How To Add Strength Training Without Wrecking Your Legs And Your Running

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Strength training is an incredible tool to help you become a stronger, faster, more injury resistant runner. But when it is not done properly, it can also wreck your legs and derail your running workouts or races.

In this episode we take you inside our thinking on the matter and share how to integrate strength training into your running program: why it matters, and how to add it without overwhelming your body.

Benefits of Adding Strength Training to Your Running Program

• A strong muscle is an injury resistant muscle
• A strong muscle is slower to fatigue
• A strong muscle increases your potential for speed, when matched with a solid training plan, nutrition and execution
• It helps with metabolism and fat loss
• It builds mental toughness and persistence

What Type of Strength Training Should We Focus on as Runners?

As runners, we want a multi-faceted, integrative strength training program. Often runners build their exercise sets around traditional bodybuilding style movements, and that is usually the wrong starting point.

With our coaching clients we stay away from bodybuilding and focus on functional strength, mobility, flexibility, quickness, balance and stability.

The reason is simple. Bodybuilding is about increasing muscle size, and size does not necessarily translate into the kind of strength a runner needs. Bodybuilding also tends to isolate muscles. Runners need strength that matches the natural movement of the body while running, or during any full body exercise.

How Do We Add Strength Training to a Running Program

Start with stabilization, not weight

There is no one size fits all approach here. It depends on you, your goals, and where you are in your running and training.

When we work with our coached athletes, we gauge where they are before adding anything. Rather than starting with weights or complex movements, we start by building a stabilization routine and use it to get them used to strength training.

Here is why. Most runners who are new to strength training need to ramp up slowly to minimize the chance of injury. We want the body to adapt to the increased load that weight training places on it. If a runner already has a history of consistent strength training, we move on to more advanced power and strength routines.

Build the core first

If you are new to strength training, the best place to start is your core.

You would think runners want to strengthen their legs, and that is true, but runners need a strong core first. Core strength involves all the major and minor muscles of your glutes, hips, back, abs, quads and hamstrings.

Then work down to the calves and feet

Beyond the core, we also focus on the calf muscles and the other muscles of the lower leg and foot. This is where a lot of our stability and balance drills come in.

Every runner should have a mix of core work and stability or balance work in their routine.

Progress only when it gets easy

Once a runner is comfortable with the stabilization routine and the balance work starts to feel easy, we add one of two things:

• Added weight. For example, loading up squats and lunges.
• Added complexity. A variation that makes the same exercise harder, such as throwing off your balance during single leg drills.

Some Techniques that Work Well for Runners

• Using BOSU balls
• Foam pads
• Closing your eyes
• Extending the opposite leg

The Recommended Products that Can Help With Balance and Stability Training

None of these are required to start. You can do most stabilization work on a bare floor, and I would rather you begin today with nothing than wait a week for a delivery. That said, these are the three pieces of kit our coached runners actually use, and each one gives you somewhere to progress once the basic movements feel easy.

Challenges of Balancing Strength Training with Running

Finding the time, and using it well

The biggest challenge we see is runners struggling to find time for strength training, or spending the time they do have on the wrong things.

Something is usually better than nothing. But inconsistency, or doing the wrong work, often fails to produce the results the runner set out to achieve. Most of us are time restricted, so the real question is what the best use of that time is.

We can help with that, and provide specific exercises based on your situation, your areas of weakness, or simply help you get started.

How much, and when

Balancing strength training with running is its own challenge. We scale it up and down across a runner’s training cycle: more in the off season, less during the season, and least during peak mileage weeks or a taper.

That is how we do it, and what we would recommend for most recreational runners.

Age, genetics, injury history, current fitness, overall health, available training time and the goals you are chasing all factor into the decision. If you are building your own strength plan, weigh those the same way we would.

We go into a lot more depth inside the podcast episode, so we hope you will check it out and subscribe on any of the popular podcast directories.

Thanks and Happy Running!