Guest Blog: Josh Hayes
As a physical therapist, I consistently hear from patients and others that it is normal for runners to get injured. While injuries do happen, and certainly one cannot always control circumstances which result in tissue damage, there are ways to decrease the risk of injury for the endurance athlete. In last month’s blog, we discussed that stretching has not been found to be effective in injury prevention or performance enhancement in the endurance athlete. Stretching, however, is not the only option when it comes to injury prevention.
Enhance Your Running Economy
While the research is not comprehensive on the subject at this time, studies suggest that strengthening activities have more of a preventative effect when it comes to lower extremity activities than stretching or balance exercises(1). This continues to be an area where the overall volume of evidence is lacking, whether it be on the populations studied, or in the inconsistency of the findings (2). Yet, injury prevention is not the only benefit of strength training. The research is much clearer in showing that a strengthening program can enhance running economy and, even better, your times in all out efforts (ie. racing) (3,4,5). So, what we know, is that core and lower extremity strengthening, when combined with your typical endurance activities, can improve your running economy and your 5K time.
But, this is where we, as endurance athletes, typically get in our own way. First, we have the issue of time. Second, the issue of what exercises to perform. And third, how should we be performing these exercises. With the information that currently available, we do have some insight into the questions above.
Get Faster Quicker
While there is no research currently to evaluate the most effective use of your time, there are two simple facts that I will relay. One, regardless of the level of the runner, your running, cycling, and/or swimming will be a much greater component of your training week than strength training will. Based on the volume of exercises to be performed, 30 minutes to 1 hour, two to three times per week should be sufficient. Second, strength training makes your workouts more effective and allows you to get faster more quickly. As resistance training strengthens the tendons, joints, and muscles, it provides a preventative effect to injury as discussed above, so the time spent strength training is helping to decrease time spent out of training due to injury.
Move Side to Side
The next issue is what exercises to perform. As a general rule, the muscles involved in running, cycling, and swimming propel us in a forward direction. While performing endurance activities, strengthening of the muscles that move us side to side or rotate the joints of our body gets left behind. In many cases, those muscles are the stabilizing muscles of our hips, shoulders, and other joints that are essential to proper biomechanics and form, as well as injury prevention. It is, therefore, essential to include these muscles of lateral movement and rotational movement into any exercise regiment.
Additionally, you have the large muscle groups that need to be strengthened. Therefore, it is suggested that whole body movements that strengthen and improve coordination of the lower quarter are an important component to comprehensive resistance training. An example of these large muscle group exercises would be squats.
Plyometrics
Last, other exercises that are an important component to any strength regiment are plyometrics. Plyometrics are exercises that use a stretch shorten cycle to allow increased contraction of the muscle for power development. An example of plyometrics would be a vertical drop jump where the individual jumps down off a box into a squat and explodes up into a jump as high as they can. Another example would be jumping lunges. These plyometric exercises have been found to improve transition from cycling to running as well as improve running economy(6).
Heavy or Light Weights?
The last question to be addressed is how to perform the exercises. In a study by Sedano et al from 2013 (7), the investigators looked at heavy resistance training versus endurance resistance training. This essentially translates to maximal efforts of less than 6 reps, compared to moderate efforts of 20 repetitions. What the researchers found was that running economy improved 5% and 5K time improved 1.2% in the heavy resistance training group, versus 1.6% improvement in running economy and no change in 5K time in the endurance resistance training group. So, while many endurance athletes may perform high repetition lower load exercises, the evidence suggests that heavy lifting for fewer repetitions to be more effective. This won’t, however, cause the endurance athlete to “bulk up” as the individual is burning many calories through endurance activities and, therefore, the body isn’t effectively able to put on mass.
Stay tuned for exercise descriptions next month. Hope this helps in your miles to come. Happy training!
1- Lauersen JB, Bertelsen DM, Andersen LB. The effectiveness of exercise interventions to prevent sports injuries: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials. BrJ Sports Med 2014;48: 871-877.
2- Yeung SS, Yeung EW, Gillespie LD. Interventions for preventing lower limb soft-tissue running injuries.Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2011 Jul 6;(7):CD001256.
3- Millet GP, Jaouen B, Borrani F, Candau R. Effects of concurrent endurance and strength training on running economy and .VO(2) kinetics. Med Sci Sports Exerc. 2002 Aug;34(8):1351-9.
4- Sato K, Mokha M. Does core strength training influence running kinetics, lower-extremity stability, and 5000-M performance in runners? J Strength Cond Res. 2009 Jan;23(1):133-40.
5- Støren O, Helgerud J, Støa EM, Hoff J. Maximal strength training improves running economy in distance runners. Med Sci Sports Exerc. 2008 Jun;40(6):1087-92.
6- Bonacci J, Chapman A, Blanch P, Vicenzino B. Neuromuscular adaptations to training, injury and passive interventions: implications for running economy. Sports Med. 2009;39(11):903-21.
7- Sedano S, Marín PJ, Cuadrado G, Redondo JC. Concurrent training in elite male runners: the influence of strength versus muscular endurance training on performance outcomes. J Strength Cond Res. 2013 Sep;27(9):2433-43.
