lot, so my legs must be strong.” That’s an incorrect assumption. Their legs have a lot of endurance – that’s true. But to assume that they’re strong would be incorrect. Strength is the maximal amount of force muscles can generate. Emphasis on “maximal.” Since endurance athletes are repeating the same movement thousands of times (taking strides), by definition, it can’t be maximal. Maximal means one time. Can’t do a second time. That’s strength. Endurance, on the other hand is the ability to sustain submaximal contractions for a long period of time.
All that is to say that endurance athletes have legs with a lot of endurance (duh). Not strength.
So the implication of all of this is that it’s important for endurance athletes to do strength exercises for their legs. You don’t need a lot of exercises, just 1-2 that work the majority of the leg muscles.
Good choices would be:
And of course, upper body exercises should not be neglected either. “But wait”, you think to yourself. “I’m a runner – that’s an exclusively lower body exercise. Why do I need to work on my upper body?”
The reason is that the upper body counter-balances the lower body. When you take a step with your right leg, it’s your left arm that moves forward. If your body perceives a strength imbalance between your upper body and your lower body, it will decrease the force produced by the lower body, to match that of the upper body, in order to prevent injury. Of course, there is an inherent strength imbalance between the lower and upper body (the lower body is usually much stronger), but if that imbalance is too significant, that’s when your performance suffers.
So again, don’t neglect the upper body. Good choices of exercises would be:
Lat pulldowns, or pullups
Of course, exercise selection is only the 4th most important variable when it comes to exercise programming. The most important part is the progression model, followed by intensity, followed by volume. Only after those 3 parameters have been “dialed in” does exercise selection really matter. But that’s a topic for another article.
In the meantime, if you want proper exercise programming, you can see if you qualify to work with us by filling out this questionnaire.
