Should Endurance Athletes Do Resistance Training?

Is lifting weights or doing resistance training really going to make any difference to running a marathon in a few months, or doing next year's Iron Man? The answer, YES!

The number of individuals entering endurance sports has increased exponentially over the last few decades, with people taking up marathons, triathlons and IronMan events as hobbies. For the 2020 London Marathon 457,861 people applied for a spot, up 25,860 from the previous year. Of the 373,736 applicants who are from the UK, 56% have never run a marathon before, so the numbers show that endurance sports are growing in popularity amongst recreational athletes.

If you asked individuals 10+ years ago how to prepare for an event or race they would say just run, swim or bike, I very much doubt many individuals would have said doing resistance training alongside their event specific training. Over the last 20+ years, a number of studies and research has highlighted the benefits a resistance training program can have on endurance based events. In this blog I will highlight the evidence supporting the use of resistance training and key benefits behind implementing resistance training alongside your endurance training.

Running is simply continuous jumping, and with high volumes of it, it will put a lot of work through the joints. With incorporating resistance training into a program we are looking to:

• Minimise injuries through strengthening the muscles, connective tissue and joints

• Improve neuromuscular coordination and power

• Improve running economy through coordination and stride frequency

What does the research say?

Previous research reports that concurrent strength and endurance training can increase endurance in high-level athletes to a greater extent then endurance training alone.

According to a 2005 study by Chtara et al; they found that incorporating resistance training into your regular exercise routine was shown to increase speed and V02 max.

Trained distance runners have shown improvements of up to 8% in running economy following a period of resistance training. Even a small improvement in running economy could have a large impact on distance running performance, particularly in longer events, such as marathons or ultra-marathons.

A meta-analysis study from the International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance found endurance athletes were shown to benefit from adding a a strength training component to their program, this included runners, cyclists, cross-country skiers and swimmers.

According to Jung (2003) study; evidence strongly suggests that there is a potential for distance runners to benefit from resistance training by improving muscular power and neuromuscular characteristics. The study also found distance runners can perform a short-term resistance program (<16 weeks) without a concern of decrease in aerobic performance.

Another study (Yamamoto; 2008), found that resistance training likely has a positive effect on endurance running performance and running economy.

How to implement resistance training?

So, the evidence is out there to support the implementation of resistance training, but how is this done? Resistance training is typically broken into 4 categories:

1. Maximal Strength - Make sport-specific actions more economical as the absolute force level during endurance exercise is lower relative to your maximum strength

2. Explosive Strength - Improve the kick at the end of the race

3. Hypertrophy - Increase muscle mass and buffering capacity that comes from moderate load training to be able to deal with higher lactate loading

4. Muscular Endurance - Improve ability to accomplish higher workload of endurance training or reduce your recovery times between intervals

For beginners/ recreational athletes simply incorporating any form of resistance training into your program will illicit some form of improvements, this can be done through circuit training or whole body workouts to get you started. Once fairly familiar and confident with resistance training we can progress to a more periodised approach such as a linear approach. This where I would recommend those with some sort of resistance training begin, here we break each of the strength training categories into blocks of 'x' amount of weeks. This sort of approach can be implemented when you know you have a race a certain amount of time away so can structure your program accordingly. An example of a linear approach is outlined below:

As you can see a 20 week training period is blocked into phases:

1. Muscular Endurance - 4 weeks

2. Hypertrophy - 6 weeks

3. Maximum Strength - 6 weeks

4. Explosive Strength - 4 weeks

Another periodisation method which is a bit more advanced but one that I would favour more is the non-linear approach. With this approach we are combining all elements of strength training throughout the week in a non-linear method as outlined below:

As you can see, each component of strength training is micro dosed into the week so we can try and implement the benefits of each to our training.

Conclusion:

To conclude, it is fairly clearly that resistance training should be included as part of the program for anyone doing endurance based sports be it a beginner or a professional athlete. There are many ways to implement into your program, my advice would be to seek out a professional in the industry. Rather than looking for a generic program online, find a professional who can help design and create a program tailored to your needs and around your current schedule and program, that is the best way to get the most bang for your buck.

JD