Strengthening endurance when time is tight!

How can endurance athletes make more strength gains with less training time and effort? Andrew Sheaff looks at the evidence

There is a consistent and compelling body of evidence that strength training can improve performance across a spectrum of endurance sports^(1,2). Whether it’s cycling⁽³⁾, running⁽⁴⁾, swimming^(5,6), or rowing, intelligent strength training can help you achieve your goals. And from an anecdotal perspective, the training programs of the vast majority of elite endurance athletes include some form of strength training.

Beyond the performance benefits, strength training results in numerous health benefits ranging such as improved bone mineral density⁽⁷⁾, as well as enhanced metabolic⁽⁸⁾ and cardiovascular health⁽⁹⁾. Importantly, these benefits are often distinct from those obtained as a result of endurance training. In short, strength training is a powerful beneficial stimulus, and it would wise for every athlete to seriously consider including it as part of their lifestyle and training program.

When time is tight

The challenge for most endurance athletes however is that strength training takes time. You’re already devoting a significant amount of time to training that will directly improve your endurance performance.  And that’s on top of occupational, familial, and social responsibilities that probably require a significant amount of one’s time and energy.  Just as importantly for the hard training endurance athlete, strength training takes energy and recovery time. That’s energy that could be devoted to more endurance work, or recovering for the next big endurance session.

As there is only so much time and energy to go around, it can be tough to commit to strength training, particularly when many strength training recommendations require large amounts of time and effort.  For the endurance athlete, the question is always how can you get most or all of the benefits of strength training, while using the least time and energy? Fortunately, a recent scientific review⁽¹⁰⁾ examined all of the available scientific evidence, and came up with a set of guidelines that endurance athletes can use to optimize their strength training, all while investing a minimal amount of time and energy. Let’s see what conclusions were drawn, and how to practically apply it your training program.

Choose exercises wisely

To limit the time you spend strength training, you’ll want to choose exercises that train both limbs at the same time, while using multiple joints to lift the weight. For the lower body, the primary options consist of variations of squats, deadlifts, and leg presses. As lunges also use large amount of muscle mass, they can be used here, although you will have to perform sets for both legs, increasing the time taken. For the upper body, various pressing and pulling exercises such as bench presses, shoulder presses, pull-ups, and rows fit the bill.

These types of exercises use a large amount of muscle and allow for the most weight to be used. They train the whole body and they train the whole body fast. As a result, strength gains are larger and happen with greater speed⁽¹¹⁾. That’s training efficiency. At a barebones level, you can perform just one lower body exercise, one upper body pressing exercise, and one upper body pulling exercises, covering just about every muscle in the body with only three exercises. Of course, if there are specific areas that need to be addressed due to your specific sport, or due personal injury history, athletes are free to incorporate relevant additional exercises, with the understanding that they’ll take additional time.

Load appropriately

To optimize muscle strength and muscle mass improvements (as necessary), choose loads that you only allow you to complete between 6-15 repetitions⁽¹²⁾. As an endurance athlete using strength training as a complement to your endurance work, you won’t necessarily need to train to complete failure to optimize progress⁽¹³⁾. However, you will want to challenge yourself.

In terms of the number of sets per week, you’ll want to make sure you’re hitting major areas of the body at least four times per week⁽¹⁴⁾. This can occur all at once or spread out over multiple sessions, depending on what you find to be easiest to implement. While more sets can lead to more rapid improvements, it’s important to understand that there are diminishing returns, and a slightly improved rate of progress may not be relevant for you as an endurance athlete. Of course, if you have extra time and energy, this is not a problem.

Pair exercises intelligently

Rather than performing all of your sets for one exercise then moving on to the next exercise, you can alternate between two or three exercises that work different areas of the body. This practice is known as supersetting (see the in-depth article on supersets elsewhere in this issue). The benefit is that you can perform more work in less time, all without compromising how much weight you’re lifting. For instance, if you’re alternating bench presses and rows, your back will be resting while your chest is working, and vice versa. This will save you time without sacrificing performance and progress.

Re-consider your warm-up

Many strength trainers perform excessively long and irrelevant warm-ups. For strength training, the most effective way to warm up is to perform the strength training exercises you’ll be using with lighter loads⁽¹⁵⁾. Starting at a low load (say 60% of what you’d normally lift), simply increase the load over a couple of warm-up sets until you’re ready to lift the intended weights. An alternative strategy is to perform your strength training after one of your low intensity endurance sessions. Provided you haven’t pushed too hard, you should be ready thoroughly warmed up and ready to go, only requiring a single light warm-up set. While this might not be completely optimal relative to performing strength training sessions completely fresh, it might be all that’s possible, and it’s certainly better than not doing them at all.

Putting it into practice

Using all of the guidelines above, here are two sample weekly exercise programs. The goal would be to complete two workouts per week, either completing workout A or B twice, or performing workout A and workout B once each. Over time, strive to lift more weight for more repetitions.

 Workout A

• Goblet squat (see figure 1)
• Dumbbell bench press
• Pull-ups or pull-down machine

Perform each exercise for 2 sets of 6-15 reps, working close to failure

Workout B

• Dumbbell reverse lunge
• Upper-back rowing machine
• Shoulder press

Perform each exercise for 2 sets of 6-15 reps, working close to failure

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Figure 1: Goblet squat technique

Click on the image above for an excellent video tutorial by ‘Buff Dudes’ on the correct technique for goblet squats, using both kettlebells and dumbbells. (official channel: www.youtube.com/c/BuffDudesOfficial/videos )

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When considering the weights that most endurance athletes will be handling, a brief warm-up of 1-2 sets should be sufficient. These workouts can be completed in less than 20-25 minutes, particularly if performed in a circuit format, taking 1-2 minutes between exercises.

This is as basic as it gets, yet still retains much of the effectiveness of much more complicated strength training plans. Of course, these are sample programs. You can change the exercises, or add more work. However, for the endurance athlete looking to add a touch of strength training to your program, this can be a wonderful high-reward, low risk strategy for implementing strength work. Be consistent, be diligent, and get stronger!

References

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