When to strength train?
8 watchers
May 2014
5:43pm, 24 May 2014
124 posts
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Darting
Hi, I run marathons and have been buildiing up my milage after a serious shoulder accident. I'm struggling to find the energy after each training run to do core workouts, which was never a problem before. Finding the time to do strength workouts is really hard as I start work early and with the marathon schedule it can mean a long day. What do you do about core and strength training, before a run, on days off, early or late? What type of strength training do you do? I run 5 times a week and work out on one of the free days but at the moment Ifeel like I also need to rest.. Darting |
May 2014
8:37pm, 24 May 2014
29,774 posts
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Velociraptor
It sounds as if strength training might be an extra stress that your body doesn't need rather than a benefit to your running or overall conditioning. If you're running five times a week, training six days a week, and are a person of a certain age with a job and a life, you DO need to rest. I don't do any core or strength training. If there was good evidence that I'd run faster if I did, I would. But there's not. I do indoor climbing, which is quite reliant upon strength and balance, but which is completely useless as cross-training for running. |
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May 2014
10:03pm, 24 May 2014
125 posts
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Darting
Thanks for the helpful view maybe a less is more approach would be better until I have fully recovered!
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May 2014
12:05am, 25 May 2014
985 posts
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Canute
I strongly agree with Vrap’s statement that rest is essential. If you are preparing for a marathon within the next 4 months, your two main foci of attention should be running and rest. However if you are base-building, I think it might be useful to do some strength training though getting adequate rest is still crucial. If needs be, intensity or volume of running should be reduced to make space for the strength work. I usually do one weight session per week, generally on a day when I do an easy run. The question of which session I do first usually depends other incidental factors in my daily schedule. However I often feel more fluent when running after a weight session. I think this is due to improved muscle recruitment. In my experience, the most clear-cut benefit of strength work is reduced risk of injury. Nonetheless, I think it is likely that the enhanced body metabolism (enhanced growth hormone; improved response to insulin) is beneficial for both health and running; some studies demonstrate that strength training increases running speed and/or endurance but in my own experience, ever since my mid-sixties I have been losing speed at an alarming rate, whatever training I do. Here is a thought provoking article on the potential benefits of strength training for runners: poliquingroup.com A further comment on Vrap’s response: maybe regular cycling in the Lake District, including 1 in 4 gradients like Honister (and maybe the occasional 1 in 3.3 such as Hardknott) might count as strength training 
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May 2014
12:15am, 25 May 2014
251 posts
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PerfectOrganism
I've often thought through this conundrum aswell. Ultimately I think that if there isn't enough time to do it, then it can't be done. It's a shame, but there just aren't enough hours in the day!
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May 2014
9:09am, 25 May 2014
29,777 posts
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Velociraptor
Good to see Canute and an intelligent answer Cycling up steep hills, even in big gears, would be a very feeble way to do pure strength training. If doing weighted squats and leg presses and the like elicits, at best, marginal improvements in power and/or endurance in some cyclists in some studies, it's unlikely that something as low intensity as turning a crank with the help of your body weight and gravity will provide much of a stimulus, though it does have the advantage of being a cycling-specific activity. (For me, because I don't have much capacity for raw muscle power, it's even less so, because I have to use small enough gears to let my heart and lungs get me up the hills.) Cycling is different from running in that it isn't a weight-bearing activity and doesn't contribute to maintaining bone density or strengthening the muscle/tendon/bone insertions, and on current evidence cyclists would be wise to do regular strength training for that purpose alone, even if it won't make them go their bikes any better. I like to think that, in combination with a reasonable diet, avoiding other bone-weakening activities, and not having a family history of osteoporosis, a little bit of running will do the job for my lower limbs and the climbing will sort out my upper body and they'll divvy up the bit in the middle eL Bee! takes advice on his cycling training from someone who races internationally, and he asked about including pumping iron for his legs in his schedule. The response was along the lines of, "Only if you like doing it and it doesn't interfere with your training." Purely anecdotally now, when I first took up running I was already doing strength training, mostly in the form of one of two BodyPump classes a week and, later, doing a round of the weights machines in the gym each week as part of a general pissaboutdoingeverything session. If you'd asked me in my first year or two as a runner I'd have insisted that doing that additional training was beneficial to my running, on no evidence whatsoever apart, if pressed, from the fact that my second marathon was 75 minutes faster and less unpleasant than my first. When I let my gym membership lapse and completely stopped pumping iron, my running suddenly got a lot faster. |
May 2014
9:38am, 25 May 2014
22,652 posts
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idio
I've found weight training has helped my running and cycling. I've got more power in the legs for climbing and better core strength has helped both my running and cycling. I started the gym to help a shoulder injury and to correct a muscle imbalance in my back thats related to my shoulder injury. I don't go to get bulked up but for overall fitness i'm not pushing big weights. But i'm not training/racing marathons most of my runs are only about an hour long and done as part of overall fitness. |
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May 2014
10:03am, 25 May 2014
1,393 posts
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wiener dog
I do it for vanities sake plus I actually enjoy it ..... but also like idio I don't race marathons. Unlike Vrap I don't do any climbing so if I didn't do weights I'd probably have huge bingo wings! However I don't do an awful lot of stuff with my legs ( usually only 4 exercises and they are more VMO strengthening things because I have awful knees )
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May 2014
10:46am, 25 May 2014
986 posts
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Canute
A further point about strength training for running. The crucial thing about running is the eccentric contraction –the development of force as the muscles lengthen due to being stretched at footfall. Doing squats with a slow well controlled descent might help with this, but almost certainly the most effective thing is plyometrics – jumping etc. There is good evidence that plyometrics improve running, but plyometrics are a bit risky. I do some fairly gentle hopping and skipping exercises and a little bit of trampolining. Two years ago, I did quite a lot of hopping and skipping in preparation for what has been my (WAVA) best half marathon since taking up running again a decade ago. At the moment I am focussing on increasing my capacity to handle long runs so for the time being I am not doing much hopping and skipping, but I hope to return to it soon. Incidentally, the minimal involvement of eccentric contraction when cycling is one of the main limitations of cycling as a preparation for running. I nonetheless think that the fact that cycling has been my main method of commuting for 60 years is responsible for the fact that even before I started weight training a few years ago my lower body strength was good in comparison with my puny upper body strength. This helped me to run moderately fast even before I did much training. My fastest HM (though not my WAVA best) was the first one I ran, in 2007. This was probably due to both a reasonable aerobic capacity and leg strength from commuting cycling. (I used to be a bit of a tiger on my sit-up-and-beg bike and could hold my own with some of the lads in lycra. I still cycle but now I am the slowest cyclist on the local roads.) It is also interesting that the only 100m sprint race I have ever run in my life gave me a WAVA of 74 yet I am certainly no sprinter. I suspect that was largely due to leg strength from years of cycling. Sadly, my sprint speed has disappeared in the past five years. |
May 2014
11:52am, 25 May 2014
19,328 posts
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SPR
The thing about bodypump is it trains muscle endurance more than strength, and for running, obviously running does that better. Free weights and heavy weight (for you) and low reps is the way to go if strength is what you're after. Free weights doing things like squats, deadlifts, cleans, and bench press means your body does the stability job fo you rather than the machine. I think I ran a mile PB in 2010 due to strength training (I had been injured so wasn't in great shape) as I ran a poor 5k just a month. No scientific proof though. I'm surprised there isn't any research showing strength training helps runners. I thought there was, but maybe I imagined it. |
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