Running and Additional Exercises (Read 877 times)

You'll get as many opinions on this as posters. My personal experience: I just run. I don't do weights, or swim, or anything. So far, no issues with it. There is no conclusive scientific proof that weight training or cross-training is a definitive benefit or hindrance to everyone. In short, if you like to do that stuff, do it. Otherwise, it's not required.

What are your thoughts and experiences on incorporating other forms of training with running? What kind of training do you do and do they compliment your running? I really need to know as for my marathon, is it adviseable to do some weight training alongside? Will it help or just make me bulkier and slower? Circuits? Swimming? All these would be additional to my current running schedule or done on my running d/o.

Eddy: When putting together your own training, you'll need to ALWAYS think of what you have and what you don't have; your strengths and weaknesses; and what your particular event requires. In an event of marathoning, you need to go the distance--this is why doing a long run is perhaps one of the most important elents in your training program. Working on running faster actually helps as well because then you can run the same speed with less effort, meaning you can conserve energy. This is why I've seen a good result coming from incoorperating some hills/steps running in marathon program. For hills for marathon, your emphasis should be on strength rather than explosive power; meaning you'll probably get more benefit doing longer, steeper hill with slower forward motion instead of shorter, more gradual hill but run it up faster or doing things like bounding. Some form of strength training may help especially if you have some weak spots. Naturally, strength training for legs can help for marathon running. As far as upper body strength training is concerned, IF you're having some trouble with your upper body in your long run, find out what it is and the cause of it and, by eliminating that particular problem can help your marathoning. But other than that, you'll need to remember; in order to move forward every kilogram of fat-free body weight, it takes 0.17 mililiter of oxygen. In other words, you'll be using up unnecessary oxygen if you have very strong (or rather I should say, bulky) upper body that won't necessarily help your forward motion, you'll be wasting your oxygen--plus extra energy to propell your body forward. Of course, there is a theory on maximizing strength without bulking up your muscle mass (high resistance and low reps). I personally haven't tried it long enough to say its effectiveness though. In essense, core strengthening is very important for balance and eliminating injury. Leg strengthening can be very important. But running itself is probably more important. Therefore, IF you can combine that and strengthen various body parts by running, in other words, hill/step running and/or rugged cross country training, it's probably most time-effective way to do it. I personally like what Takeshi Soh (2:08 PR, finishing 4th in LA Olympic marathon) said about weight training. He started playing around with it toward the end of his career. He said it didn't help him run faster. But it MAYBE helped him continue to run well in his 40s.

I'm slightly under 30mpw for running (1/2 marathon training for me) and I also manage to get in 2-3 miles of swimming, usually at least 60 to 70 miles of cycling, and 2 to 3 weight training sessions a week. Hmmmm... I wonder what that equates to in 'padded' running miles? Anyway, all I can tell you is that for me, balancing 4 different training aspects is difficult. My running legs are often tired from the cycling and the weights. The only thing that doesn't seem to affect my running is obviously the swimming; although I can work ymy core quite a bit depending on the swim drills. When I start marathon training (summer 09), I'll be dropping the cycling to one day per week and the weights to one day per week... just so that I can keep somewhat of a base for the 2010 triathlon season. I'll probably continue to swim 2 days per week since I find the buoyancy quite therapeutic for tired legs. I need to drop the other elements b/c my running legs are definitely negatively affected by too much cycling and lower body weight training. There just aren't enough days in the week to recover. I think crosstraining is FANTASTIC... you just have to experiment with the type and amount in order to see how your body responds to the added stress.

What Nobby said. Depending upon what you do for core, it probably wouldn't affect how much running you can do. Upper body may not provide much benefit for road marathon. (long ultras where you might be carrying water bottle for hours is something else) Leg work can be helpful but you'll have to do it so it doesn't impact running (unless you're training for a hilly mtn race and don't have hills to train on). Body-weight work can be very effective. *IF* you already have a strong base of hills and mountains (strength and strength endurance) and depending a lot on the individual, then you might find that some explosive power *may* help to pick up the speed a bit. Most of my training heading into a 50-mi race is aerobic (rarely hitting LT) hills, but last year after the 50-miler in prep for a 13-mi (3000ft up in first 4 mi)I tried adding some more intensity to some hills (about 3.5 min up 30% hill, pushing above LT, but not much). That benefit carried through to rest of my workouts, and I did substantially better in my HM compared to previous year (but lots of other things were also different). I'm just exploring adding more consistent strength training to my running now (can't get to my normal hills), and what I'm finding for *me* is that if I add the strength after an easy run, I've got the next day to recover, so my running isn't compromised. I generally run 2 on / 1 off (hard/medium, easy, off). If I did anything except core on my off day, my run the next day suffered - so far. I could probably adjust the work load, and also over time, I'd probably adapt. But when I'm normally running in the winter, I'm snowshoe running on rolling hills (strength endurance, but no power in soft snow), so I don't worry too much about strength endurance. What I need in my supplementary work is to increase basic strength (people over 35 are losing muscle mass unless using it) and some power. YMMV. (esp. since you're training for a road marathon and not hilly trails.)

As you may know I am doing the London Marathon, all roads, but would it benefit me from doing some hill running. I am a particular weak hill runner, unlike my brother who eats them for breakfast. As I am weak at them perhaps this needs to be focused on, but will it help with my road running?

yes