Why should runners think about resistance training? Why would they spend valuable time in the gym?

That’s a fantastic question, and we should look at it from both sides – even why runners shouldn’t spend time strength training. Let’s start there.

Spending time resistance training takes time. There’s an obvious opportunity cost: time in the gym is time that could be spent elsewhere – on a long run, speed work, or focusing on recovery.

Plus, if you overtrain in the gym, making yourself so sore and tired that your next run doesn’t feel good, or you can’t perform up to your expectations, obviously you’re losing fitness.

So what’s the argument on the other side?

Strength training unlocks performance gains and improves durability for runners – ensuring many more seasons in the future.

Let’s consider that there are a number of different goals we can have when we hit the gym for a resistance training session.

We could train with the goal of building as much muscle as possible, as if we want to step on stage with a big, ripped physique, training like a bodybuilder.

We could train with the goal of maximizing the amount of weight we can move, serving the ego with an impressive feat of strength, or even training for a powerlifting competition.

Or, we can train with the goal of maximizing our performance, durability, and longevity, which looks very different from the first two.

As we dive into training for performance, let’s start with an unpopular notion:

Running is a strength-dependent skill.

Of course I’d say that: I’m a strength coach whose career started with teaching skill-based running technique. I’m a hammer, who goes looking for nails.

Here’s the thing: which nail we hit really matters.

If you’ve been running for a while, and you’ve been entirely injury-free, it’s fair to say that you’re strong enough to run.

Yet, if you’ve been injured (unless it was from a fall or running into something), you actually weren’t strong enough: that injury occurred because something wasn’t in the right position when it was asked to bear the load of your body’s impact with the ground.

Your body is a complex system of system, and every part has a dependency on the parts connected to it, above and below. And when one part isn’t engaging correctly, its neighbors don’t have the support they kneed (ha!).

Let’s consider the knee. When we’re running, and the knee moves towards the centerline of the body (ie your left knee shifts to the right when it’s bent), or the left hip shifts wildly left (creating the same inward angle of the thigh), we call this “knee valgus.”

On a long enough timeline, knee valgus will lead to IT band pain, a searing sensation down the seam between the muscles on the front and back of your thigh. It’s the result of the iliotibial band attempting to stabilize the knee, which it only needs to do because the larger muscles of the hip and thigh aren’t doing it themselves.

Why aren’t the muscles which should be stabilizing the knee working right?

Perhaps, it’s a problem with the hamstring or the glutes not being strong enough in certain positions.

Perhaps, the bones the hamstrings and glutes are attached to (the pelvis) isn’t stable either. This is like setting up a tent, with really tight cords, but those cords are attached to stakes planted in the sand: they can’t take much force at all.

What stabilizes the pelvis? The connection to the ribcage, via the abs, which leads us to consider how we breathe (which moves and stabilizes the ribcage).

The goal for runners is to use the gym as a lab to test ways to improve internal stability, which will carry over to running performance.

When you’ve trained your body to create more internal stability, you’ve unlocked improved performance in the short term, with more power and endurance available.

You’ve also made yourself more durable, with far fewer overuse injuries, or those nagging bits that recur every so often.

And you’ve invested in your longevity, giving yourself the opportunity to enjoy pain-free running for many more decades.