Resistance Training for Runners to Prevent Injury, Run Faster and Further

This morning I was listening to one of my favorite new podcasts, the Runners Round Table.  The podcast from this morning was an old one, about resistance training.   I would recommend listening to it, as it has some advice that I think could become very helpful for runners looking set a PR at their next marathon or half-marathon.  Below is a post from the "expert" on the panel, Amelia Burton, all about resistance training and various exercises you can try to start out. 

AmeliaBurton.com

What’s your training program like? Do you focus on increasing your miles each week, maybe a bit of speed work here and there, and of course a token stretch at the end of each session? Well hats off to you because unlike 85% of the population at least you are doing something! But whether you are an amateur runner or a competitive athlete, adding a resistance session each week might just be the thing you need to take your further, faster and with fewer injuries.  This article looks at the reasoning behind resistance training for runners and identifies the top resistance training exercises all runners should do.
What is Resistance training for distance running?

Conventionally we think of resistance training as weights machines, dumbbells, slow movements and heavy weights (with lots of grunting).  Resistance training for runners is quite different. It’s about loading the muscles in a manner that replicates running to improve their strength power, endurance and most importantly coordination. It’s about identifying the weaker muscles in the body and developing them to prevent injury. It is NOT about building unnecessary bulk or damaging already fatigued tissue and I must stress that incorrect resistance training can tighten you up and slow you down.

What purpose does it serve?

There are four key areas that resistance training will help you with: Speed, muscular endurance, efficiency of running technique, and injury prevention.

•  Increase strength of your prime movers for speed and distance: The stronger your quads, glutes and hamstrings are the faster your will go and the longer you will be able to maintain your pace. Obviously nothing beats running to strengthen these,  but resistance work involving sprints, uphill and downhill running improve their strength much faster.
• Prevents injury by Increase strength of your stabilisers: Your prime movers can only work as hard as your stabilisers will allow. It doesn’t matter how strong/fit you are, if you have poor hip knee and ankle stability, you will never reach your full potential in both speed and endurance.
• Increase coordination: Similar to stability, the faster you fatigue the sooner your coordination goes. Look at a distance athlete and how smooth their running style is. That is good coordination. All muscles, tendons, ligaments and joint actions are working in smooth unison to create effortless strides. The more fatigued you get the worse these actions interrelate creating a less economical stride which slows you down and increases your chance of injury.
• Increase stride length: As you fatigue, your stride naturally shortens, your muscles tighten and you slow down. By increasing your stride length (within reason) you can maintain a faster pace and waste less energy through excessive foot strikes.

Two Training Programs for Runners

Click here for a printable program you can take to the park/oval for your resistance session. Ideally you will need a stop watch and a skipping rope, but exercises can be performed without them.

Click here for a printable program for Core Stability and VMO/Glute Activation. You will need a swiss ball and leg extension machine for these.

The below animations will help you understand the exercises in the programs. Familiarize yourself with these exercises before printing out your workout sheets:


Skipping/Hopping

Bounding

Jumping on/off step

Plyometric Lunges

Burpees

1. Start in a standing position and bend your knees and place your hands on the ground.
2. Extend your legs back into a push up position. Bring your knees back in towards chest and explosively jump in the air.
3. This should be a continuous motion and be fluid.

Walking Lunges (Hand weights optional)

Single Leg Squat (Try not to hold on and I prefer foot to balance in air not across other leg)

 

What are the best muscle balancing exercises for injury prone runners?

 
Leg Extension: from 15-30degrees, toes turned out slightly, focusing on VMO activation. Light weight. 3 x 15-20 reps.

Lunges: Focus on the VMO of the front leg and glutes of the front leg. Keep your knees tracking straight and don’t let them internally rotate as you lower.

Core Stability exercises: Click here for a printable program 

1. Alternating Single Leg Bridge
3 x 15 reps

2.Double Leg Pike:

2 x 2 min

3. Alternate Arm Swings and Single Leg Raises

3 x 15 reps

4. Side Raises on Ball
3 x 12 each side

Click here for Printable resistance program. Click here for printable Core and VMO/Glute activation program
For more detailed core stability exercises,  click on my core stability four part series linked here.

• Core Stability Part 1- A Remedy For Back Pain
• Core Stability Part 2: The spinal neutral test
• Core Stability Part 3: Challenging your core muscles
• Core Stability Part 4: Functional Exercises -the plank and its wacky variations
• Abdominal Exercises: Exercise Your Oblique Muscles to Get Rid of the Love Handles

Amelia Burton's original entry 

A Guide to the Boston Marathon

Today we are 22 days until the 114th Boston Marathon!  While I won't be running Boston this year (or likely any year in the near future) I will be watching it on TV and I have a few friends that qualified so I wanted to make sure I shared a course guide that I have.  My sister ran the race back in 2008 as a charity runner, and her company helped train them and gave them a guide to the race.

I joined my sister at about mile 15-16 and helped run her in for the last 10 miles, the one piece of advice that I remember her repeating while I was with her was that you should not look at 13.1 as your halfway point in Boston.  The hills from 16-21 are all pretty brutal and, and don't think you are half way done until about mile 20, might sound a little strange but it seemed to help her.

I hope this guide to the course helps you.

Guide to the Boston Marathon

Boston.com Interactive Race Guide

March 25th - Pacers Greenberry AM Run

Time: 46.37

Distance: 5.82
Pace: 8:00
Weather:  Entire course was dry

Temp: 47

Time: 5:00 AM
Terrain: Pretty flat except at the the end

I ran with Ken again this morning, he has become a really good running partner and we have definitely begun to push ourselves a little harder each run.  We seem to improve our time each run, but it doesn't seem like we are racing each other, we are just pushing each other to really know our ability.

The route starts on a downhill and when we were in Georgetown Ken noted that we were really booking it, our pace at that point was a 7:15.  I didn't notice that we purposely slowed up but we did lower our speed a little bit just so that we didn't kill ourselves.  When we were heading over Memorial Bridge the two of us were talking about pushing each other and trying to add a new test into our runs, doing things like adding part of the National Mall...I tricked him and got him to agree to add the second hill at the end before he realized I was committing him to it.

When we got to the base of all the hills we were at 4.2 miles in a time of 32:35 which is a pace of 7:45, over the next 1.5 miles when we were running purely up hills we killed out time a bit.  At our normal finishing point we had run 5.3 miles in 41:30, a pace of 7:49, not a bad drop if you ask me.  In the last half mile though, we definitely took a hit and lowered our pace to an 8 minute miles overall...although mapmyrun.com has the route at 5.95 miles which would put our pace at 7:47 a mile.

Want to race in April or May?

If you want to get into a race in April or May check out these great 5K's and even a half marathon!

 

 

 

 

March 24, 2010 - Short run around apt

Time: 23:06
Distance: 3.0
Pace: 7:42
Weather:  Sunny
Temp: 65ish
Time: 2:00 PM
Terrain: Flat

Today it was a gorgeous day out and I decided to out on a run in the parking lot that circles my apartment complex.  I haven't run in a full week because last Friday's run was canceled due to my wife's contractions coming very close to each other.  I figured if I asked for permission to go running I would have gotten in some SERIOUS trouble.

When I started running I really didn't have a "goal distance" or any clue how far I'd run.  I was thinking somewhere in the 5-7 mile range and at times thought maybe I'd go with a nice 9-10 miles...after all I had zero time constraints unless the newborn baby girl in my life started throwing a complete fit and Erin needed help.  When I was at about mile 1.5 I started to feel light headed and the fact that I hadn't eaten lunch was starting to hit me so I decided I was going to call the run short and only do 3 miles.  It felt nice to run again, my knee hurt for the first 1/4 of a mile but then went away.  I'm definitely thinking it's my feet yelling at me for a new pair of shoes...hopefully that will happen soon.

Since I did a half mile loop I did 1/2 mile splits and here they are:
0.5 - 3:48
1.0 - 3:52
1.5 - 4:01
2.0 - 4:00
2.5 - 4:00
3.0 - 3:22

Pictures from Pacers Greenberry Run!

Due to the special run yesterday some of the people brought camera's with them, here are some of the pictures from the post-run festivities.

This is the most of the group that came out for the run...some people still showed up a few minutes late, but they're forgiven this was 5 AM after all!

This is me with Caitlin after the run, I ran the Marine Corps Marathon with her and we coached each other to the finish, she beat me in chip time by 1 second...darn her!

Here I am with Sandy, she works for Pacers and is one of the coaches.  Anytime I have questions or need some running advice, I go to her.  She's also the one that frequently can say 'I told you so' when I don't listen to a tid-bit of advice.

March 17th - Pacers Greenberry AM Run

Time: 42:17

Distance: 5.3
Pace: 7:59
Weather:  Entire course was dry

Temp: 49

Time: 5:00 AM
Terrain: Pretty flat except at the the end

This morning the Pacers AM group had the annual St. Patrick's Day run.  We had a really large group (about 25) show up for a 5 AM run, which is really impressive if ya ask me.

I ran with my group of 4, Ken, Julia, and Wally.  (Wally is a really fast runner that usually is leaps and bounds ahead of me but he decided to take it easy today I think.)  We started at a pretty decent pace on the downhill, but were really just talking and letting our legs go at whatever pace felt comfortable.  We didn't start to slow up until we started to his the up-hills near the end near the Marine Corps memorial at which point I really think having 4 runners helped us out dramatically to keep pushing each other.  As we started up the first incline (Marine Corp Hill) the other 3 started to slow up and I surged ahead to set the pace.  On the second half of the up-hill the peloton swallowed me and Wally and Julia started to set the pace to pull us up the hill.  As we flattened out in between the next set of hills we all just pushed ahead until the next set of hills.  Here Wally and I set the pace until we hit the crest.  This is when I turned to Wally and decided to turn it into a little bit of a race.  When I got to the finish with the large push I put in at the end I felt the need to throw up, but don't worry I didn't.

All in all, I beat my recorded time by about 15 seconds, nothing fantastic but each run I have felt great and have felt like I keep getting in slightly better shape.  I think that with a little more work I'll be good to go for the half marathon I want to do. 

And to answer the million dollar question right now, yes my wife is still pregnant and we're hoping she'll give birth any day now.



My yearly mileage count is currently at 65.21 with an average distance of 5.93 miles at a pace of 8:32 per mile.