Strength and conditioning is a crucial component of any endurance athlete's training regimen. The benefits span far and wide, from increased endurance economy (i.e. less effort for the same output) to a reduced risk of injury. Studies have shown that more than 70% of running injuries are due to overuse injuries and an average of 56% of iron-distance triathletes suffer overuse injuries.
S&C is a tool which can help us mitigate the risk of injuries, but it's still easy to make mistakes with S&C that can hinder your progress.
In this article, we'll explore some of these mistakes and how to avoid them to maximise the benefits of your S&C training program...
Mistake 1: Only doing S&C in the winter
It’s far too common for endurance athletes to forgo their S&C as soon as their training volume begins to ramp up. The time that would've been spent in the gym or in a home workout setting is swapped out for extra miles on the road or in the water.
But, the old adage is true; if you don’t use it, you really do lose it! It takes roughly one month for the gains from your strength training to begin to diminish, and power and strength is proposed to be maintained for up to 30 days, meaning those hours you clocked up over the winter period are long gone by the time summer arrives if you stopped your S&C at the beginning of February!
If you want to keep the performance and longevity gains of S&C training, you need to incorporate a year-round S&C programme.
Solution: You only need two or three 45 minute S&C sessions per week to enhance endurance performance. So, take a critical approach to your training plan and prioritise two S&C sessions a week. These are your non-negotiables, and can be flexed around your training and race schedule.
For the time-crunched endurance athlete, you can also pair exercises together to ensure you're getting the work in before resting to move on to your next exercise selection. For example, A1: Romanian deadlift, A2: Medball slams. B1: Dumbbell bench press, B2: Seated single arm shoulder press. These 'super sets' alternate targeted muscle groups to incorporate work for one wile the other is resting.
Mistake 2: Having to ‘really feel it’ to believe it
As endurance athletes, we’re used to pushing ourselves to the limit and training for hours on end. It’s easy for us to take this ethos into our S&C sessions and rate workouts based on how ‘sore’ we feel the next day, with more soreness meaning we had a better workout.
In practice, what this often looks like is lifting weights heavier than you should, pushing to failure, doing too many sets and reps and not adding recovery in between sets. This can have a knock on effect on your endurance training because the last thing you're going to want to do, with legs that are struggling to get up and down the stairs, is to go out and train.
Respecting that endurance sports are always king for you and S&C is there to support you in your quest to become a better endurance athlete is key to avoiding this mistake.
Solution: Minimal effective dose for maximum return. Stimulate your body enough with S&C to reap the rewards, but not leave you sore and unable to train the next day.
Use a monitoring scale that you're familiar with, for example the Rate of Perceived Exertion scale. (RPE) allows for variation in your performance to reflect fatigue, nutrition, sleep and biological variations.
Target a 6-7/10 RPE score in your S&C sessions or work to the prescribed 'reps in reserve' (RIR) in your sets. 3-4 reps in reserve would look like this: athlete X successfully completed 8 reps and felt like they had 3 more in the tank.
We often get hung up on the weight of the bar and this can lead us to chase more weight each week. Ensuring you're nailing the movement mastery of each exercise and sticking to the RPE/RIR scoring for your sessions will guide you to increase the weight on the bar when it's appropriate.
Additionally, completing a warm-up set in which you use the same weight for each week is a nice way to check in at the start of your session and see how you’re feeling. If that warm up set feels heavier or harder than usual, today is not going to be the day to push for a PR in the weight room. Instead, listen to your body and have the confidence to take down the weight a little from where you were in your last session.
Mistake 3: Leg day, every day
“I’m a runner, why does my S&C program have a dumbbell bench press in it?” This is often the question I’m asked by my athletes, and they're not alone as many more endurance athletes are fixated on only training their legs. However, they're frequently left confused as to why they're not making improvements from their S&C.
This mindset is fully understandable as injuries to the lower limb accounted for 75% of all injuries sustained by triathletes during the six-month preseason in this study, so it makes sense to try to make this area as robust as possible.
The answer, however, is that your legs are not the sole determinant of endurance performance; they are a piece of the jigsaw puzzle but not the complete picture.
For me, the marathon best encapsulates this. A test of stamina, resilience and determination, known to have even some of the best endurance athletes out there ‘hit the wall’, the marathon will push you to your limits!
In the first 5-10km of the race, we typically see runners upholding their technique with a consistent stride frequency. Roll on another 20km and it's a completely different picture for some. Their technique has fallen apart, their stride pattern is now heavy and long, their chest is collapsed forwards and their shoulders are hunched. This happens because their bodies, in their entirety, are so fatigued that they cannot support the demands of the marathon any longer.
Luckily, there's a simple solution to this...
Solution: Incorporate upper body work into your S&C training programme. Aim for push and pull movements which target the back, chest and shoulders. For example, single arm row, shoulder press, press ups/assisted press ups. These can be paired with your bigger lifts or as an accessory set.
