Friday, July 11, 2014
Feature in Running Times on sports drinks
I've been up to a lot behind the scenes recently: doing a lot of research for an upcoming injury article, doing freelance work, and keeping up with my regular articles at RunnersConnect.net. One of my biggest recent projects was an article for Running Times magazine on some of the marketing claims of new sports drinks. The hard copy version came out in the July print issue, and the online version was just posted. Check it out!
Tuesday, July 1, 2014
The different roles of strength training for distance runners
Strength training for distance runners is a pretty
popular and contentious topic in the world of training, and I don't have much
up on my blog about it. I recently got an email
asking about my opinion on strength work for distance runners, and it spurred
me to condense what I know so far about the subject, so I've adapted my
response to that email into a blog post.
Strength work, and especially
weight lifting, is in a bit of an awkward place right now, because (unlike most
things with training) the science is actually ahead of the coaching—or at least
the coaching material that's out in the open. Weight lifting was
dismissed for so long for distance runners that there's very little training
literature on how to actually go about integrating it into a training
routine. On one hand you've got running coaches who know nothing about
lifting saying you should only do body weight stuff 1x a week, and on the other
you've got weight lifting coaches who know nothing about running saying you
should lift heavy 3-4x a week and not run on those days.
Whether it was fears that
weight lifting would cause a runner to "bulk up" and slow down, or
claims that most strength work isn't specific enough to distance running, a comprehensive theory of how strength
training fits into an overarching training plan is distinctly lacking in the
coaching literature. I don't doubt that
there are plenty of coaches out there who are far more knowledgeable than I am
on this subject—there certainly are—but there's a distinct lack of literature
(books, articles, interviews) describing how to go about piecing together a
comprehensive strength program. Sure,
you can watch a video on Flotrack of Galen Rupp doing single-leg barbell
squats, or read a magazine article about how Shalane Flanagan does hurdle
drills for hip mobility, but there's no Daniels' Running Formula for
strength work. This problem is particularly bad when it comes to weight
lifting.
When evaluating whether a
certain kind of strength work is useful for you, you need to ask yourself
"what purpose is this serving?" and "is this the best way to
achieve the outcome I want?" Weight lifting and strength training in general
can serve one of several purposes in training: injury prevention, general
strength, maximal muscle fiber recruitment, or running-specific explosive
training. I'll go through each of these four purposes one by one.
Strength work for injury
prevention
A lot of people think that you should lift or do "core work" to prevent injury, but really, the best kind of strength for injury prevention is boring, physical-therapy style exercises for hip strength. Scientific research supports strengthening the hip muscles, ESPECIALLY the abductors and external rotators, as a way to prevent injury—especially knee injuries like runner's knee or IT band syndrome, but hip strength appears to be connected with overall injury rates as well.
A lot of people think that you should lift or do "core work" to prevent injury, but really, the best kind of strength for injury prevention is boring, physical-therapy style exercises for hip strength. Scientific research supports strengthening the hip muscles, ESPECIALLY the abductors and external rotators, as a way to prevent injury—especially knee injuries like runner's knee or IT band syndrome, but hip strength appears to be connected with overall injury rates as well.
There's a huge range of hip
strength exercises out there. Based on
some rudimentary research on muscle activation patterns, I particularly like
these four:
*Side leg lifts
*Clamshell leg lifts
*Glute bridge with leg lefts
*Monster walk
with theraband
I myself do these four
exercises six or seven days a week, 20-25x for the leg lifts, 90-120sec for the
glute bridge, and 2x30 for the monster walk.
This is just one example, and there are a lot of other exercises that
are likely equally good, but if you're ONLY looking to prevent injury, this is the
kind of strength work you want to do. It's not fun, it's not exciting,
and it's not physically challenging in the same way a pushup is. That's why I call this routine "the
boring exercises" with the high school runners I coach. Instead of a 30min ab strength routine,
you're far better off just doing hip strength. Ab strength isn't bad,
per se, but it's not been directly connected to injury risk.
Instead of core strength
routines that only strengthen the abs and the lower back, I'm partial to the Pedestal
routine, developed initially (I think) by Dan Pfaff and probably popularized
among distance runners by John Cook, who coached a number of American elites,
including Shannon Rowberry and Leo Manzano.
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