Endurance Athletes and Strength Training
The benefits of strength training for elite endurance athletes
Endurance Athletes & Strength Training:
Strength training is common practice with athletes involved in high-intensity sports. Its widely know that a well formulated strength training regime can improve athletic performance by developing attributes such as muscular development, neuromuscular acuteness & energy system efficiency. The real question is whether endurance athletes can reap the same benefits despite the fact their sports can prioritise different athletic attributes.
The Common Misconceptions about Strength Training for Endurance Sports:
There are many myths pertaining to strength training but here are some of the most common ones regarding endurance athletes.
Strength training will bulk you up too much and slow you down.
Strength training will increase the risk of injury due to muscular fatigue.
Strength training decreases your conditioning due to increased energy requirements.
The Actual Results of Strength Training on Endurance Performance:
It has been shown that strength training improves both short term (<15 minutes) and long term (>30 minutes) capacity in endurance athletes (Aagaard & Andersen, 2010). These results were consistent in both untrained and highly trained, elite athletes. It’s important to emphasize the improvement in highly trained athletes as these populations generally experience the smallest increments of improvement due to the years of training and mastery of their chosen sports. Furthermore, these results have been reproduced in a variety of endurance sports including running (Sedano, Marin, Cuadrado, & Redondo, 2013), rowing (Izquierdo-Gabarren et al., 2010) and cycling (Ronnestad, Hansen, & Ellefsen, 2015).
How it Works (The Physiological & Biomechanical Adaptations):
There are a variety of reasons as to why athletes experience improved performance but here are some of the key points.
An Increase of Type IIA muscle fibers: These muscle fibers are more resistant to fatigue, can produce a higher maximal force (resulting in increased muscle strength) and can elevate the rate of force development in muscles (more explosive power) (Aagaard & Andersen, 2010).
Increased peak velocity (PV): This is a carry-over effect from the previous adaptation. By having stronger and more powerful muscles, athletes are able to increase their peak velocity/movement speed (Sedano et al., 2013).
Improved anaerobic capacity: Although anaerobic factors are considered less vital in endurance sports, strength training improves Glycolysis, PCr stores & utilization and the buffering capacity of lactic acid. These factors all contribute to an improved lactate threshold, a key performance marker in endurance athletes (Beattie, Kenny, Luons, & Carson, 2014).
Increased movement economy: Increased muscular strength negates the effects of any mass gained or additional muscular energy requirements resulting from strength training (Paavolainen, Häkkinen, Hämäläinen, Nummela, & Rusko, 1999). Movement economy was also found in cyclists pedaling characteristics. By achieving peak torque earlier during the stroke of each pedal, the cyclists were able to produce higher peak power and mean power during both 30-second and 40-minute maximal cycle tests (Ronnestad et al., 2015).
Enhanced neuromuscular function: There is an improvement of motor unit recruitment and muscular coordination (Beattie et al., 2014). Another way to explain this is that the correct muscles can be activated faster, more powerfully & efficiently and are able to work more harmoniously within the kinetic chain of the movement.
Training Principles & Guidelines:
Like most strength training programs, the key is adherence. Work hard, train smart and be consistent. That being said, the studies mentioned above focus around some key strength training principles and such as periodization and specificity. Here are some of the guidelines they had success with.
Utilize strength training at least 2-times per week (Ronnestad et al., 2015). Assuming you have an adequate amount of recover between lifting weights, multiple sessions have a greater effect on developing muscular strength.
Use a periodized training program (Ronnestad et al., 2015). If you do the same exercises, volumes and training intensity, your body’s ability to adapt from the training stimulus will drastically decrease.
Some of the best results came from combining heavy strength training with explosive strength training/plyometrics (Sedano et al., 2013). This sort of concurrent training allows for muscular and neuromuscular development.
Don’t train to failure (Izquierdo-Gabarren et al., 2010). While both maximal and sub-maximal training programs benefited endurance capacity (performance), the studies above showed that endurance athletes responded better to heavy strength training, while avoiding pushing to failure.
Exercise selection should be specific to the athletes chosen sport (Paavolainen et al., 1999). This is an interesting one as people often think of open-chain exercises as the better and more “functional” option. In a lot of cases this isn’t a terrible assumption however, many endurance sports are closed-chain movements such as pedaling a bike, pushing up and down a slide in a rowing boat or running on a relatively straight and flat course. Leg press and walking lunges are respective example of closed and open-chained exercises. Consider your sport and the type of movement you are performing before choosing your exercises (Beattie et al., 2014).
The most effective training programs were long-term (Aagaard & Andersen, 2010). Small benefits were seen in as little as 4 to 8-weeks, however programs lasting 12 or more weeks presented the best results.
On a final note, it’s important to mention that strength training has one of the lowest rates of injury (adolescent and adult populations) when compared to other sports (Hamill, 1994). This is due to its predicable and repeatable nature of the movements. Therefore, if you want to improve your endurance capacity, regardless of your age or athletic background, get in the gym and start working out!
References:
Aagaard, p., & Andersen, J. (2010). Effects of strength training on endurance capacity in top‐level endurance athletes Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports. Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports, 20(2), 39-47. Retrieved from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1600-0838.2010.01197.x. doi:10.1111/j.1600-0838.2010.01197.x
Beattie, K., Kenny, I., Luons, M., & Carson, B. (2014). The Effect of Strength Training on Performance in Endurance Athletes. Sports Medicine, 44(6), 845-865. Retrieved from https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40279-014-0157-y. doi:10.1007/s40279-014-0157-y
Hamill, B. (1994). Relative Safety of Weightlifting and Weight Training. Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research, 8(1), 53-57.
Izquierdo-Gabarren, M., Gonzalez De Txabarri Exposito, R., Garcia-Pallares, J., LSanchez-Mendina, L., Saez De Villarreal, E., & Izquierdo, M. (2010). Concurrent endurance and strength training not to failure optimizes performance gains. Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, 1191-1199.
Paavolainen, L., Häkkinen, K., Hämäläinen, I., Nummela, A., & Rusko, H. (1999). Explosive-strength training improves 5-km running time by improving running economy and muscle power. Journal of Applied Physiology, 86(5), 1527-1533.
Ronnestad, B., Hansen, J., & Ellefsen, S. (2015). Strength training improves performance and pedaling characteristics in elite cyclists. Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports, 25, 89-98. Retrieved from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/sms.12257. doi:10.1111/sms.12257
Sedano, S., Marin, P., Cuadrado, G., & Redondo, J. (2013). Concurrent Training in Elite Male Runners: The Influence of Strength Versus Muscular Endurance Training on Performance Outcomes. The Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research, 27(9), 2433-2443. Retrieved from https://journals.lww.com/nsca-jscr/Fulltext/2013/09000/Concurrent_Training_in_Elite_Male_Runners___The.10.aspx. doi:10.1519/JSC.0b013e318280cc26
Written by Nevin Mills - The Strength Institute of Western Australia
