Should Runners And Triathletes Strength Train?
If you are an endurance athlete looking to optimise your sport, a search on the internet would clarify that you should be doing some form of strength training to compliment your running, riding or swimming.
But what are the real benefits to adding in gym sessions to your current schedule.
Are there any drawbacks or negatives to adding in strength work? Surely it can’t all be sunshine and rainbows.
In this blog, I will be outlining some of the pros and cons to adding in strength work as an endurance athlete.
THE PROS
DECREASE INJURY RISK
This is one that gets thrown around a lot and it’s probably due to the high injury rates in endurance sports, but I don’t think its as black and white as people make it out to be. Whether you are just starting out or have been in the game for a while, training for your first triathlon or your tenth ironman, strength training can help keep you in the game longer.
I think it’s importance is undeniable when we are specifically talking about returning back from injury or addressing “niggles” before they develop, but the actual decreasing injury risk for an already healthy athlete is an interesting discussion. Logically, it makes a lot of sense that improving the capacity, strength, power and elasticity of your muscles and tendons can help decrease the risk of injury. This is something that I strongly believe and hopefully have seen in the long-term clients that I have worked with. Whether this means we can blanketly say “prevents injury” is another story and anyone who suggests otherwise should be approached with caution, in my opinion.
The type of injuries we commonly see in endurance sports; your overuse-style injuries like tendinopathies, seem to love strength training, so could we potentially get on the front foot and get them before they get us? I think so!
I just also think with this one, we also have to remember that injuries are multi-faceted and often unpredictable. No amount of strength training is going to help you recover from spiking your load, sub-optimal nutrition and recovery, and just freak incidence in general.
Conclusion: It is absolutely worthwhile adding strength training into your schedule to decrease your chance of developing an injury.
Team evolve athlete, Kai, racing a 60km trail
INCREASE PERFORMANCE + EFFICIENCY
Another benefit to strength training for endurance sports is the potential to increase your performance. There are several ways that strength training can do this:
Keep You In The Game Longer - this has more to do with decreasing the risk of injury than it does directly making you a faster runner, rider or swimmer, but indirectly there is a lot of merit to this. If we can stay free from injury for long periods of time, we can accumulate more solid, consistent training. If we can accumulate more training volume, intensity and quality, we are going to directly increase our capacity, speed, endurance and overall performance.
Increasing Strength + Power - increasing the strength of your entire body, increases the potential of the speed and power you can put out. Strength refers to your ability to overcome resistance, power refers to your ability to overcome resistance in the shortest amount of time. So, whether you’re pushing watts on the bike, speed at the track or pace in the pool, more strength and power could take your performance to the next level, especially if you haven’t exposed yourself to a lot of this style of training. A stronger muscle has more potential to produce force, with an increase threshold this can also make other efforts sub-maximal. i.e. if your peak power on the bike is 300w for 30s and you increase your leg strength to be able to handle 350w for 30s, 300w becomes a sub-maximal effort.
Elasticity, Stiffness + Rate of Force Development (RFD) - running is an activity that is elastic in nature, we absorb and reapply force into the ground to bounce back up, like a spring. RFD is similar to power, it is how quickly the muscle can produce force, this is important in running as a faster RFD can result in less ground contact time and a more efficient stride. If we don’t have adequate elasticity, stiffness or RFD in the system, we compromise our ability to maximise our speed and efficiency, i.e. we are slower and potentially “leak” energy. Under the banner of strength training, I would put plyometrics, and using plyometrics in the gym can help us develop this elasticity and RFD. Lifting heavy loads and exposing our tendons to high stimulus in the gym can also increase their stiffness and therefore their ability to transfer force more efficiently.
Conclusion: if you want to maximise performance you need to be in the gym.
img from scientific reports link here
IMPROVE MOVEMENT
With people generally associating strength training with bodybuilders who struggle to rotate, the concept of improving movement through strength training is one that isn’t often spoken about. But, the potential strength training has in creating long-lasting changes in general human movement is actually quite amazing and extremely useful for endurance athletes.
Every endurance athlete feels guilty about not doing their weekly mobility and stretching and if they get injured it’s because they didn’t do enough and not because they upped their running km’s by 30%. Realistically, the typical mobility (stretching, foam rolling) that people do, has very little impact on their overall movement and risk of injury. This is partially because of the modality (foam rolling etc.) and partially because the adherence is generally low.
The reality is, if we can program strategically, we can make long-lasting changes of range of motion, coordination and overall movement quality, this in-turn can have a profound impact on technique, efficiency and performance; getting a better aero position on the bike, coordinating your running technique or improving your high-elbow pull in the pool. We can do this by strategically using warmups, appropriate exercise selection, lifting tempos, constraints, intensities and training volume.
Your body was meant to move in a certain way, use strength training to promote this natural human movement, not take away from it.
Case Study: This before and after is from a few years ago, Matt came to me wanting to put on muscle and his increase strength, back then apart from a basic warmup I don’t think I was doing much mobility with clients at all, especially if their goals were muscle and strength related. So, we deadlifted, we squatted, we pushed, we pulled, we did abs and arms and put on a few kg’s of muscle over a few months, and then we retested his toe touch one day. Position and range of motion was at the forefront of every exercise, and it shows. Over a few months Matt saw some great progress in his toe touch, improving his range significantly and attaining a really nice curvature throughout his spine.
Conclusion: strength training could help take your overall movement to another level.
ELIMINATE NIGGLES
Firstly, let me define ‘niggles’ as; an injury that is insignificant enough, training doesn’t have to be modified, but significant enough that is annoying, lingering and mentally effecting how you approach your session.
We may not be able to eliminate niggles altogether, as I think they are generally apart of being human and not a robot, but I think we can proactively prevent niggles from developing and eradicate them quickly, if we approach them properly. A lot of this tends to come down to appropriate load management and progression, as well as recovery etc. but not too far down the hierarchy, I think comes strength training. Identifying niggles quickly and taking action in the gym could be the difference between modifying weeks of training, and months.
As I alluded to earlier, these overuse-style injuries generally love loading, but they probably won’t love your provocative-style loading (such as running and jumping), they will generally love some isometric (holding one position, i.e. wall sit) or isotonic (moving through a range, i.e. squat) loading. This is where getting in the gym is the difference, body weight likely won’t suffice for long, generally we want heavier loads to overload tendons and forcing them to adapt, for the better.
I encourage my athletes to see patterns in rehab and this proactive approach, suddenly they are making adjustments to their own endurance program and strength program, based off of the feedback they are receiving from their body (red or yellow flags) i.e. when to pull back their run volume and potentially add in some specific rehab-style exercises.
Conclusion: being proactive in the gym could result in less niggles, better managed niggles and more time in the game.
RETURN FROM INJURY
You get injured, you go to the physio, they tell you to modify the thing that’s causing you the pain and prescribe some low-level exercise to rehab the injury.
Their job is to get you out of pain and they generally do a good job in doing this, but there is a big disconnect between their low-intensity exercises and returning back to high-level, intense exercise. This distance becomes larger, the longer the time you have off.
There are two major areas where strength training can help fast track you back from an injury
Rehabbing the injury itself
Progressing these low-level rehab exercises can be challenging, especially if you don’t have access to any equipment. Your body will adapt to this stimulus pretty quickly and the exercises that once worked will become ineffective at progressing your injury. To fast track your return, lifting challenging loads and progressing plyometrics (plyos are probably more specific to running, but most injuries are from running) will be paramount.
Reducing the detraining effect of the other muscles and tissues in the body
Continuing to train the rest of your body with high-level stimulus can make the return back to intense training a lot smoother. Often people will spend a lot of time rehabbing their left knee and build a lot of strength through appropriate rehab and progression, to only return back to intense running and their right leg (knee, achilles, calf) starts to get angry because it has detrained and decreased its capacity through the period you haven’t been training.
Now, we will look at the cons. Obviously I’m very pro-strength training for endurance athletes, I don’t actually see many cons and of the cons I do see, I think they are easily managed and controllable with good preparation and outsourcing.
THE CONS
PACKED SCHEDULE + TIME POOR
Endurance sports can quickly become a game of volume, with more always being the answer; you get to 60km a week, now you want 80 or 100. You get to 10 hours, now you want 12!
People wrongly assume just doing work and more volume is the best way to get them to their goal, absolutely volume is important, but without structured and strategic programming, the volume game isn’t anywhere near as effective.
I’ll be the first to admit that endurance athletes spend a lot of time training and being genuinely time poor is a real issue. As a triathlete, 100% this is real, but this becomes less less significant for runners, in my opinion.
There are two ways where I think incorporating strength training into your week can be more easily managed.
Condense strength sessions to 45mins
When people associate the gym with 60-90min sessions, plus travel, it’s no surprise they don’t have the time to squeeze some gym sessions in. But with efficient programming you can get a quality strength and plyometric session in, in around 45mins. You do this 2 x times a week and you’ll be kicking goals!
Sacrifice an endurance session
This is not optimal, but sometimes necessary and in my opinion, 100% worth it. Often life gets in the way and things become out of our control. Sometimes we may have to, block your ears endurance coaches, replace an easy endurance session with a strength session. I don’t think I need to relist the pros of strength training here. But on the occasional week if you have to replace an easy session with a strength session, its okay. Obviously this is largely dependent on your history and current weekly schedule, but so is this whole article.
Get a coach to properly schedule your week
Simples.
SORENESS/EXTRA FATIGUE
I’m not going to go too far down here, because I think so many of these can be avoided by doing a little research or hiring an experienced coach.
Getting sore from resistance training can be a real issue, but the athletes that consistently complain about soreness are generally training sporadically in the gym or going too hard and doing too much, or all of the above.
Consistency in going to the gym regularly, and consistency in a session (not doing random, different exercises every time you go) can significantly reduced your Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness (DOMS).
Along with proper scheduling throughout the week with adequate recovery.
INJURY RISK/NOT KNOWING WHAT TO DO
The risk of you getting injured in the gym is relatively low, given you hire an appropriate coach (even if it is just short-term), you listen to your body and you don’t let your ego take over.
Knowing what to do should come from an experienced coach.
There is undoubtedly more pros and cons, we could branch each of these off into 2-3 separate points, but I think I have covered the most important ones and potentially opened your eyes to how useful strength and plyometric training can be to compliment your endurance sport. This blog will be the first of many in helping runners and triathletes reduce injury risk and increase performance, creating strong, fast and robust athletes.
