I added my thoughts recently on a discussion around strength training and what I wish I’d known when I started. Looking back on the comments they made for a nice set of ideas that I wanted to draw together here:
First what I have learnt / wish I knew:
The first few pieces of advice relate to pretty much any form of exercise:
- Consistency is king. In that vein think trying to lift/move as much as possible, as regularly as possible is the road to ruin. Better for every session to be good enough, a solid 7/10 than a handful to be 9/10, then have to miss out for some time.
- Related to above, missing the odd session is not going to make a difference, don’t worry.
- Meet yourself where you’re at not where you either: a) have been in the past or b) the end point where you expect to be. This is a really, really quick way to get hurt (notably when lifting weight / free weights). So check the ego and start easier than you think.
- The best piece of advice I heard recently was to think about strength in these terms: Control / form / load. So with any strength training you should always have control of the movement, which feeds into form – what does it look like and are the right parts of the body moving to allow the impact that you want. When you can do this add load.
- Start with bodyweight, understand what & how to execute the movement. Video yourself. Control the movement, Learn the movement, load the movement.
- A single kettle bell / rucksack with tins in it work well – machines, free weights, a gym set up is nice, but you don’t need any of that to start. Resistance can be provided by a whole host of different things we have lying around the home.
- I’m a big believer in compound movements (where you are working several different areas of the body at the same time) – and not a subscriber to the idea of leg day / arm day / single muscle exercises. For most people (runners particularly) they find time to do strength limited. Alongside which compound movements build better all round strength for life. In light of this the following movement patterns help: pushing, pulling, hinging, carrying, rotating. So a squat/bench press, deadlift or row, carrying different weights, moving weight around / across the body.
- Vary the lifts from time to time, 3 months one way, change for the next 3 months, again after another 3 months if looking at general strength. If incorporating into a program with a specific goal think about the whole training balance. Marathon training a great example here. Heavy weights at the beginning of a block, when the running is at it’s lightest load (ie 2x a week). Light weights more infrequently at the end of the block when running is at it’s heaviest (ie 1x a week).
To which I added this that I remembered at a later date:
I remembered this last night anf have just been prompted by the rest between sets idea on another thread.
I always thought strength was purely about building muscle mass. It was onky after I became a lot more curious that I relaised this was missing a massive part of the equation. Simplistically it is:
- Building muscle mass
- Improving the ability for the nervous system to signal muscles to be used.
Thus you can meet really, really strong individuals who aren’t particularly big (think mountain dwellers) as these guys have an excellent ability to access the muscle mass they have via their nervous system.
Part of strength is that key element. Which for endurance based runners becomes key as it helps correlate the importance of strength and the understanding it doesn’t have to mean large gains in weight due to hypertrophy of muscle
The next part came in response to this thought:
Why running, which exercises all of the running muscles, needs to be augmented by moving weights, which doesn’t.
To which I added:
It may help to think about running & strength in these terms:
Running is about an exchange of force, you express force into the ground and absorb force from the ground.
The way that this happens depends on 3 basic things:
- The bodies shape that you make when you express & absorb force (from footstrike through to toe off and swing)
- The signals that you send to your muscles via your nervous system
- The use of the muscles themselves.
We all create systems our brain perceives as the safest way for us to run, which more often than not involves creating shapes with the body that result in some parts of the body doing too much and some parts not doing enough. This happens over time. What can then happen is injury to the parts of the body doing too much, whilst the parts we need to work on still remain unwilling / unable to work.
This is where strength work plays an integral role in supporting running.
Take Peter – he has problems with his knees, they hurt most of the time that he runs. So he rests from time to time, knees feel better, he goes back to running but his knees hurt again and the cycle is repeated. The knees here aren’t the problem, his knees are showing you they are working too hard and something, somewhere else isn’t – let’s say here it’s his pelvis / hip.
So what Peter needs is to practice a running related exercise, that allows him to load his chain WITHOUT the force running brings to his body & also slow everything down so that he can:
- Focus on the shape he needs to make
- Use his nervous system to signal his muscles
- Build muscle mass where it is lacking.
So in this instance doing something like a loaded step up, or a single leg split squat allows Peter to load his body, without the force of running, as he slowly practices a movement that translates to his running. As he descends into the split squat / pushes up on the step up he can really switch onto what is working where? Is he timing the movement & making the right shape that allow his hip to support his body as opposed to the load going straight down to his knee and it buckling? Can he feel his whole foot accepting the load? As he then pushes up, where is this movement being generated from? Is he able to control and stabilise as he does this? Now can he add load so when he goes back to running he is better able to express force and then absorb ground reaction force.
This for someone who is in an injury cycle. Alternatively it would make better sense not to let things get to a rehab situation – rather to use strength as a preventative tool to help build a really robust body that can then manage the load that running places on the system.
BreatheToMove 