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.  

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.

Why You Need To Build An Aerobic Base

This post originally appeared on EliteTrack.com

When it comes to conditioning for athletes, it seems that all the emphasis over the last several years has shifted toward using high intensity interval training (HIIT) to develop an athletes conditioning as a shortcut compared to long slow distance (LSD) training. There are many reasons for this including the old paradigm that if you train slow you’ll be slow, games are played at high intensity so training should be at high intensity, or that training at these high intensities will build mental toughness in athletes, but is this the best approach to take when planning for long term improvements and sustained aerobic gains for athletes?

While we may immediately think of most sports outside of marathons and other long distance events, as almost purely anaerobic, therefore prioritizing high intensity training, the majority of sports include a large aerobic portion in terms of energy pathway utilization. This happens in a number of ways, either there are short bursts of high speed and power interspersed with rest periods, or there’s some form of to moderate to high level of activity that only lasts a minute or two at a time. While on the surface this looks like an activity fueled primarily through the ATP-PC and anaerobic glycolytic systems, Gaitanos et al found that over the course of 10 six second sprints, anaerobic ATP production dropped by 64% while total power output only dropped 27% (Gastin, 2001, p. 731). This would suggest that aerobic energy contribution increased over the course of those ten sprints so that the athlete could meet the energy demands for the later sprints. McGawley et al also found that over the course of 5 six second sprints, aerobic contribution increased from ~10% to ~40%. So even though the work periods are fairly short, the more we do, the greater their aerobic contribution.

Another study found that repeat sprint ability (RSA) was correlated with an athletes minimum velocity to reach their VO2max (vVO2max) as well as their velocity at the onset of blood lactate accumulation (vOBLA). So to improve performance in repeat sprints or typical game situations, it’s beneficial to increase an athlete’s aerobic speed, which is the speed that they can maintain while still in a predominantly aerobic energy zone. By improving the efficiency and output of the aerobic energy system, you will be able to reach higher speeds before reaching your anaerobic threshold which is where the OBLA occurs (Kindermann, 1979).
Researchers have found that when exercising maximally or near maximal levels, the aerobic system responds rapidly and at around 60-75 seconds becomes the predominant energy supplier. In non-maximal exercise, it is estimated that shift to aerobic dominance occurs around 20-30 seconds (Gastin, 2001, p. 736). This is in contrast to the notion that the aerobic energy system is “slow” and only responds to low intensity activity. With this information, it becomes clear that any athlete that competes in anything that has repeated all out efforts, or near maximal intensities that last longer than 20 seconds should develop their aerobic base in training.

When it comes to building an aerobic base, there have been various studies to show that you can improve your aerobic fitness through HIIT at a faster rate compared to LSD training, however many of these studies do not state that the majority of aerobic gains were mostly made in the first few weeks and then plateaued through the remainder of the study. Maffetone found (2016) that after an extended period of HIIT, aerobic capacity began to deteriorate the longer this training method was used. In addition, many HIIT studies mainly only measure VO2max which is not significantly correlated with the ability to repeat sprints (Da Silva, 2010, p. 2120). Even though you’ve increased your ability to use more oxygen for energy, you do not become more efficient at using that oxygen for energy production.The best way to increase aerobic efficiency is by training in an aerobic zone either through steady state training or an interval method where you don’t allow your heart rate to get above (180-your age), which is a formula that estimates the intensity that will correspond to your maximum aerobic function as calculated by Maffetone. There are some modifications to this based on health and training status which must be taken into account, for those recovering from a major illness (surgery, hospital stay, etc..) or are on any medication you should subtract 10 from your calculation, for people who are just getting back into training, have become injured, regressed in training, are inconsistent, or get more than two colds per year you should subtract 5 from your calculation, if you are consistent with your training (4x per week) without any problems then use your calculated number, if you have been training for two plus years without any problems and have progressed in competition then you should add 5 to your calculation. While these modifications will work for the majority of the population, for some high level athletes you may need to add 10 to your calculation if you find adding 5 not enough after self-assessment. For the many people who do not have heart rate monitors, this intensity typically corresponds to about 65% of your maximal speed (Bertuzzi, 2013, p. 456).

While building an aerobic base hasn’t always been seen as the sexy and fun parts of training, it may prove to be one of the most beneficial in terms of maintaining performance throughout games and competition. Because of this, it’s imperative that we train our athletes in these aerobic zones to increase their efficiency at using oxygen for energy production, which will increase their vOBLA and vVO2max.

References:

Bertuzzi, R., Nascimeto, E.M.F., Uro, R., Damasceno, M., Lima-Silva, A., (2013) Energy System Contributions During Incremental Exercise Test. Journal of Sports Science and Medicine, 12, 454-460.

Da Silva, J.F., Guglielmo, L.G.A., & Bishop, D., (2010). Relationship Between Different Measures of Aerobic Fitness and Repeated-Sprint Ability in Elite Soccer Players. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 24 (8), 2115-2121.

Gastin, P. (2001) Energy System Interaction and Relative Contribution During Maximal Exercise. Sports Medicine, 31, 725-741.

Kindermann, W., Simon, G., & Keul, J. (1979). The Significance of Aerobic-Anaerobic Transition for the Determinants of Work Load Intensities During Endurance Training. European Journal of Applied Physiology and Occupational Physiology, 42, 25-34.

Maffetone, P., (2016, June 22) MAF Exercise Heart Rate – How it can help improve health and sports performance. Retrieved from https://philmaffetone.com/white-paper-maf-exercise-heart-rate-can-help-improve-health-sports-performance/

Maffetone, P., (2016, June 22) An Introduction to MAF – Maximum Aerobic Function. Retrieved from https://philmaffetone.com/white-paper-introduction-maf-maximum-aerobic-function/

McGawley, K., Bishop, D., (2015). Oxygen Uptake During Repeated-Sprint Exercise. Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport, 18, 214-218.