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The Case for Strength Training in Endurance Athletes

Most professional athletes are great at doing strength training alongside the necessary sport-specific endurance exercises. That’s because they have a team of coaches, physiotherapists, and strength and conditioning experts in their corner.

But it’s the weekend warriors and recreational athletes that don’t pay much attention to lifting heavy weights if their interest is in a sport like running, swimming or rowing and they suffer because of it. 

Endurance and strength are somewhat opposite sides of the training spectrum. So when athletes are committed to one, they tend to ignore the other.

In this article, we’ll make the case for why you need to do resistance training even as an endurance athlete (pro and amateur alike).

We’ll help you understand that “strength training” doesn’t mean that you need to build a muscular body like Arnold Schwarzenegger. But that it can be as simple as doing a couple of body-weight focused strength training sessions at home every week.

Why Should Endurance Athletes Strength Train?

Here’s the short answer.

No sport is purely endurance-based or strength-based. Training your body in both puts you in the most optimal position to prevent injury, perform at your best and take care of your overall health.

The long answer is that resistance training offers you so many more advantages than just building your muscle. It

  • Improves your capillarization
  • Increases your lactate threshold
  • Builds type II muscle fibers
  • Increases your performance economy
  • Helps you prevent injury
  • Improves your overall health 

You need all of these benefits for performing well in your endurance sport.

Now, let’s talk about each of these points in detail in the next section. 

Benefits of Strength Training in Endurance Athletes

Benefits of Strength Training in Endurance Athletes

Strength training in endurance athletes can be sport-specific just like the endurance exercises are.

So you don’t have to do anything too alien. You can focus on doing lunges and leg presses if you’re a runner or a cyclist. And do upper back, chest and shoulder exercises if you enjoy rowing or badminton.

Here are a few of the top benefits of strength training in endurance athletes:

Strength Training Can Help You Avoid a Plateau in Performance

Your body quickly recognizes stress and adapts to any training stimuli. So changing the type and intensity of exercise – from endurance-only to strength and endurance – actually helps you. (Reference)

Switching up activities can improve your endurance. It can also increase your motivation to participate in different sports and make you feel refreshed.

Strength Training With High Loads Increases Type II Muscle Fibers

Our muscles are made of different types of fibers. Type II fibers can generate more muscle power than type I fibers. (Reference)

More power means that you’ll complete the endurance event much faster and with less energy, which are often the goals.

Strength is the work done, which here would be your body weight moved from point a to point b.

Power takes into account the time you need to do the work, the more power your muscles have, the less time you need.

So every time you take a step while hiking or move your arms to row, you’ll generate more force with the same amount of energy because of type II fibers. You’ll also improve your performance and get tired much later.

That’s especially beneficial for professional athletes who compete on an elite level. 

Strength Training Creates Muscle Balance in Endurance Athletes

Strength training can help you balance muscle power between overworked and underworked muscle groups. That improves your overall posture and distributes the load evenly across all muscle groups.

Most endurance sports focus on some muscle groups more than others. For example, running builds the quads but ignores the hamstrings (to some extent). This creates an imbalance in the muscle power on both sides of the thigh.

Similarly, the muscles in the front of your lower leg don’t have to work too much when you’re running or hiking since the calf is primarily involved here.

That can sometimes lead to pain in the anterior side of your legs and conditions such as shin splints because the muscle power on both sides is not equal.

You can prevent such injuries and imbalances by focusing on the ‘ignored’ muscle groups during strength training sessions.

Strength Training Prevents Injuries

Building strength in your muscles allows you to stay relatively injury-free. (Reference)

Resistance training doesn’t only work on the muscles. It also makes your tendons, ligaments and joints stronger. All of that leads to a better posture while doing your endurance exercises and a stronger body to manage high loads.

Resistance Exercises Increase Your Lactate Threshold

A higher lactate threshold means that you can perform for longer before getting fatigued by training your muscles to use oxygen efficiently.

That’s the same reason why athletes do interval running and push their muscles to the point of fatigue over and over. (Reference)

When your muscles are running low on oxygen (generally towards the end of a long or intense exercise session), your muscles generate energy without oxygen and produce lactate. It’s not a direct cause of fatigue but is a contributing factor. Through strength training, your muscles increase their oxygen utilization capacity and delay the accumulation of lactate, thus increasing your stamina.

Strength Training Increases Capillarization

Resistance exercises develop networks of capillaries in your muscles to supply them with more blood and, in turn, more oxygen. This increases blood flow to your muscles and improves your performance economy. (Reference)

Economy = ability to maintain your performance and velocity over a given time.

How Can a Physical Therapist Help Endurance Athletes With Strength Training?

Endurance athletes suffer a lot of repetitive and overuse injuries. Hence they come to physiotherapy clinics for rehab.

A physiotherapist (PT) can teach you alternate movement strategies. That’s helpful if you’ve been injured multiple times due to a faulty posture. This can also work on muscle strength imbalances and weakness.

They can prescribe you the exact exercises that you need to balance muscle power and prevent overuse injuries.

PTs can also educate you on the importance of strength training in endurance athletes. They can tell you about the science of how bulking up a little bit won’t negatively affect your performance.

Although ‘learning about the science of strength training’ sounds like a small thing, it can go a long way. Once your mind is convinced of something, it becomes a lot easier to get your body on board.

A physio can also talk to you about dealing with some of the common endurance athlete-specific injuries through resistance exercises.

Since physical therapists are experts in decreasing the future risk of injury, they can help you create a plan for the progression of strength training exercises.

That way, you can build muscles’ capacity to appropriately manage the forces that you’ll encounter when you go back to your sport.

Pro tip: You have to be aware whether your PT is only helping you recover from your current injury or also strength training you – the two are not the same.

Strength training in endurance athletes generally falls in the domain of strength and conditioning coaches. It becomes the physical therapist’s job when you have some medical complications (injury, post-surgery, high-risk for something) that require a physio’s expertise.

The Takeaway

Endurance athletes have this common belief that since they don’t need to lift objects or use a lot of muscle force in their sport, they don’t need proper strength training – but it couldn’t be farther from the truth.

Some professional athletes also avoid strength training because they don’t want to add unnecessary muscle mass which they think will slow them down.

Resistance training teaches muscles to work together and synchronizes your body movement. That also translates to your endurance sport and improves muscle power and performance while preventing injury.

You also need to think about your overall health after you’ve stopped competing or participating in your favorite sport at the level you do now. Training strength along with endurance can help you stay healthy in a more holistic way for longer.

Disclaimer: This article is for informative purposes only. We provide well-researched and authentic information. Do not consider this personalized health advice. Please contact a licensed healthcare professional for medical issues and health concerns.