I recently came across an interview with Alberto Salazar, the coach of double Olympic gold medal winner Mo Farah, where he revealed that the secret to Mo’s success was not the number of miles he was clocking up on the road but the hours he was spending lifting weights in the gym!
In the interview, Salazar described Mo as a “90lb weakling” when he started training with him nearly 2 years ago. From that point on Farah incorporated regular weight training sessions into his programme which Salazar believes has been the key to Mo’s remarkable performances at the Olympics.
There’s a key message there for all runners, whether you’re training for Olympic gold or just the local 5km fun run – you need to get strong!
Here’s a look at 3 reasons why you need to be doing some strength training alongside your running:
1. Preventing Injuries
If you take a quick look at any internet forum for runners you can guarantee that one of the most popular topics of conversation will be on injuries and you’d be forgiven for thinking that there are only two types of runner: the injured ones or the ones just getting over an injury!
If you can relate to this then consider the fact that when you run your body has to deal with impact forces of roughly 2-3 times your own body weight every time your foot strikes the ground. Multiply that over a long run and you can probably appreciate there’s going to be trouble if you’re body isn’t strong enough to deal with these forces.
Movements or exercises are considered to have three phases: an eccentric phase when the muscle is lengthening under a load, an isometric phase when the muscle is neither lengthening nor shortening and then a concentric phase when it shortens. Most sporting injuries are thought to occur in the eccentric phase. Lifting weights enables you to progressively challenge the muscles through these phases so they are not only able to produce more force but reduce and stabilise forces which is key from an injury prevention stand-point.
2. Improving Performance
I remember a coach at my athletics club once telling me to steer well clear of the gym unless I wanted to end up slow and bulky! Such myths still seem to persist despite the fact that pretty much every top level endurance athlete performs some strength training as part of their programme.
So just how does strength training improve your performance? There’s two aspects to look at here one is the effect of increasing your maximum strength and how it can increase your maximum speed the second is to do with stiffness.
Increasing your maximum strength through weight lifting is one way of increasing your maximum speed. By increasing the strength of your lower limb muscles you can apply more force to the ground with each foot strike to propel you forward. You might just think this is only relevant to sprinters but watch the final lap of Mo Farah’s victory in the 5,000m at the Olympics. The final 400m was run in 52 seconds which a lot of recreational 400m sprinters would be pretty chuffed with!
Stiffness – or rather leg spring stiffness – refers to the ability of a muscle to resist an increase in length (deformity) under an applied load. By increasing stiffness in the muscle it becomes better at storing and releasing elastic energy which means less energy is expended by the body to propel you forward each time your foot strikes the ground. This translates to better running economy (a measure of how much oxygen you use at a given running pace) which is now considered one of the best predictors of race performance.
3. Posture
If you’ve ever watched a massed race event like the London Marathon you’ll have probably have seen a fair share of runners looking worse for wear the last few miles; arms flailing side to side, waist sinking into the hips and straining with every stride in an effort to make it to the finish. These are all unnecessary energy wasting actions, eliminate them and you can divert more energy to running a new PB. Clearly tidying up your technique is one aspect to this but if you don’t possess the necessary strength in your upper body you’re not going to be able to maintain this for long periods of time. As Alberto Salazar is quoted as saying in the article “You can’t win races at this level without upper body strength”.
So why not take a leaf out of Mo’s book and start including some regular strength training alongside your running? Whilst you might not be aiming to challenge for Olympic gold, at the very least you’ll be making sure you spend more time out on the road than down at the physio clinic!
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