Strength Training for Runners - More Miles, More Smiles!

Runners, are you tired of getting ready for your next 10k or marathon only to get injured at the vital moment?

Well, let me tell you how strength and conditioning (S&C) can be a game-changer for you!

By strengthening muscles and tendons your body is able to do more without breaking down. By becoming more resilient to injury you can train more consistently meaning more miles and more smiles.

But the benefits don’t stop there, the stronger you are the better your neuromuscular signalling is. What this means for you is a faster and stronger muscle contraction leading to improved speed.

Strength training will also massively help your running economy, this potential is the biggest area for progression. Running economy is the amount of energy/oxygen required to maintain a certain pace for a length of time. The more efficient you are the less energy is required to maintain a certain pace, meaning a slower rate of fatigue, this can be huge especially when it comes to the longer endurance events.

By requiring less energy to maintain a certain pace you not only hold that pace for longer, but can also run at a faster pace for the same effort.

So now you are hopefully sold on the idea of strength and conditioning how do you implement it?

If you are new to S&C then start off with 1 session per week. The chances are you will get quite sore initially which can have a knock-on effect on your other training.

It is best to start this in a base phase and not when you are not getting ready for a specific event.

After 4-6 weeks you could book to include a second session to help increase the stimulus and therefore the improvements you see.

If you are struggling to know where to start then why not book some accelerate sessions to take you to the next level?