Four Benefits of Strength Training For Runners

Running has always been fairly popular among recreational athletes, but for those who have decided to get a little more serious let’s briefly look at four benefits that adding strength training will have on your running performance.  

• Decreased injury risk by improving both muscle and tendon health and strength.

• Increased endurance by improving neuromuscular pathways, thus improving running economy and lessening the amount of work done to maintain the same pace.

• Improved mobility by working in more than just one plane of motion and developing the less used muscles in running.

• Improved speed, by increasing the maximum force output of the muscles, you’ll be able to run faster throughout the race or at the end during your last sprint.

These are are just the beginning of the benefits that strength training will have for runners, and at this point the research overwhelmingly supports adding strength training to endurance training as a way to get better.  

Understanding Resistance Training

Resistance training may be one of the most misunderstood topics in fitness and performance. There's plenty of misinformation out there on the inter-webs so let's look at some common myths and misconceptions regarding resistance training.

• Lifting weights will not make women bulky or "manly".
  • This is a common one that I hear all the time and frankly isn't true. It's almost impossible for women to get "bodybuilder bulky" from strength training because they don't produce enough testosterone to support that amount of muscle building, so to get to that level there typically needs to be some form of supplementation to get that amount of muscle building.
• Resistance training makes you slow.
  • I get this from my young track athletes who are just starting out their journey of athletic development. It's been thought that resistance training will make you slow and this isn't the case. To go sprint faster you need to put more force into the ground, so strength training is necessary for speed or power athletes.
• Girls shouldn't lift heavy weights.
  • Every time I have my track girls I see them not wanting to grab anything heavier than an 8 lb dumbbell when they can clearly go much heavier. This comes back to the false notion of them not wanting to get bulky, but to get strong you have to lift heavy weights and progress to heavier weights as you get stronger.
• A good workout will leave you exhausted and sweaty at the end of it.
  • This is something I get from parents, that their kids aren't tired enough at the end of a session, or that they rested too much to get a good workout in. While it may come from good intentions, this "no pain, no gain" thinking that has surrounded fitness and performance training has gone on too long. For high intensity work (max strength, speed, power) there needs to be plenty of rest time so that the athlete can perform to their abilities. While there is a time and place for exhausting workouts they should be used sparingly depending on the goals of the individual.
• You'll see results immediately.
  • I sincerely hope no one truly believes this. For physical changes to occur with resistance training it takes generally 6-8 weeks of consistent training. Before this, you'll see increases in strength, coordination, and power but these are primarily neurological improvements and the physical changes begin to show soon after this. The key with this is that you have to be consistent to see improvements.
• Endurance athletes don't need resistance training.
  • This topic has gained a lot of attention recently and many endurance coaches still won't budge from the way they've always done things. The truth is that resistance training helps stave off injuries, improves running economy and can make you faster. This works because your muscles have now been stimulated to a level that allowed them to fire in a more efficient manner that wasn't happening with just running, cycling, swimming. The benefits of adding resistance training are very clear for endurance athletes and should be part of every training plan.

Sprinting Basics

Most sports have a few things in common, one of these commonalities is that you can never be too fast. In fact being faster than your competitors correlates well with getting more scoring opportunities in games. But before going on any further let’s define what speed is, for most sports it is how fast an athlete can sprint at maximal speed. 

Sprinting, is a highly technical skill that has been determined to be an outcome of stride length and stride frequency. The basic premise is that the longer your stride length, this will allow you to cover more distance and will help you be faster, and for stride frequency, the shorter time you take between each stride, the faster you will be able to sprint. Stride length is primarily determined by limb lengths and motor control and typically is optimized once the athlete begins to learn the skill that is sprinting. So while this is a determinant of speed, there is little to be done to improve it once the pattern has been set. Stride frequency is based on two factors, flight time and ground contact time, and commonly is trained by teaching athletes to quickly “turn over” and move their legs as fast as possible. While this may make sense at first glance, a deeper dive into the subject shows that flight time, no matter if it’s measured from Olympic level athletes or your average grandma remains relatively unchanged. In fact when studies on stride frequency are done, the one commonality among elite level sprinters is that they get on and off the ground the fastest which is the main factor that can be modified to improve maximal sprinting speed. So while it may be common practices to ask your athletes to swing their feet faster to be faster, this actually doesn’t determine sprint speed and instead the focus should be on shortening the ground contact times.

With emphasis being on shortening ground contact times, there are a few ways to do it. First and foremost, proper body positioning must be maintained. The pelvis should be slightly posteriorly rotated (butt tucked down) as this sets the body up for proper positioning at touch down, as well as not allowing the swing leg hip into hyperextension. By being in proper position at touch down, with the stance leg under the hips, the ground contact time is reduced because the leg effectively acts as a spring and gets up and off the ground without any extra time needed to get into position, but when an athlete reaches out in front of them, this may seem like it will increase stride length and will improve sprinting, but in reality it increases braking forces at the foot and increases the amount of time needed to get into proper position and then off the ground. 

A second important training factor for improving sprint performance is to get strong. There are clear correlations of an athletes squat one rep max and their sprint time being faster up to about a strength level of 2x body weight. Another reason this is important is because during sprinting, forces of up to 5x body weight are experienced at every ground contact, and that’s only on one leg, so increasing the amount of force you can put into the ground in a very short period of time is essential to sprinting faster. Strength training also increases the stiffness of your tendons, the ability to withstand deformation, which is essential to being able to withstand the forces associated with sprinting.

Ultimately while sprinting is a highly technical skill, the major determinant of success and running really really fast is how quickly you can get off the ground. Making sure that you are in proper position at touch down, getting strong are some of the best ways to aid the effort of getting fast, instead of spending time trying to move your legs faster or increase your stride length which may ultimately lead to decreases in performance.