Strength Training for Runners
Strength exercises, as you know, as so important to your training. They can help you feel better, stronger and overall perform better. When done incorrectly they can wreak havoc on your plan, and when done properly they can open doors to racing possibilities. In this article I’ll be going through the what, the who and the how, including a big mistake to avoid so you can optimize your strength training and running plan.
What is it?
Strength exercises are exercises you do to make muscles and tendons stronger. Strength exercises can be anything that challenges your muscles and tendons. This challenge makes them work harder so with repeated exercises progressively challenging them more over time you build strength.
Who should strength train?
Everyone and their mom should strength train. Because muscles and tendons support the bones and joints and are the literal movers of the body it’s vital to have strong muscles and tendons.
Why should runners strength train?
Runners should strength train because stronger muscles will make them better runners.
Running is a cardio activity, meaning it uses the heart, lungs and circulatory system, so many runners think that they just need to train these systems and build their endurance and they’ll be good runners.
But to propel yourself forward you need to activate your muscles. And to optimize muscle strength you need to progressively challenge them and running more challenges the cardiovascular system, but not necessarily the skeletal muscles.
Mistake to avoid when injured
The biggest mistake injured runners make with strength training is using strength training to cure their running injury.
Now, don’t get me wrong, strength training is important.
However, using strength training as the end-all-be-all for your injury cure will leave you frustrated and can even lead to a worse injury.
So, the biggest mistake to avoid is doing more strength exercises for your injured body part… without changing anything else.
Let me give you an example: Let’s say you have runner’s knee and you heard that runner’s knee is caused by weak quads because if you didn’t have weak quads your quads would be strong enough to handle running and it wouldn’t cause overuse and pain, i.e. runner's knee.
The problem with this is going back to what’s causing your runner’s knee. 80% of running injuries are caused by doing too much, overworking your muscles, joints and body… that means it’s not muscle weakness causing the problem, it's training too much causing your injury.
Ok so now we know that the injury is caused by doing too much… not weakness. So that’s 1 reason why strengthening doesn’t work, because you’re not getting to the actual problem.
But, let’s say, perhaps, just maybe, weakness really was the cause of your runner’s knee.
Think of all your combined categories that make up a running program, you should think of strength, training, rest & recovery, shoes & equipment, stretching, fueling & nutrition. Then think of all those things as either stressing the body or relieving stress from the body, let’s put the categories into either of those buckets: Stressors or stress relievers.
Strength and training are stressors: they add stress to your body in order for you to build something: either muscle strength or endurance.
Rest & recovery, shoes & equipment stretching, and fueling & nutrition can relieve stress because they help support your body in some way to be able to build something. You can’t go, go, go all the time so you need rest & recovery. The right shoes & equipment can put your body in a good position so you can run your best. Stretching helps decrease soreness and tightness so you can move freely. Fueling & nutrition literally gives your body the nutrients it needs to build muscle and for your body to function properly.
So let’s go back to the cause:
1) overtraining. If overtraining is causing your injury (which it is in 80% of running injuries) and you ADD strength to your program to fix the injury… you’re ADDING more stress to your muscles.
You’re not relieving stress from your muscles. So you’re going to keep overworking them and will either not get better, or worse, make your injury worse.
2) If the cause really is weakness, which could be in up to 20% of cases, I guess. (Don’t quote me on that number, I’m just doing simple math of 100-80 = 20).But let’s say if weakness is the problem, if you add strength training and that’s all you need then yes, it should heal the injury.
But, if you’re still injured, then did it work? No, it didn’t. And that’s because even if it is weakness, you’re still overloading your muscles and not relieving some of the stress for it to have less pain or less inflammation to make you feel better.
A few years ago I had a patient in my physical therapy practice and we were working on her knee pain, and she also had wrist tendonitis so we were working on that, too. After 2 weeks of working together she had an appointment with her Doctor who told her the exercises she was doing weren’t going to help her wrist problem because they weren’t strengthening the muscles that had the tendonitis, so the doctor gave her new, “better” exercises to do. The patient was skeptical and talked to me about it.
And I said that yes it was accurate that the exercises she had been doing for 2 weeks weren’t strengthening exercises for the muscles and tendons with the tendonitis and that’s because those muscles and tendons were too painful and inflamed right now and needed rest, so the exercises she had now were for the other muscles in the wrist and forearm to get the whole wrist moving and grooving without aggravating the painful ones, and that in a few weeks, usually after 6 weeks of doing the non-aggravating exercises, I anticipated her muscles and tendons would be less annoyed and would tolerate the other ones.
It’s not a no pain, no gain situation. There’s no need to keep aggravating the problem thinking it has to hurt to get better. Give the injured area a rest for a few weeks before adding on strength exercises to that direct area.
So how do you incorporate strength exercises into your program?
I recommend all runners do a whole body strength routine from the beginning. This will keep a well-rounded workout and tackle all major muscle groups for the strength routine.
And if you’re struggling with an injury get professional guidance on which exercises to do now and which ones to wait on. This is so vital because if you’re doing the wrong thing now, it can make you worse.
It could be as simple as taking one exercise out of the routine and supplementing with another one.
And it’s not your fault you don’t know which one is which… you didn’t get a degree in physical therapy, or get extra certifications for runner’s rehab as a personal trainer. Heck, it’s taken me 3 years of grad school + 10 years of practicing as a physical therapist to understand the timelines and what symptoms mean what in order to guide someone along the right path.
In a nutshell, don't just power through pain. Be smart, be patient, and give your body the right kind of love. Strength training is a key player, but it's just one part of the whole puzzle. Keep your muscles strong, your head clear, and your running journey epic.
