It may seem early to bring up this topic since everyone is probably in the heart of training for a big fall race, but trust me when I was that you should be weight training year-round as a runner to prevent injury. I fell into the common mistake of only lifting during the winter months only to find myself injured halfway through the summer because my muscles weren’t strong enough to handle the constant pressure exerted on them.

I have always used weight training to supplement my running and the benefits are innumerable, but the question is how should we weight train. The running community is split on how to weight train, but majority think that low weight high reps are the way to train to avoid building bulk or gaining too much weight. Well, recently I’ve been doing some reading on various strength training regimes to see if there was something out there that made sense because I have been doing the lower weights/high reps for years with little or no results as far as tone goes. My strength has pretty much plateaued. We all know that a runner’s goal isn’t really to max out on the bench press, squat or deadlift; rather we do these exercises because they strengthen some of the basic muscle groups we use in running. Throw the bench press out because that’s almost a worthless exercise – I mention it because of its popularity.

I’m not going into details of which exercises are the best because there are several opinions out there, but I will share some information that I came across that got me thinking. To build strength without adding bulk lift heavy and keep the sets to two and the reps performed on each set less than ten with five being optimal. I won’t get into the science behind it, but more reps damages the muscles more which could lead to injury, but also causes the muscle to rebuild itself and usually rebuilds it larger than before. It makes sense to me.

I want to think of this in a different light. The goal of weight training is building strength not endurance or cardio. That is what running is for. If the goal is strength, then why bother with higher reps and lower weights. I think the “common knowledge” of high reps/low weight came about because of that “runner’s mindset” of having to go longer, so we sacrifice weight to lift a little longer (i.e. more sets and reps). Use your weight training for what it was intended for (strength) and leave the endurance for long runs and cardio for short fast runs like intervals. The beauty of heavier weights and shorter reps/sets is that the time spent in the gym is significantly less and your muscles aren’t totally taxed, so you can enjoy a run afterwards. Heavier weights also have another benefit it that you are less likely to get injured. It’s true, you tend to concentrate more on form (provided you know the correct form) than using lighter weights, which let you sacrifice form for repetitions.

Finally view this argument form another perspective: you can’t build endurance by only running the minimum 20 minutes 3x’s a week like conventional wisdom dictates. Endurance requires longer runs. Same thing with speed. You can’t expect to run fast unless you run fast. So when it comes to strength training, don’t try to mix in things like endurance and speed and just focus on strength. You won’t bulk up, and you won’t get injured as long as you listen to what your body tells you. If anything, you’ll enjoy the benefits after a few short weeks of consistent training.

This just reiterates the importance of quality over quantity. Make the workout your doing do what it was intended to do (i.e. build strength, improve speed, or increase your endurance), don’t try to mix them up which “waters down” your intended goal.

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