Episode 30: Strength Training for Runners: the Minimum Effective Dose and Which Lifts Matter

Most runners either avoid the gym because they think it'll make them heavy and slow, or they walk in and do random machine work with no plan. Both are leaving free speed and durability on the table. In this episode I break down why runners should lift, why heavy low rep work makes you stronger without making you bulky, and the minimum effective dose that supports your running instead of stealing its recovery. I go through exactly which lifts matter and why, how heavy to go, and where to put them in the week so your gym work and your key runs never wreck each other. Two sessions, a few big lifts, a runner who's harder to break.

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Lift Heavy, Run Fast Podcast Intro

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:07

What's going on, everyone? Welcome back to another episode of the Lift Heavy Run Fast Podcast. Today we are talking about the strength training for runners, the minimum effective dose, and which lifts matter. Okay, first of all, I want to start off by saying that that title uh is a little bit of a juxtaposition to what I'm probably gonna be talking about because I don't actually think most hybrids need to do any particular thing in their training. Uh, well, most runners need to be do any particular kind of exercises in their training. I think what works for most people um in terms of their training is gonna be individualized and it's gonna differ from person to person. But nonetheless, today I want to unpack uh some of the things that I think um I, or some of the things that I'm doing and why, and some of the things that I I might get some of my clients to do and what I think about this whole concept. So, anyway, for myself, as many of you know, I'm preparing for project 300 sub-90, which is essentially a challenge where I have set a challenge I've set for myself where I have to deadlift 300 kilos and run a sub 90 half marathon back to back. No one's ever done it before, anyone anywhere in the world. La la la, uh, I'm a hero, all that kind of stuff. Now, when I was, when I began my preparation for this, I was barbell squatting quite frequently. But what happened was because barbell squatting is so taxing on my body, including my central nervous system, I found it really hard to back it up with my deadlifts that week. Um, my deadlifts suffered and my runs suffered. So, because I need to prioritize those two things that I decided to remove barbell squats out of my program and change those uh for heavy Bulgarian split squats instead, um, just two sets of that, as well as heavy lunges, um, two sets of that, you know, each of those once a week, okay? Monday and Friday. If I were to give all of my clients heavy Bulgarian split squats uh or heavy lunges to do and then expect them to run, you know, 50 plus kilometers a week right now, like I am. I think last week actually hit 70 plus kilometers a week. Most people aren't gonna be able to do it. Uh, and it takes time to develop the endurance and what you need in order to do that. Okay, so it's not just for everyone. You can't just jump in and assume Bulgarians are the right exercise for you because some dude on the internet told you to do them, or or lunges are the best exercise. There is no best exercise. What works best for you is dependent on you and what you can tolerate. And if you're progressing, keep it in. If you're not, fuck it off. But for me, bulg uh barbell squats weren't helping me progress anymore in terms of what my current goal was. Uh, although I do love them and I love squatting heavy, they just weren't serving me right now. And the other issue was because I was barbell squatting for so long, I developed quite an imbalance between my right and left side, which I wanted to address before I started to run more because I found that when I was running, I wasn't pushing off my legs evenly. In fact, my left leg didn't feel that cooked when I finished the run. My right leg always felt thrashed. So I needed to like work out what was going on here and try to rectify it. Doing more single leg work, doing a little bit more uh isolated, more um single-sided um core exercises and stuff like that to alter the movement of my hips helped a lot as well. I won't get into all of that, but essentially I found doing single-leg and single-sided movements um helped me a lot. Again, if you don't need to do those things, then don't do them. They take too long anyway. You can go and do, you know, double leg leg press or hack squats, or if you can tolerate it, keep barbell squats in your program, whatever works for you. Um, essentially, though, you need to look at what the goal is that you're trying to achieve, and then are the exercises that you're doing in your program helping you get there. For me, barbell squats weren't helping me get there. But for some of my clients uh who only train in the gym twice a week and run twice a week, barbell squats are a great choice because they're a great strength builder, and frankly, they're not gonna accumulate that much fatigue that it's gonna hinder their running sessions because their running sessions aren't till much later in the week, anyway, so they're gonna be fine. Things you can consider here, okay? So just be careful about believing every you know fucking thing that you need to have in your program that some dude on the internet who weighs 60 kilos wants you to believe, okay? Nothing against people that weigh 60 kilos, but if you're a dude that weighs 60 kilos and you can't even squat your body weight anyway, who are you to tell someone who squats over 200 kilos what exercises they should be doing while they're trying to run a sub 90 half marathon? Just saying. But anyway, uh that sounds arrogant of me. Sorry about that. I don't want to come across as that person, but anyway. Um, so there's some things that I think as opposed to looking at as what exercises you should be doing, okay, let's look at what movements I think are useful or what muscle grips are useful to train. So in the legs you have a few different muscles, okay? We're going to look at the shin or your tibialis muscles. Um you have your calves, the gastroconomius and your soleus, you have your quadricep muscles, your hamstrings, and usually your glutes, as well as whatever the glute muscles are, glute meat and all that kind of stuff. Your quads is divided into four, your hamstrings. I think there's three of them or four of them as well. I'm not going to go into each one of them, it doesn't matter. The point is that you want to make sure that each week you you probably should hit one of the each of those muscle groups at least once per week. Okay. I personally found my ankles, uh, calves and everything respond really well to doing one hard set of tip razors. If you don't know what they are, YouTube them with a weight or body weight two to three times a week, and body weight calf raises, full range of motion, two to three times a week. Okay. I will do one set of each of those two to three times a week, and I find it helps improve the fatigue that I've experienced in my ankles and calves when I run, but also I do feel like I get a little bit more strength and durability with each uh step when I run as well. I'm not sure if it is anecdotal that evidence. I'm not sure if there was much supporting it, but I have taken both of those things out of my program before and continue to run. And I always feel better when they are in my program as opposed to out of my program. That's just me, they may not serve you. Again, what works for you might work not uh might work differently for someone else. Okay. Then I will always have some kind of squatting exercise in my program. If I wasn't training for the Project 300 sub 90, barbell squats would probably be in my program still because I love them. Um, and I also think always having at least one single leg movement in your program is important. Uh I don't know which one it should be, it's gonna depend on what you like, but lunges are great, single leg leg press is great, Bulgarians are great, uh, pistol squats are great, whatever the fuck you want, man. Throw them in. Just do one single leg movement each week at least. I also think you should do the same for hamstrings. Um, I think single leg hamstring curls are always excellent. I always find an imbalance between right and left hamstring on myself and a lot of the people I coach. Um, otherwise, a hinge pattern is also useful as well. Uh something that forces you to hinge at your hips and use your hamstrings and glutes to lift yourself up. Doing one of each of those is great. You don't need to do all of them, mix and match them as you want. Okay. I just think those are some of the movements or movement types that you need to have in your program. So one knee flexion, one knee extension, one hip extension as well, um, one cuff, one tip movement, which is dorsiflexion and play deflection, and you should be right. Okay, that's me giving you the technical terms for those that give a shit. Uh, the main things that I think here though, keep in mind the cost of doing these things on your lower body. Okay. Uh how are you going to continue to run if you're smashing your legs, you know, hard with four or five exercises? That's why I just do two or three exercises on a Monday and two or three exercises on a Tuesday on a Friday. The volume is relatively low, but the intensity is quite high on each of those. So two sets close to failure each time. It's enough for me to get what I need to out of it, and then I leave it and go on to the next thing. Okay. The main thing is though, is I'm going in there, I know what weights I want to do before I get to them. I know I did 90 kilos on my Bulgarian split squats last week. This week I want to go 92 or 95, and that's it. Okay. One of the things that a lot of people think is that heavy lifting at low reps um is gonna make you slow, um, which it's not. Uh, it can make your legs feel heavy because if you accumulate, you know, DOMS or a lot of fatigue in your legs, it will make running harder. However, I don't think you need to stress too much about it uh for most people that are in the beginner to intermediate stages of your running career. I think you should just kind of get used to running on somewhat tired legs and just crack on with it. It's not going to actually make you slower in terms of an adaptation, it will definitely make you stronger. But if you find it's continuously impacting your runs, then you may need to shuffle the days of the week that you do these things so they don't impact each other as much. Nonetheless, uh, does it make you slow? Will it make you bulky? I don't know how much muscle you think you're gonna gain by squatting once or twice a week or doing legs once or twice a week. You can gain a very sufficient amount of muscle, but you're never gonna be like Ronnie Coleman. Uh, nor do you take steroids like Ronnie Coleman did, so don't stress about that too much either. Now, and honestly, if you're really concerned about it and you think uh that doing all of this type of running is affecting you, I am almost certain that all half marathons or all marathons were not lost in the squat rack. Okay, so it wasn't the squat rack that made you miss your time by five minutes, it was whatever else you were fucking doing. So don't think that these are the things that are costing you. Uh, unless you decide to go full bodybuilder styles when you're like four weeks out from your first race and train in the gym six days a week and pay attention to your running like once a week, then it might cost you, but most of you aren't dumb enough to do that. So your marathon or half marathon or 10k race, whatever, is not going to get lost in the squat rack. So I don't think it's that. Now, in term of in terms of dosing your legwork, like I said before, uh, you generally want to do the minimum effective dose. So for most people, that's like one to three hard sets uh each workout. Um, the gym's there to support your running, don't let it compete with your running. And if it is, consider shuffling it around in your training week. Uh, consider maybe training on the same day if you have to before fatigue sets in. There's a few different options you can do. Um, I tend to always lead my squat training with or my lower body training with some kind of squat-based movement, which for me is either a lunge or like a Bulgarian split squat or barbell squat or front squat or something like that. Just because I think for me, for me, this is not you, but if it works for you, which it probably will too, um, is they're great at just developing the quads and glutes and just you know, bang for buck. Um, plus, I just love the feeling of a deep squat, it's fucking hectic. Um, I also find they've gotten my knees a little bit stronger. Some people might find they hurt their knees a little bit more. If that's the case, you might have something else going on, and it's probably not the squat that's causing it. It's either your technique or some other pathology you need to get addressed by a physio or someone that knows what they're talking about. Okay. I think a deadlift or hinge is also always should be in the program. Uh, hinge movements tend to uh target your proximal hamstring a little bit more than your lower hamstring. Um, so hinging movements are also really useful at just hitting the upper hamstring as well as your glute, and then you have some kind of leg curl uh in the program to hit your lower hamstring as well. Uh, if your goal is still to get some size on you, do both of them. If your goal is just to be a faster runner, then just do one of them. Who gives a shit? Um, you'll be fine. I would say though that you know improving your posterior chain, your your hamstrings, glutes, uh, your erectors, your back, um these things can be really good at just developing overall strength uh through your legs when you run. Um, and I I don't know how frequent uh whether there is a lot of data saying that these are gonna lower hamstring injury risk or anything like that when it comes to running. Um but I find that having really strong hamstrings is probably never gonna let you down in most cases. I don't want to say it's gonna reduce your injury risk because I don't know if that's the case. Uh I'm sure there's some evidence saying it's so, but you know, freak accidents happen and you're gonna get injured at some point, regardless. So it doesn't really matter. Um I've touched on the tip raises that I do, I've touched on the calf raises as well. Having both of those things is awesome. I just do one set three times a week and I go to failure. There's such small muscle groups that they can take it and they'll recover fine. Uh, if you want to do a little bit more, that's okay as well. But be careful with the calves. If you smash them too much and they're sore, it is so hard to run on small calves, on sore calves. I I've run on sore glutes, sore hammies, sore quads, but sore calves for me personally, particularly if you're trying to run fast, is a fucking nightmare. So just be cautious of that. In terms of other exercises, okay, like for runners or people that want to get you know better at running. I think everything else from the core upwards, uh, do whatever you want. Like, do whatever core exercises you want as frequently as you want, it's probably not gonna hinder your running training whatsoever. Train upper body as frequently and as often as you want, it's probably not gonna hinder your running that much. Unless you are a really high-level runner already, uh, then those things are things you might want to consider due to the amount of fatigue you're accumulating and how that can then hinder your other training sessions that are you're trying to prioritize, which is normally your running. But if you're not at that level, just do core and upper body as much as you want, and you can go as hard as you want. And do I program like this for everyone? No. But the most of the people that are probably gonna be listening to this are like you know in that beginner to intermediate level, um, and you don't need to worry about like the stimulus to fatigue ratio that you're accumulating and and you know consolidating stresses. Things like hitting your abs quite frequently uh will probably serve most of you more good than bad. In addition to that, you know, blasting arms is really not gonna do much to hinder your training whatsoever. Uh, yeah. Legs though, you do just want to just keep it in mind a little bit as to how it can impact uh your running training and vice versa. So, just other things you might want to look at here. Um for lower body, okay, particularly, I bias towards heavier loads, lower reps, like I've mentioned. Uh, higher reps just cause you to get a little bit more of a pump, but also cause a lot more DOMS, which is normally not what we're looking for. I like to keep my heavy lower body sessions away from my hard running days and away from my long run personally. Um, I lift legs hard when I know I'm gonna run easy afterwards, or I'm gonna run hard on the same day because I don't have fatigue yet from that session that I would have had that morning. I personally, because I'm trying to prioritize lifting more than running, I will lift before my runs. But when I'm not doing that, uh if I was prioritizing my running, I would probably run before my lifts. Uh and that, and that would be so I have the most energy for that. But I've actually found that lifting before my runs does not hinder me whatsoever, even if I do have a hard session. I think if you only have time and recovery for so much training in your week, the frequency of your running is probably what matters most, then bolts on your weight training around it. So if you are someone that's deliberately trying to get better at running, you need to just think of how am I going to fit in? More frequent runs and more running in my program for the most part, as opposed to thinking of, and particularly if you're time pool, you shouldn't be thinking of, oh, how do I add in some more, you know, legwork or weight training in my program. You should be trying to prior prioritize uh the runs in your training week with your lifting sessions, then based around that. And if you need to cut one, you should be cutting your gym sessions first. If your goal is to prioritize and get better at running right now, but if it's not, keep both 50-50. It's up to you. I think that's everything. I don't want to ramble on anymore. I am 19 or 18 days out from project 300 sub 90. So I'll keep you guys in tune with that. As always, thanks for listening. Like, comment, subscribe, give me five stars. Send this to your grandmother. Uh, I know she misses me, but otherwise, hit the links down below. I've got free stuff now that you can download. It's free, it's there's no gimmick. Uh, it's free stuff that I give I've given away on Instagram and YouTube on Instagram and TikTok. So uh I've just made a page on my Shopify that you can then go in and download stuff for free that I've already given away to other people. Um, but as always, if you do want to contact me for coaching, you know where to do that too. Or look at my downloadable programs, they're there as well. Thanks for listening. I'll see you guys next time.