Advertisement The first way strength training can aid an endurance athlete is through injury prevention. Lifting weights has been shown to increase bone density, reducing the risk of stress fractures, a common ailment for long-distance runners.
Choosing exercises that put a load on your spine, such as squats, deadlifts and leg presses, are great options. Including some light plyometric, or jumping, exercises also can be effective.
Aside from increasing bone density, however, strength training allows the endurance athlete to target muscle groups that are under-utilized in the sport.
A cyclist, for example, primarily uses the muscles of the quadriceps, or thighs, to propel down the road. This leaves the hamstrings, hip flexors and glutes a little bit weaker by comparison. By incorporating single joint lifts such as leg curls and hip flexion exercises or more complex ones such as a Romanian deadlift, a cyclist can maintain some degree of symmetry in the legs, reducing injury risk.
The muscles of the low back can take a beating due to the rider’s posture in a long ride, too. Exercises such as back extensions or standing good mornings can increase the strength of the lumbar area, allowing the cyclist to ride longer.
The tri-athlete can use weightlifting as a training tool. An athlete who is a good swimmer, cyclist and runner may struggle when these are done back-to-back-to-back.
Specific aerobic training in which the athlete rides a bike and then runs several miles can help cut down transition times and prepare for the muscular fatigue the athlete will feel during a race. However, when biking before running isn’t feasible due to time or weather, the athlete can pre-exhaust his muscles by doing a high repetition leg workout in the weight room followed immediately by a running workout. This simulates the exhaustion he will feel in a race and can be customized at his own direction.
Although its implementation is a bit different, strength training can aid an endurance athlete much in the same way it can a speed, strength or power athlete.
Travis Erickson is director of undergraduate strength and conditioning concentration at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse. E-mail questions to erickson.trav@uwlax.edu.
