Yes, running more—provided you build up gradually over time—can make you a better runner, but it’s hardly the only piece of the puzzle. Strength training is a huge factor too: Adding it to your routine can help ward off injury and improve performance, helping make your runs more consistent, potentially faster, and also, well, a lot more enjoyable.
That’s why when we set out to create SELF’s Learn to Love Running Program, we knew strength training had to be a part of it. So we tapped Amanda Katz, an NASM-certified personal trainer and running coach in New York City, to create a 12-week plan that aligns with our program’s three weekly cardio sessions, which gradually ramp up from a walk to run-walk intervals to 30 minutes of running.
Whether you’re just getting started or preparing for your 25th marathon, resistance training can benefit both your training and your overall health. But, we get it: Unlike with running, where you can simply lace up and get going, lifting—in all its barbell-, dumbbell-, and kettlebell-laden glory—can seem a little more intimidating from the get-go. So we’re here to break it all down for you. Below, everything you need to know about strength training for runners, from what it entails and why you should do it to exactly how to slate it into your routine.
Here’s what we mean by “strength training” in the first place.
Strength training goes by a lot of names—lifting, resistance training, or pumping iron, for starters—but regardless of what it’s called, it refers to the same general thing: movements that have your muscles working against some sort of resistance, whether that’s your bodyweight, a band, or a barbell.
When you challenge your muscles in this way, you cause tiny tears in your muscle fibers. This is a good thing: As you rest and recover, the body’s healing response not only knits them back together, it makes them even stronger through a process called muscle protein synthesis—so you can lift heavier the next time. In addition, you’re strengthening the connections between your mind and muscle, training your body to effectively activate (and coordinate) motor units—complexes made up of motor neurons and the muscle fibers they control to allow you to move.
The motion of running works your muscles too, but not in the same way. Whereas strength training involves pushing against a heavy load you can lift (relatively) few times, running involves faster, more repetitive muscle contractions—over and over again, to the tune of 180 steps per minute. If your goal is to build significant strength, you’ll need to subject muscles like your quads, hamstrings, and calves—not to mention those in your upper body—to progressively heavier loads.
Strength training can reduce your risk of running-related injuries.
Running is oh-so-good for you in tons of ways—but it’s also a high-impact activity that sends forces up from your feet through your lower body. That’s one reason injuries like shin splints, plantar fasciitis, and Achilles tendinopathy are so common among runners.
“Every time your foot leaves the ground and you land, it’s two to three times your body weight of ground reaction force,” Jessica Mena, DPT, CSCS, a physical therapist and running coach in Los Angeles, tells SELF. “You have to be a little bit strong to handle the load of running.”
Resistance training strengthens all your tissues—muscles, tendons, and bones—to better prepare them for that stress. What’s more, giving a little specialized attention to muscles like your quads, hip flexors, and the small muscles along the sides of your butt can improve your running form and alignment, preventing or alleviating issues like runner’s knee.
The effect can be significant: In one 18-week study, runners who did about 20 minutes of strength training and foam rolling twice per week were 85% less likely to sustain an injury than those who didn’t. Simply put, if you want to run consistently—and not be sidelined every so often with a pesky new ache and pain—you’re going to want to add strength training to your workout routine.
It can make running feel easier for longer.
One of the biggest things that can dissuade new runners: It feels freaking hard. While strength training isn’t automatically going to make your next run feel more like, well, a walk in the park, it can make it seem a little more comfy. That’s because research also shows strength training improves a measure called running economy, or how efficiently you use oxygen to power your stride. “When you’re a more efficient runner, you’re expending less energy,” Katz tells SELF. That might mean you can run faster or that any given pace feels a lot more chill.
What’s more, the stronger you are, the less your running economy decreases even as you fatigue. Experts call this durability or physiological resilience, and it also contributes to better performance.
Another reason to pick up the weights: Increasing your lean muscle mass lets you push off the ground with more power, which can propel you forward faster and more smoothly, Tammy Whyte, a running coach in Chicago, tells SELF. And because resistance training stimulates the growth of new blood vessels surrounding your (more powerful) muscles, you’ll increase the amount of blood flowing through your body, providing oxygen to fuel your performance and also speeding up your recovery.
Plus, strength training is great for your overall health.
Stronger muscles and bones have implications that go far beyond the road, treadmill, or trail. You’ll find it easier now to do random everyday tasks—everything from hoisting a bag into the overhead bin to rearranging your living room—now. And you’ll stay more mobile and independent as you age, with a lower risk of hip fractures and other health problems.
“To be able to move well and stay healthy, you want to maintain as much lean muscle mass as you can,” Whyte says. Strength training is the only way to offset the muscle loss that occurs naturally after about the age of 30 and especially after 65, and while lifting is especially crucial for older runners, “the earlier you start, the better.”
In fact, lift now and you may be able to delay the ultimate finish line. In one large study with data spanning more than 20 years, women who strength trained two or three days per week had a 30% lower risk of dying of heart disease. And combine cardio and weights—like we’re recommending in our program—and you could gain even greater life-lengthening benefits, even if you’re just lifting once a week, per the British Journal of Sports Medicine.
The best strength exercises for runners are pretty similar to top picks for general lifters—with some nuances.
In general, anyone looking to get stronger should include compound exercises (big movements that have multiple muscle groups and joints working together) like deadlifts. Runners should also incorporate smaller, isolation moves (those that zero in one on smaller, more specific area), like banded clam shells, in their workouts, Whyte says. And because you’re pretty much never on both legs at once while you’re running, a strength training program for runners should also include plenty of single-leg exercises. “When you run, you’re pretty much jumping or pushing off and landing on one leg,” Dr. Mena says.
So while squats and squat variations definitely have their place for runners, eventually including some related exercises such as reverse lunges or split squats into your program can be particularly helpful. Not only do they help build single-leg strength, but they can also help you pinpoint and address any imbalances between sides.
Basically, when thinking about your lower body, you want to choose moves that work the big muscles there: hamstrings (with moves like Romanian deadlifts, good mornings, or leg curls); quads (like with squats, lunges, or leg presses); and glutes (say, with hip thrusts, glute bridges, or glute kickbacks). Then you want to give some special TLC to some key smaller areas. Runners tend to have weak hips, so hitting the muscles there (including the glute meds, along the sides of your hips) helps you stay stable, Whyte says—making moves like fire hydrants, side-lying leg raises, or the clam shell great program additions. And lots of folks tend to overlook their calves, which can be a problem, since studies show its larger soleus muscle does much of the work of propelling you upward and forward. So that means exercises like calf raises and all their variations can come in clutch too.
But strength training for runners shouldn’t only focus on your lower body. Core exercises can also help you maintain proper running form since stronger abs, obliques, and transverse abdominis (your deepest core muscles) keep you in a solid upright position when you stride. And working the muscles in your chest, back, shoulders, and arms can improve your arm swing and prevent you from slouching when you get tired, Dr. Mena says.
Because running is a forward-only movement, you also want to train side-to-side exercises, like lateral lunges, lateral step-ups, or banded lateral walks. This improves your stability both when you’re running and through the rest of daily life, Whyte says. Finally, add a dash of plyometrics—rapid, explosive movements like hops and bounds—to improve agility, power, balance, and tendon health. (You’ll see one plyo movement in each phase of Katz’s program!).
Your strength training routine should not feel like running.
Katz says she often has to remind runners that their gym time should have a different vibe from their mileage. “They are so accustomed to keeping a certain heart rate, leaving a run sweaty, not taking rests that they try to produce the same outcome in their ‘strength training,’” she says. But remember, these sessions aren’t designed to increase your endurance; that’s what running does. “The goal is for a heavy enough force to stimulate change in muscle to contract and grow.”
She designed the strength training program for our Learn to Love Running Program at what she calls “the sweet spot for building both strength and muscle”: three sets of eight reps at a weight that’s challenging enough to have only one to three reps in reserve (RIR). In other words, by the time you get to your final rep, you should feel like you could only do one to three more before you need to stop—you don’t need to go all the way to what’s called “failure,” where you simply can’t complete another rep. In between each set, you’ll rest for a full two to three minutes.
Regardless of whether you’re following our program or not, the same tenets still apply: Keep your weight challenging, your reps low to moderate, and your rest significant to get the biggest strength bang for your buck.
Training this way also addresses another concern runners frequently have: that strength training will interfere with their primary sport. “Lifting at a lower rep range with a weight that challenges you is the best way to avoid feeling fatigue on your runs,” she says. “Strength training with ‘minimal effective dose’ in mind will not only get you stronger but will keep you running more.”
There are several ways to make it fit into your running schedule.
When you’re just starting out with running, the best way to strength train is any way that works for you. In our program, we include one weekly full-body strength workout, sandwiched in between a rest or active recovery day and a day you’re running.
But you could also try a shorter workout done more frequently—Whyte assigns her athletes strength sessions that can take as little as 10 minutes, some that focus on a few body areas (say, core and glutes) and some that are full-body. If you’re struggling to get started, choose a few moves for core, glutes, hips, and calves and do them immediately after a run two or three times weekly to get yourself into the habit, then add on as you’re able. “Do the basics and build from there,” Whyte says.
Advanced runners doing more mileage might have to be more strategic. If you’re doing harder workouts—think speedy intervals or tempo runs—Whyte recommends doing your strength work either the same day or the day after, not the day before. And generally, you should run before lifting if that’s your priority, although there are other considerations in that equation.
Dr. Mena says that, while some runners feel like they don’t have time to strength train, many more—especially those who’ve been injured before—now recognize how vital it is to their health, performance, and consistency. “The whole idea is, this is going to help supplement your training,” she says. “It’s not separate from your training. It’s kind of all the same thing.”
Related:
- 15 Benefits of Running That Will Make You Want to Log Some Miles
- 10 Running Myths Top Coaches Really Wish You’d Stop Believing
- The 8 Best Strength-Training Exercises for Beginners
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