Lift Heavy Now, Run Faster Later

The sooner you realize that strength training and running go hand in hand, the quicker you’ll improve your performance.

- By Amy Schlinger. Photographs by Svetikd and Getty Images

DEAR RUNNER, THE sooner you realize that strength training and running go hand in hand, the quicker you’ll improve your performance. While many runners tend to avoid strength work, it’s so essential to your stride that many coaches don’t even think of it as cross-training. Instead, they view it as a necessary part of training that athletes need in order to reach their full potential. Science supports that, too. According to a review in the journal Sports Medicine, resistance training improves a trained runner’s economy, or the amount of energy a runner uses, by up to 8 percent. And that’s just one of the many positive outcomes. Here’s why you need to hit the weight room, and what to do when you get there.

The science of strength training When it comes to building muscular strength— the amount of weight or the load that you’re able to lift—the perks are undeniable for distance runners. Those advantages boil down to two main research-backed benefits: injury prevention and improved performance.

Before you improve your run speed, you need a solid base of endurance, which you build through mostly easy mileage. The catch: Increasing your mileage poses injury risks, explains Jason Fitzgerald, a USATF-certified running coach and the founder of Strength Running in Denver.

“The solution is to strength train regularly for stronger muscles, bones, tendons, ligaments, and joints that will help protect the runner’s body from the impact forces of running,” he says. Research supports the idea of strength training to sidestep injury. For example, one 2018 study in the Journal of Orthopaedic and Sports Physical Therapy found that strengthening the hips and knees helps to decrease pain associated with runner’s knee.