Why Endurance Athletes Should Strength Train Year-Round - Coach Tip Tuesday

We are now immersed in the time of year when many - if not most - athletes are in Maintenance Phase (or as it’s more commonly known as: The Off-Season).  There are two key functions of Maintenance Phase.  The first is to allow athletes to decompress and off-load a bit of the training and fatigue that they have built up over the main season.  This allows the body to become resensitized to the volume and intensity that will be necessary to make fitness and performance gains in the future.  The second function of Maintenance Phase is to lay down the groundwork to establish habits and behaviors that will set the athlete up for greater success in the upcoming season and seasons.  

Today, we’re going to focus on that second key function by discussing one of the habits that I strongly feel that all endurance athletes should maintain year-round: Strength Training.  In my experience working as a coach for the last 12+ years, a majority of athletes are not incorporating strength training alongside their sport-specific training.  If athletes are incorporating strength training, they usually are not doing so throughout an entire training cycle or year.  Instead, they are doing it sporadically and/or only during the Off-Season.  Whether you are a runner, cyclist, triathlete, endurance swimmer, or hiker, if you haven’t ever strength trained or if you do not currently consistently strength train, you should consider utilizing the current Maintenance Phase to establish this important year-round habit.

Why Don’t More Endurance Athletes Regularly Strength Train?

I think it’s valuable to begin this conversation by discussing why a relatively low number of endurance athletes regularly strength train.  One of the most common “reasons” (which could potentially be classified as an excuse, but I digress) that athletes give for not including strength training in their programming year-round is that they are afraid of losing fitness in their primary sport and they want to prioritize their sport-specific sessions in training.  While I understand this feeling (as I shared this sentiment back when I was a new endurance athlete), I also know that this is an example of when our minds are lying to us and when our feelings and/or emotions about our training are overriding our intellect about training.  

It’s true that if you stop running, swimming, and/or cycling that you will lose fitness.  However, if you sustain an injury and you cannot run, swim, or bike, you will lose fitness.  It’s as simple and as hard as that.  Too many athletes view strength training in opposition to their primary sport and training, when truly, it enhances one’s primary sport and training by providing the framework of resilience, durability and strength that is necessary to reduce injury risk and make gains.

Additionally, I think that many endurance athletes neglect to consistently strength train because it isn’t as fun or as interesting to them as their sport-specific training is.  (And it’s this reason that prompts many athletes to say/use the number one reason mentioned earlier.  Once again, I understand this from personal experience, as I felt this way for the first part of my athletic journey.)  A strength session doesn’t usually trigger the same release of endorphins that a workout such as a run, bike ride, or swim will for endurance athletes, and thus, they don’t have the same “high” after completing a strength session as they do after completing a workout in their primary sport.  But saying “I don’t like [insert thing here]” is hard for people; it’s easier to say a “valid reason” such as “I don’t want to lose my sport-specific fitness” and cover up one’s real feelings.  For a lot of people, it doesn’t sound as “good” to say that the reason they’re not doing something is because they don’t like it or they don’t want to.

Finally, I think that many athletes disregard strength training because it is overwhelming and confusing to them.  This feeling is entirely valid; I felt this way myself for the first half of my coaching career until I went through a certification course to learn about the principles of strength training.  In fact, until I successfully completed that course, I refused to prescribe strength training for the athletes I was coaching because I didn’t feel that I had sufficient knowledge or experience to safely prescribe strength training.  To this day, strength training is one of the more complicated and risky series of workouts I plan for athletes due to its complexity.

What exercises should athletes be doing?  Should they be using machines or free weights?  What weight should they select for a given exercise?  Which exercises will support their endurance training?  Which exercises could have a negative impact on their endurance sports training?  How many sets should they do?  How many repetitions should they complete?  Do they need to join a gym, or can they get in an effective strength workout at home?  There are so many variables to consider when planning strength training, and it’s much more complicated than other activities endurance athletes engage in.  This makes it very challenging for athletes to sort out for themselves what they could and should be doing.  It’s far simpler to put on a pair of running shoes and head out the door for a run.

Why is Strength Training So Important for Endurance Athletes?

By its very nature, endurance sports training is catabolic, which means that it breaks the body down on a cellular level.  By contrast, strength training is anabolic, which means that it helps build the body up on a cellular level.  One could say that strength training and endurance sports training are yin and yang; they are opposite forces that form a whole, and one cannot fully exist well without the other.   The goal of any sound endurance sports training program is to reduce the amount that a given athlete’s body is breaking down over the course of an Annual Training Plan (ATP) or macrocycle.  Strength training helps mitigate this risk of breakdown, and in my opinion, it’s the best way athletes can mitigate this risk.  

It can be helpful to think of your overall status as an endurance athlete as a pyramid, with your actual fitness in your primary sport being the top of that pyramid.  This pyramid is only stable if it has a broad base; at the bottom of the pyramid are general physical qualities.  The two most important general physical qualities as they relate to endurance sports are range of movement (ROM) and control through that range.  These physical qualities at the base of the pyramid must be achieved through strength training.

The next levels up in this pyramid are the physical qualities related to your primary sport that are not necessarily developed in your primary sport.  Examples of these include (but are not limited to): maximal power, the range of motion that enables you to hold a time trial/aero position on the bike, and eccentric stabilization under load while running. (Eccentric muscle contractions refer to the force that is being produced when a muscle develops tension while lengthening; the ability to stabilize while sustaining eccentric muscle contractions while running is critical to running safely and reducing injury risk.)  These levels in the pyramid are developed through a combination of strength training and sport-specific training; they cannot be achieved through one or the other form of training exclusively and/or on their own.

The top of the pyramid are the physical qualities related to your primary sport that are developed in your training that is specific to your primary sport (think your running, swimming, and/or cycling workouts).  These qualities can only be properly worked on and developed if the lower levels of the pyramid are sound and stable.  In other words: Your sport-specific training sessions will only be maximally effective if you have laid the proper groundwork through strength training.

As mentioned earlier, left to their own devices, most athletes will only focus on the top of the pyramid (sport-specific skills and training) and they will neglect the all-important stabilizing parts of their pyramid.  But as we all know, any structure - including a pyramid - that is built on a shaky foundation is at risk of collapsing.  And this is what happens for runners, triathletes, cyclists, and swimmers: They collapse (sometimes quite literally).  Except in endurance sports, we have a different name for this collapse; we call it injury.

No matter what your endurance sport of choice is, proper posture is essential for you to see true and compounded fitness and performance gains over time.  Proper posture enables you to engage with economical and efficient mechanics and to delay time to fatigue.  Without this proper posture, you will break down mechanically.  This is especially true as you accumulate fatigue over the course of a workout or a race.  Strength training is what helps you develop and retain this all-important posture. 

In addition, strength training helps enhance an endurance athlete’s sport-specific performance.  An interesting study was conducted recently that determined that triathletes who concurrently strength trained alongside their sport-specific (triathlon) endurance training significantly improved their maximal strength, cycling economy, and running economy with no change in body mass.  The control group, which only completed sport-specific (triathlon) endurance training (and did not complete any strength training) did not show any significant gains in economy or maximal strength.  The researchers concluded that strength training is an essential component for endurance athletes (triathletes in the case of this study) to see meaningful gains in their strength and performance.

The Fallacy of Off-Season-Only Strength Training

If you have a marathon coming up in October, you would not run train from November - April, then not run at all from April - October, and still expect a strong and great performance on race day in October.  If you have a triathlon in August, you don’t swim, bike, and run in training from January - May, neglect to do workouts in June and July, and then expect to be successful in the August triathlon.  Even the athletes who are most prone to cramming their training would agree that this would sound like an absolutely crazy strategy to implement.

And yet, this is exactly what so, so many endurance athletes do when it comes to strength training.  They might start strength training in the Off-Season and keep it up for a bit of Base Phase.  But then as their sport-specific training starts to build in volume and/or specificity toward their goal race, they eliminate strength training in favor of their sport-specific workouts.  In many cases, they expect that strength training that they completed and the gains they made from it in the off-season to magically hold and be effective throughout the entire season.  But that isn’t how training works.  We need to frequently and consistently do the things that matter in order to make progress and reduce our probability of injury.  We cannot just load up on a dose of a particular something (such as strength training) and expect that it will stay with us for a prolonged period of time.

A Multi-Planar Approach to Endurance Sports Training

Most people have probably heard the quip “sitting is the new smoking” by now.  And while it is a catchy phrase, there’s also honestly quite a bit of truth to it.  Modern lifestyles are increasingly sedentary and indoors-based.  The average person spends 7.7 hours sleeping and 10.4 hours sitting (a whopping 18.1 hours total each day!).  Americans spend 87% of our time indoors, 6% of our time in our cars, and a measly 7% of our time outside.

As a result of all of the sitting, computer usage, and smartphone usage in modern life, kyphosis is becoming increasingly more common.  Kyphosis is an increased front-to-back curve of the spine.  Practically speaking, it is an excessive rounding of the upper back (think slumped shoulders and a forward head position).  While some curvature of the spine is healthy and normal, the rounding of the back in Kyphosis is excessive and outside of what is healthy.  This is a particularly concerning condition because it is the opposite of what we were discussing earlier; it is improper posture.  As a result, it can lead to limited physical functions, back pain, and other issues.  Practically speaking for athletes, kyphosis can lead to increasingly decreased performance gains and limitations in movement, especially in aging and Masters Athletes.

In addition to our daily lives increasingly contributing to causing this condition, endurance sports training actually promotes kyphosis since endurance sports (such as swimming, biking, running, and hiking) take place in the sagittal plane.  Movements in the sagittal plane are forward and backward, and moving exclusively in this plane promotes continued rounding of the upper back, neck, and head.  Remember: Endurance sports are catabolic in nature.  We need strength training as the anabolic counterforce to our endurance sports training; we need strength training as the anabolic counterforce to the extended time we spend moving in the sagittal plane as endurance athletes.  

Strength training in all three planes of movement helps provide this counterforce and builds overall resilience and durability in the body.  (The other two planes of movement are the frontal plane and the transverse plane.  Movements in the frontal plane are side-to-side and movements in the transverse plane are rotational in nature.)  Additionally, including multi-joint movements that connect multiple parts of the body helps teach the body the neuromuscular specificity of moving collaboratively with precision, coordination, and strength.

While each athlete is an individual and therefore has movement patterns and compensations that are unique to them, there are some exercises that are broadly applicable to a wide range of athletes that can enhance their training in their primary sport as well as help counteract our sedentary daily lives and resulting poor posture:

• Planks
• Push-Ups
• Wall Angels
• Shoulder External Rotations
• Shoulder Presses
• Lat Pull-Downs
• Single-Leg Step-Ups
• Single-Leg Step-Downs
• Sliding Single-Leg Romanian Deadlifts
• Split Squats
• Calf Raises
• Trunk Rotations
• Dead Bugs
• Single-Leg Lift & Chop

Some of these exercises are weighted, some of them are not.  A lot of athletes have a dismissive attitude about bodyweight strength training exercises, but the truth of the matter is that bodyweight exercises need to be leveraged to develop proper and good form.  A wide range of factors, to include genetics, injury history,  training activity level (to include frequency, consistency, and volume), daily activity level, and what the athlete does for work mean that very few athletes have the range of movement, control, and strength to go into loaded (aka weighted) strength training movements when they begin strength training.  Only once good form is mastered is it safe to add weight to strength exercises.  If you load (aka add weight) to a movement that is being completed with poor form, you will only reinforce improper mechanics and/or posture, which is in opposition to the goals of strength training for endurance athletes and can lead to injury (either acutely or over time).

How Often Should Endurance Athletes Strength Train?

Unfortunately, knowing some good strength training exercises isn’t sufficient enough to see all of the wonderful benefits that strength training provides.  To reap these benefits, endurance athletes need to do one of the three most important things in endurance sports training: They must strength train consistently, and they must do so year-round.

As I’ve talked about in the past, I firmly believe that strength training is so important for endurance athletes that it should be the backbone of their training.  What I mean by this is that endurance athletes should plan for and schedule their strength training sessions first, and then “fill in” the rest of their weekly training schedule around those scheduled strength sessions.  In other words: I believe that endurance athletes should not even consider what sport-specific sessions they will be doing until they have prioritized and scheduled their strength training.

However, even I can admit that this is a relatively utopian view of how most endurance athletes will schedule their training weeks in real life.  So if scheduling strength training first is something that athletes are unwilling to do, I recommend including two strength sessions per week, separated from each other by at least 48 hours (meaning that there should be at least 1-2 days in between strength training workouts).

Strength training workouts can happen on the same days as workouts for an athlete’s primary sport.  And in many cases (especially for multisport athletes), doubling up like this actually becomes necessary at times in order to get the appropriate amount of training sessions in to help them have the highest probability of successfully reaching their goals.  When strength sessions are doubled up like this, I recommend one of two approaches:

1. That the strength training session takes place as the first workout of the day time-wise.

-OR-

2. That the strength training session happens at least eight hours after the primary sport workout if the strength training session is the second workout of the day time-wise.

There are several really important reasons why I make this recommendation.  As discussed earlier,  one of the most important benefits we’re seeking to get from strength training is to train proper posture and - by extension - proper and sound mechanics.  Additionally, strength training is one of the more risky elements in an endurance athlete’s training regimen.  When strength training is the first workout of the day, we are giving that workout our “first fruits” - our first time, energy, and attention reserves of the day.  This allows us to be more engaged in the workout and to ensure that we are not fatigued when we are completing the exercises and movements in the session.

If a given athlete doesn’t want to do their strength training first, I recommend a break of at least eight hours between sessions to allow the athlete to rest up a bit and to do the strength workout with more energy than they would be able to if they did the strength session immediately after or shortly after their primary sport workout.  For many athletes (and especially Masters Athletes), when a strength training session is completed immediately after or shortly after a primary sport workout, they have enough fatigue in play that they are not deriving as much postural and mechanical benefit from the workout as they could if they allowed some time for recovery.  Additionally, the risk of sustaining an injury from the session increases.

I have seen that two strength training sessions that are 30-60 minutes long each week year-round is a wonderful foundation of strength training to support endurance sports training.  If athletes have the time and/or desire, the frequency of these sessions can be increased to three sessions per week.  

But what happens when athletes don’t feel that they have the time to complete 2-3 “full” strength training workouts like this each week?  This situation becomes a strong case of “something is better than nothing”.  Incorporating some strength training into your weekly training routine year-round is much, much better than not including it at all.  If you only have 15-20 minutes a few times a week, do some strength work during those 15-20 minutes.  

Another “sneaky” and useful way to incorporate strength training is to make strength training exercises a part of a dynamic warm-up before your primary sport sessions.  When completed immediately before a swim, bike, or run, these dynamic warm-ups can be 10-15 minutes long and can serve the dual purpose of preparing the body for the main workout as well as incorporating some strength work.  Here are some examples of good exercises for that:

• Pre-Swim Dynamic Warm-Up Exercises
  • Wall Angels
  • Shoulder External Rotations
  • Cross-Body Arm Swings
  • Shoulder Pull-Aparts with Band
• Pre-Bike Dynamic Warm-Up Exercises
  • Dead Bugs
  • Glute Bridges
  • Reverse Lunge-to-Balance
  • Shoulder "I"s, "T"s, & "Y"s with Dumbbells
• Pre-Run Dynamic Warm-Up Exercises
  • Single-Leg Step-Ups
  • Single-Leg Step-Downs
  • Sliding Single-Leg Romanian Deadlifts
  • Calf Raises
  • Lunge-to-Balance
  • Airplane to High Knee

‍Do Endurance Athletes Need to Work with a Strength Coach?

Endurance athletes have a lot of options when it comes to coaching for their primary sport.  They may be self-coached, they may be following a Training Plan, or they may be engaged with a customized and personalized coaching service provided by an Endurance Coach.  While many Endurance Coaches are educated and experienced enough to prescribe endurance sports training, not all Endurance Coaches have the knowledge and experience to write safe and effective strength training sessions alongside those primary sport workouts.  Some Endurance Coaches do have this experience (I happen to be one of them).  But some simply do not.

Even if an athlete is working with an Endurance Coach, there is immense value in also working with a Strength Coach who understands the sport-specific needs of endurance athletes.  A qualified Strength Coach is going to have the knowledge, specific expertise, and experience to be able to write and prescribe quality training for endurance athletes to help them mitigate injury and to see gains in their primary sport.  If they are working with an endurance athlete in-person, a Strength Coach can assess that athlete’s current abilities and select the most appropriate exercises for where that athlete currently is.  Perhaps most importantly, a Strength Coach is going to be able to tell when it’s appropriate for an athlete to add weight to strength movements, which is one of the riskiest and most important details to manage when writing strength training workouts.

One of the main limitations of working with a Strength Coach - especially one-on-one and in-person - is the cost of this service.  As of the time of my writing this (November 2024), the average cost of working with a Strength Coach in-person is around $75 per hour.  While this level of service is the most personalized (and therefore arguably the best) option that athletes can select when it comes to including strength training into their fitness routine, simply put, many athletes do not have the funds to pay for in-person strength training sessions.

But just because you can’t afford (or don’t want to afford) to work with a Strength Coach one-on-one and/or in-person doesn’t mean that you can’t incorporate strength training into your workout schedule.  That being said, I don’t recommend that inexperienced athletes try to plan strength training on their own; strength training is, in my opinion, honestly riskier to take on on your own than even endurance sports training since performing movements without the proper chassis, range of motion, or foundational elements in place is fundamentally compromised and flawed.  Lack of progress, imbalances, and injuries are just some of the things that can result from doing this.

There are several nice alternatives to working one-on-one with a Strength Coach.  Group strength classes have become more popular over the last ten years and are now staples at many gyms and fitness facilities.  Additionally, there are many resources online (specific Strength Training Plans, videos of strength training routines, etc.) that enable athletes to follow strength workouts without having to do the planning themselves.  Remember: When it comes to strength training, something is almost always better than nothing.

The Bottom Line

Strength training year-round isn’t just a nice idea; it is something that all endurance athletes should be seeking to do so that they can continue to make gains, reach their goals, and retain the ability to participate in endurance sports for a high percentage of their life.  Additionally, it helps improve their overall health, balance, and mobility, which is critical for aging humans (as well as aging athletes).

Seize the opportunity of the Off-Season and leverage it to set yourself up for success next year and in the seasons to come.  Incorporate strength training as a regular and consistent part of your training schedule to help unlock your true potential.

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Sources:

Luckin-Baldwin, Kate M., et al. “Strength Training Improves Exercise Economy in Triathletes during a Simulated Triathlon.” International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance, vol. 16, no. 5, 1 May 2021, pp. 663–673, https://doi.org/10.1123/ijspp.2020-0170. Accessed 10 November 2024.

Blodgett, Joanna M, et al. “Device-Measured Physical Activity and Cardiometabolic Health: The Prospective Physical Activity, Sitting, and Sleep (ProPASS) Consortium.” European Heart Journal, vol. 45, no. 6, 10 Nov. 2023, pp. 458–471, https://doi.org/10.1093/eurheartj/ehad717.  Accessed 10 November 2024.

National Academy of Sports Medicine. NASM Essentials of Personal Fitness Training. Fifth ed., Burlington, MA, Jones & Bartlett Learning, 2017.