Strength Training for the Endurance Athlete

Intro

As I’ve written about before, strength training is a key component to success in endurance athletics (I’m referring mostly to running, swimming, cycling, and rowing) yet it is one that is often avoided.  The old mindset of “to get better at XYZ sport you should ONLY perform XYZ sport a lot” is gone.  Every athlete regardless of chosen discipline must take the time to focus on their body to be at the top of their game.

I feel that endurance athlete’s aversion to strength training comes down to two things:

                -Fear of unwanted weight gain and

                -Time

The weight gain issue is a legitimate one when a few ounces here or there can hurt your performance.  But as someone who trains heavy 5-6 days per week and eats a lot to fuel those workouts I can tell you, it’s not as easy as you think.  Weight gain comes down to food choices more than anything, but that’s beyond the scope of the article.  In a nutshell, a few days a week of strength training will improve your performance above and beyond what a pound or two of lean tissue gain will do to hinder it.

The lack of time issue is the bugaboo here.  But just like the bogeyman it is often just a figment of our imagination. 

To get good at running, swimming, cycling, and/or rowing long distances you need to run, swim, cycle, and/or row long distances.  There is no way around that and anyone who tells you different usually has something to sell.  The time issue gets to the root of the problem when it comes to strength training for endurance athletes- very few of them know what their strength training should look like or consist of.  I know I wouldn't want to be out doing extra work that could hurt my performance when I spend so much time training as it is.  But on the flip side taking away some road work and replacing it with an individualized strength training program will help your performance way more than the extra road work will.  I cannot understate that enough.

When someone says “strength training” often the images that are conjured are those of big guys with big weights on their backs or in their hands grunting and screaming at each other.  That caricature isn't too far off from what happens at a lot of gyms but it couldn't be further from the truth of what an endurance athlete’s strength training should be.  The point of these articles is to dispel this myth and point endurance athletes in a direction that will improve their performance in both the short and long term.

Whatever your passion or sport of choice may be I feel it is important to not only be as good as you can be at it, but to also be able to do it for years and years.  Ok, enough of the yadda yadda yadda.   Let’s get to the goods.

Part 1: Mobility, Stability, and Tissue Quality

When it comes to training athletes the concept of a pyramid is an easy one to follow.  At the bottom you have the base.  It is wide and strong and supports everything above it.  Everyone would agree that if you don’t have a strong base the rest of what’s on top is in jeopardy of crashing down.  In essence the base is the most important part of the pyramid.

When it comes to the training of endurance athletes, mobility, stability, and tissue quality are and always will be the base.  Without proper mobility, stability, and tissue quality training for muscular balance, proper movement patterns, and strength and power becomes a gamble at best and downright detrimental to the athlete at worst.

Improvements in these three areas lead to more efficient and smoother strokes, pedal strokes, and strides since you are not fighting your body to get into necessary positions.  Due to the repetitive nature and high demands of endurance athletics mobility and tissue quality issues will creep up.  Taking a proactive approach will do wonders to abet them.

Mobility, Stability, and Tissue Quality: They Are All Connected

The human body is more complex and integrated than all of the supercomputers in the world combined (I made this up but it is more than likely true).  I could talk in circles for days about different situations that appear to be mobility problems but are stability problems caused by poor tissue quality that came about due to a lack of mobility because the body didn't have proper stability, ad nauseum.  Often times it takes a little detective work to figure out the source of the problem. 

And that detective work starts with a comprehensive movement screen.  These can be as simple as someone who is well versed in these things watching you go through various movement tasks to having someone video tape you and put you into a computer model to find deficiencies.  Either way, what you find in this screen is only a snapshot.  It is up to you and/or your fitness professional to determine the root of the problem and the best course of action.

Pain Isn't the Problem

It would be nice to be able to say, “Gee golly gosh, my patellar tendon hurts!  I should stretch my quads.”  It is rarely that cut and dried.  The point of pain isn't where the problem starts, it’s where it ends.  The beginning (i.e. the source) could be almost anywhere. 

Take the above example; your knee hurts so you stretch your quads.  Your quads feel really tight and stretching them feels good but it doesn’t do much to help your knee pain.  So you stretch more and more but still nothing.  So you go to a fitness professional and he puts you through a movement screen.  He sees that when you perform a body weight squat your heels come off the ground putting all of your weight onto your toes.  Through another test he finds that your ankles are tight which forces you to do everything with your quads, making them tight.  This essentially leaves your glutes and hamstrings to atrophy from under use.  Due to the overactive quads he also finds that you have an anterior (forward) tilt in your pelvis.  Your pelvis tilting forward causes it to pull on your underactive glutes and hamstings making them lengthened and “tight”.  This only forces you to use them less and less which causes for more force to run through your quads and knees until viola!, your knee hurts.

This seems like a complicated series of events but it actually happens quite often.  Because of the complexity of many issues self-diagnosis becomes hard.  This is why it becomes extra important to start taking care of your bones, muscles, ligaments, and joints BEFORE something starts to hurt.  And fortunately this takes minimal equipment and even less skill. 

There are many techniques to choose from when it comes to taking care of mobility and tissue quality but the most accessible to everyone is myofascial release and stretching.

Myofascial Relase

This is more or less a fancy term for rolling out.  When choosing an implement it’s important to scale it to you.  I use a 4” PVC pipe but most would be just fine with a BLACK foam roller.  The white ones are junk and do not last long.  

So without further ado here is a simple and basic rolling routine that can be done any time and just about anywhere.  I'm not going to go through the technique of each and every one.  My email is tdequaine@hotmail.com if you have any specific questions.

The tools of the trade.  PVC pipe and a softball.

IT Band Start

IT Band Finish

Hamstring Finish

Hamstring Start

Upper Back Start

Upper Back Finish

Quad Start

Quad Finish

Adductor Start

Adductor Finish

Calf Start

Calf Finish

Prirformis.  Go side to side on top, outside part of your buttcheek.  Hunt around and find some spots that hurt.

Stretching

Stretching has been much maligned in the past few years as both ineffective and deleterious to performance.  Studies have shown that stretching will neither improve performance nor prevent soreness.  Those that stretch before performing power movements such as squats or jumping will display less power than if they had not stretched.  These viewpoints are, in my opinion, myopic.

Stretching, when performed on its own, is rather ineffective for improving performance.  But when done in conjunction with myofascial release and targeted strengthening (i.e. the opposite muscle of the one that is tight) it becomes a useful tool in the tool box.  The below stretches are by no means comprehensive and pale in comparison to being stretched by someone who knows what they are doing, but they are great for the prevention injuries and the improvement of performance both in the gym and on the road.

Quad/Hip Flexor Pos. 1

Quad/HipFlexor Pos. 2

Quad/Hip Flexor Pos. 3

Calf

Pigeon Pose (stretches the glutes) side view

Pigeon Pose front view

Adductor Stretch Start

Adductor Stretch Finish

Stability

Now that we've got mobility and tissue quality issues cleared up let's look at stability.  Stability IS NOT the ability to do single leg squats on bosu balls while spinning a basketball on one finger.  That's called the circus.  Stability is the ability to resist motion when motion wants to happen.  

When I'm running I want to be as efficient as possible with each stride.  But if my shoulders and mid section are swinging from side to side and leaking energy all over the place I will not perform optimally, period.  Also if I'm having to fight my body to get into positions because I lack core strength and stability I'm at a disadvantage.

Everyone talks about core strength, but how many really know what that means?  In a nutshell the stronger your core, the better you'll be at displaying strength and power throughout your entire body.  If my legs are strong enough to squat 500 pounds but my core can only handle 400 pounds I will only be able to squat 400 pounds.  Same goes with endurance events.  If I'm using energy in my legs to counteract my swinging shoulders and midsection because my core can't keep them steady I'm going to tire out much faster than if I could keep them streamlined.

Stability starts in the middle and radiates out.  The word "core" has become a buzz word in the industry and many associate "core" with your abdominal muscles specifically the rectus (the six-pack muscle).  But the core is comprised of much more than just your abs.  There is also your obliques, transverse abdominus, erector spinea, diaphragm, latissimus dorsi, multifidus, hip flexors, and many more muscles that are part of your core.  But they all have a similar purpose when talking about your "core".  And that is to stabilize and protect the spine.  Entire volumes have been written on this notion but for our purposes it comes down to this:

The better you are at stabilizing and protecting your spine the more freedom of movement you will have in your extremities.  The more freedom of movement you have the less you will have to fight against yourself to obtain optimal postures and positions.  The easier it is to obtain those positions the easier it will be to propel yourself through space.  Strengthen and stabilize your spine, run/swim/bike/row further and faster.

What that is saying is that the less stability you have surrounding your spine the more you will need to take from your hips and shoulders.  This can present itself as a lack of mobility.  You can see this when someone has difficulty getting depth on a squat but can lie on their back and put their feet behind their head.  Their mobility is fine but their body will not allow them to get into a position that could be harmful to the spine, i.e. squat all the way down.

Joint integrity and stability are also key.  If you have lax hips and your femoral head bounces around inside your hip socket eventually those structures are going to wear down.  Being able to stabilize the joint without sacrificing freedom of movement is MUCHO IMPORTANTE when it comes to enjoying your sport many years into the future.

That is an incredible simplification of that certain precept.  Having a strong and stable core is only the first part of the puzzle.  Applying that strength to benefit your sport takes focusing on your movement patterns and the watchful eye of a competent coach.  We only have a certain number of reps on our tissues regardless of perfect technique or not but performing movements with sub-optimal patterns burns through those reps at a much higher rate.  And taking the time to counteract the abuse we do to our bodies will help us perform when it matters the most.

This brings us to the topic of the next post which will be on the middle of the pyramid; movement patterns and muscular balance.