Resistance Training and Endurance Sports. Can they co-exist?
This post in inspired by a handful of clients I have at the moment who are coming to me to guide them through a strength and mobility program through a physiotherapy lens as an adjunct to their run training. I am honoured to be a part of their journeys and excited for them to take on their 2023 racing goals. Full Send! Want to work with me? You can book an appointment here or send me an email with any questions you have!
Runners love running. And when I say love, I mean they find that doing anything other than running for physical activity feels like a waste of time. Why pick things up and put them down when you could be frolicking through a tree covered trail, chasing that runner’s high? There is also concern around becoming “bulky” or “heavy” (the endurance community has an unhealthy obsession with race weight, but I will save that for another day).
I don’t often think we should compare ourselves to professionals, but professional endurance athletes all put in some work at the gym. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander. So what at the benefits of doing resistance training (RT) as an endurance athlete? It is a bit nuanced, so we will look at what it doesn’t do, as well as how it can make you faster.
A number of studies have looked at how RT affects traditional endurance performance metrics like VO2Max and lactate threshold. Generally, the results suggest that RT does not have an impact on these two markers.
VO2Max: The maximum rate of oxygen your body can use during exercise. Generally speaking, the higher your oxygen usage, the fitter your cardiovascular system. To increase this number, you need to be doing cardio, or something that gets you breathing hard. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that most people do not see improvements in VO2Max with RT.
Lactate Threshold: The exercise intensity where your body starts to accumulate lactate. This can be trained to be a higher percent of your VO2Max. Again, studies have shown that doing RT does not improve this metric. Similar to VO2Max, lactate threshold is trained through targeted cardiovascular training, and doing weights does not get your anywhere near that level of intensity.
If RT doesn’t increase your VO2Max or lift your lactate threshold, then through what mechanism can it impact performance?
Studies have shown that RT has a measurable impact on 3 key elements of endurance performance: neuromuscular performance and anaerobic power, time to exhaustion, and running economy. These categories are not stand along silos and are more like a Venn diagram, with each component having an impact on the others, but I will do my best to explain them below.
Neuromuscular performance and anaerobic power: In broad strokes, RT can positively impact your neuromuscular performance by improving recruitment, coordination, and force development. Think of it a bit as reinforcing the connection of your nervous system and the muscles they control. This has a spillover effect on your anaerobic power, which is the power you can generate without oxygen. Anaerobic efforts are short in duration but high in force production (think explosive), and therefore benefits from a neuromuscular system that is firing on all cylinders. Twitchy and springy. Why does this matter in endurance sport? Having a neuromuscular system that is fatigue resistant means you can maintain better form for longer and won’t become an uncoordinated mess during the back half of a race. Some studies have shown that if other variables are held constant, like VO2Max and running economy, that anaerobic power can predict who will do better in a race. By becoming better at generating power, you are fortifying your neuromuscular system and in a way priming yourself for a performance boost.
Time to exhaustion: This differs from VO2Max because it is a measure of how long you can go for at a given workload. There is enough scientific evidence to suggest that RT can increase your time to exhaustion. By increasing your strength, the relative percent of muscle being used at a given workload decreases. It is also possible that your time to exhaustion increases due to the anaerobic and neuromuscular benefits mentioned above.
Running economy: This is possibly the single most important reason to strength train, and although it is called “running economy”, the idea of movement economy can be applied to virtually all sports. Given the large impact running economy has, and the numerous ways that it can be influenced, I am not going to get into this here, and am instead going to dedicate a whole post on this one (sorry! Such suspense!).
If you made it this far, you deserve a quick summary. The big takeaways are that RT does not have a negative impact on endurance performance, but it certainly can help you by improving your neuromuscular characteristics, muscular power, time to exhaustion, and running economy (you are just going to have to take my word for it). Do you want to set yourself apart from your peers? Go move some weight around! Not sure where to start? Send me an email and let’s chat!
