67. The Myths and Benefits of Strength Training for Runners

My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Sports Nutritionist, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve dedicated my life to helping runners just like you properly fuel your body and your mind. So you can get leaner, get stronger, run faster, and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.

Hey there, and welcome to episode 67 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, a health and fitness expert and certified personal trainer. And as a certified personal trainer, I talk a lot with my clients about the benefits of strength training. So today, I’m going to go through some of those benefits.

And also kind of I want to dispel some of the myths around strength training, especially for runners because I hear a lot of people, a lot of runners, especially talking about strength training. And honestly, not everything I hear makes a lot of sense.

For example, runners tend to think they need to do a lot of reps with super lightweights or they’re going to get too jacked, you know, they’re going to get too muscley. Right, and it’s going to hinder their running performance. Really? Is that something you’re concerned about?

I get it though because I’ve bought into a lot of these ideas over the years. And I’ve come to realize that there’s just a lot of information out there that we believe to be true. We believe it’s based on facts, but it’s just not true. Okay, so in this episode of the Running Lean podcast, I want to help clarify some of these things bust a few of these myths and misconceptions that runners have around strength training and what it can and can’t do for you.

I also will outline the many, many benefits that strength training actually does provide, especially for endurance athletes. If you haven’t already done so please come check us out on Facebook, we have this amazing podcast community on Facebook called the Running Lean podcast community. It’s a group of runners who all share similar health and fitness goals.

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Okay, let’s get right into this topic here. Because I’m excited about this. The myths and benefits of strength training for runners. So first off, I’m going to go through a few of these myths that are very common among the running community and things that I’ve heard for many years. And I’ve just come to realize that some of these things are not true.

And we need to understand what’s really going on, I really want to focus on the importance of strength training, especially for endurance athletes. Okay, so the first myth I’ve heard for years and years and years, and I kind of bought into this too early on in my running days is that I’m a runner, so I don’t really need to do strength training, running is enough.

And this one, I’ve just got to tell you, you know, no, running is not enough. Okay. So, as a healthy human being, as an athlete, especially though, we have three main kinds of systems that we need to improve, okay, we’ve got our endurance system, our strength system, and our explosive power system.

All three of these are required for optimal human health and fitness, okay, but especially for us runners, right? You’ve got to build your endurance, you’ve got to build strength, and you need to build up your explosive power. Most long-distance runners only focus on one thing though, endurance, and that’s it.

They might focus on maybe getting a little bit faster, but they kind of leave a lot on the table, right? Just because you can go long distances and run far doesn’t mean you’re as strong or as fitter, as healthy as you can be. And when you only focus on one system, like endurance, you never improve other areas and you’re actually not going to be as fit or as powerful as a runner as you could be.

Okay, so we all know that to build endurance, we need to run more, right, we just keep increasing our distance, we keep increasing the time that we’re out there running. And that’s how we build endurance, you know, you, you go longer and then you back it off a little bit. So your body can adapt and recover.

And then you go longer, again, you build up that cardiovascular system, you build up that aerobic system. Great, we all understand how to do that, right? To build explosive power, you can do things like plyometric exercises, box jumps, single-leg jumps, lateral jumps, HIIT training, these are all ways of building explosive power.

Also, things like sprinting, and I’m not talking about, you know, speed work, where you just go a little bit faster, I’m talking about all-out sprinting, or explosive step running, like running up steps, right, just until you just can’t go any further. It’s like, you hit that lactic threshold really fast. Okay, that’s, that’ll build explosive power.

And then to build strength, we need to do some sort of resistance training, we need to do some sort of resistance exercise where we lift heavy things, we progressively overload our muscles, so that our muscles can adapt and grow and get stronger. And it’s not just enough to go out there and run a lot to get stronger legs, let’s say, like, you can do that.

And you will improve the strength in your legs by running. But even more effective would be to do some sort of resistance training. But when you have all three of these systems, you know, when you’re building into all three of these systems – endurance, explosive power and strength – you’re going to be a much stronger, much more powerful runner, you will be able to go farther and faster. And also, you’re just gonna be a much more healthy human being over. All right.

Everything I talk about here is like, I want to be the healthiest, most badass version of myself possible. I’m always working on improving my health, and my fitness, always. And I’ve realized that in order to do that, I can’t just go run a million miles. Like, that’s part of it. But if I only focus on one thing, I’m just leaving so much behind. And so I’ve really made it a point to start focusing on building strength. And it’s so powerful.

And I’ll get into a lot of the benefits about this as we go through this, but just know that you do need to do strength training, you know, running is not enough, just running a million miles is not enough. Okay. Another thing I hear from people because I work with a lot of people who are, you know, maybe in their 40s, or 50s, or 60s, you know, and a lot of people have said this, to me, it’s like, I’m getting too old to do strength training, I’m too old to do this.

And I just have to say like this one is not true at all, you’re never too old to do strength training, even if you’ve never done it before in your life. Especially for endurance athletes who are over the age of 40. We especially benefit from strength training, because as we get older, our strength tends to decline faster than our endurance, like our endurance seems to be pretty good. And we can kind of maintain that as we get older, but our strength declines pretty fast.

And when you engage in high-intensity strength training, it actually kind of produces an anti-aging effect, because what you’re doing is you’re preserving lean muscle mass, which is very important. We want to stave off sarcopenia, which is you know, losing muscle. It optimizes certain adaptive hormones so that you, you know, get stronger, you build more lean muscle mass.

And the reason this is important is because as you get older, you know, sarcopenia is a real problem. Osteoporosis is a real problem. And one of the most common causes of death in the elderly population is not having strong bones and muscles, not having a strong muscular, skeletal muscular system, and people fall down.

Falling down is one of the leading causes of death in the elderly population because they fall down, they break a hip or something like that, and all of a sudden they become said theory. And then when you’re sedentary, everything declines very rapidly, right? You totally lose muscle mass, you lose bone density and bone strength.

And, you know, your quality of life just goes downhill pretty fast, you know. So if you can maintain your muscle strength, if you can maintain your bone density, you’re much more likely to live longer and thrive even as you get super old, right.

So strength training will actually help increase muscles, right, we know that, but it also will help increase bone density and can help prevent osteoporosis. A study published in the journal, endocrinology, and metabolism this study was called the effects of resistance exercise on bone health.

And basically, they say, based on the available information resistance exercise, either alone or in combination with other interventions may be the most optimal strategy to improve the muscle and bone mass in postmenopausal women, middle-aged men, or even the older population. So studies have confirmed this, this is not just speculation, and as you get older, you definitely want to maintain some sort of wrist resistance exercise.

One of the best ways to stave off aging, and to build and maintain a good strong skeletal muscular system is to lift heavy things, keep doing some strength training or start doing it. Listen, I’m 54 years old. I’ve been doing this for a long time, I’ve been doing strength training for a long time. And right now, I’m the strongest I’ve ever been.

I am in really, really good shape. I feel amazing. My running is amazing. My strength regimen just keeps improving. I’m starting to see a lot of muscle growth and muscle definition like I’ve never seen before. So even at my ripe old age of 54 years old, I’m still making massive improvements. Okay, so you absolutely can do this. It doesn’t matter how old you are.

I recently saw some video, I think it was on Instagram of some 95-year-old woman doing deadlifts. And that was pretty badass, you know, she was like in super great shape. And that was impressive, you know, so it doesn’t matter how old you are, at any age, you’re never too old to do strength training. Alright.

Another common misconception people have is that strength training just takes too long. It takes too long. Listen, I get it looks like you’re already running four days a week or six days a week. And now you want to add strength training to that too. I mean, come on, I don’t have time for that. Nobody has time for this, right.

So there is a little bit of truth to this, because if you’re doing it wrong, it may take too long. So I used to do strength training, like three or four times a week, and I would go for an hour or an hour and a half each time. And for years I did this and my results were never all that great, right? I really wasn’t getting a lot of results.

And the thing is, I was doing it wrong. Okay, I was going there and I wasn’t doing a good effective strength training program. So what I was doing was just kind of going through the motions putting my time in, you know, it was more of a cardio workout than anything else, right.

So to spend that much time at the gym doing strength training, unless you’re a professional bodybuilder, and this is like what you’re doing for a living, I would say you don’t need to spend that much time at the gym. A well-written strength program, the programs that I write for my clients only require twice a week.

And about 20 minutes each time 15 to 20 minutes each session, you get a whole-body workout twice a week, and it is a kick-ass program and very effective. Very, very effective. I am seeing amazing results in myself and in my clients. I’m getting bigger arms, bigger legs, more muscle definition, and I feel more powerful.

I’m definitely stronger because I’ve been tracking all this from just doing this, like 20 minutes a week, twice a week. That’s it. I have time for that you have time for that. So strength training does not take too long. If it’s taking too long. You’re not doing it right. Okay, we need to back off the amount of time we’re doing it and make the most of the time we’re lifting.

So that requires you to get get a little bit heavier with the weights. It’s got to hurt it’s got to be hard. But you can do it and do it without spending a lot of time at the gym. Okay, this one is interesting. So a lot of people think that you have to do strength training on your rest days.

So the days that you’re not running are the days that you should do your strength training. And I used to believe this, and I used to think this was a really smart way to go, like, you don’t want to, like, you know, go run a lot and do some sort of heavy, heavy lifting on the same day, right. And until recently, I used to believe this and used to practice this, but I found more and more evidence that this is actually not a very good idea.

Here’s why. Because when you do your strength training on your rest days, you’re effectively destroying all the benefits of a rest day. Okay, so let’s say, for example, you run four days a week, like Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday. And then on Mondays and Wednesdays, these are supposed to be your rest days. Very critical rest days, you know, for a hard-running schedule, you need those rest days, right.

But now you’re putting in a couple of heavy lifting days, well, you’re gonna have a much harder time recovering from your runs, because you’re not giving your body the time it needs to recover on those rest days. Also, because you’re doing your strength training, and then the next day you’re running again, you’re gonna have a hard time recovering from your strength sessions, because you’re not giving yourself time to recover on those rest days.

Okay, so the suggestion here, then this may go against everything you thought you knew. But the suggestion is to do your hard strength training days on the same days as your hard running workouts. The idea here is that you want to make your hard days hard and make your easy days easy.

So this will actually help you to work harder on those hard days because you’re going to recover faster, you’re going to reduce your risk of getting injured, and you’ll be more you’ll have more energy and you’ll be more rested and recovered for those hard workout days. And then on your rest days, treat it as a true easy day, a true rest day, and you’ll recover much better. And you’re going to get stronger, and you’re going to improve both your strength training and your running if you do it this way.

Okay, so and then there’s a preference, some people decide to do their strength training before their running. And some people like to do it in the opposite order, they like to run first and then do their strength training. Really, this is kind of a personal preference, really up to you.

Personally, I like to do the strength training first and then run. But do you know, do whatever works for you. But try to keep your hard days hard, and your easy days easy. And you’re gonna start to see some definite improvements in both places, for sure.

All right, now this one is fun. And I love this because I hear this all the time. And it cracks me up. I need to do super light weights with a lot of reps so that, you know, I build endurance. And here’s the thing, your endurance system, you’re already working in the endurance system, right?

You do not need to do a bunch of reps with super lightweight, this is not doing you much good at all, honestly. And I see people do this all the time. They’re like, you know, they go to the gym, they pick up those five-pound weights, and they’re just doing these arm curls or something. And they can do like 100 reps. And yeah, it is true.

It does help to build some cardiovascular endurance, but you don’t really need to be working on that at the gym with weights in your hands, okay, you work that work on your cardiovascular endurance out on the roads running, right? You don’t lift weights to build endurance, you lift weights to build muscle.

You don’t need more endurance training. What you need to do is increase your lean muscle mass so you can become a stronger runner and doing a lot of reps with very light weights is just like going out and running a bunch more. Right? There is a cardiovascular component to it, but there’s no strength component to it.

So you want to develop muscles you want to get stronger and the only way you can do that is to overload your muscles. You got to put more load than your muscles can handle so that they adapt to those stressors. You want to overload your muscles so that they get super stressed, send signals to repair and grow so that it can accommodate more stress the next time.

And if you could do this properly, and you do this consistently, you will build muscle and you will get stronger. You just never tax your system enough by lifting super light weights and doing a million reps. Your muscles never need to adapt. And I totally get this because I kind of did this for years, I was doing some sort of strength training for years, and I wasn’t getting results.

And I’m like, what am I doing wrong? Maybe I need to go and, and do even more. Because I was in this mindset of like, I’m a runner. So I need to do lightweights with a million reps. And it just never worked. And never, I never got any results from that, you know. So the same thing applies here.

You know, when we keep doing the same amount of weight each time we work out at the gym, right? You’re never going to progress, your muscles will never grow because they aren’t being overloaded. And here’s the thing, the reason we don’t want to do this is because it sucks and it hurts, it’s hard. Overloading your muscles means you’re going to have to get to failure. And that’s painful. It’s really, it’s painful. If you do it the right way.

If you’re doing strength training the right way. You should be just cooked at the end of the workout. Okay. So the whole lightweights with a million reps is not a thing, just stop doing that it’s not really doing you much good at all. Okay.

Another myth I hear is that, if I do strength training, it will actually hurt my running performance. And this one, I mean, I would hope you guys understand by now that this is definitely not true like strength training can only help your running performance, right? Being stronger overall, having a stronger, you know, muscular system definitely makes you a better endurance athlete.

Building strength helps you to maintain good running form helps you to maintain consistent power, especially as we get into these longer endurance activities and you start to fatigue towards the end, right like towards the end of a marathon, or an ultra marathon when you need that extra strength and power.

You know, if you’ve not built up your muscular system, you’re not going to have that extra power that you need. And you’re going to fatigue and you’re going to kind of crash and burn, okay. Strength training is actually essential. If you want to be a successful endurance athlete, okay, putting your muscles under intense stress stimulates muscle growth, right, you build more muscle, you build more lean mass, you get stronger, and you will be able to achieve peak performance in running.

Only if you improve your muscular strength, right, you absolutely must include strength training if you want to become a stronger runner. Strength training will make you a more powerful runner. Because here’s the thing, when you build more muscle, and you reduce your body fat, that means you’re going to increase your power to weight ratio making you a more powerful runner. How awesome would it be to be lighter with carrying around less body fat and stronger, carrying around more muscle mass, this will only help your running performance? Okay.

Another myth that people have – this is my favorite one. This is the last myth I’m going to talk about here. But this is a good one. If I lift heavy weights, I’m going to bulk up too much. So heavy weights will make me bulk up too much. Light weights will get me toned. And this is awesome. I love this.

Like I hear people say this all the time. I don’t want to get all big and muscle-bound. So I’m just going to lift light weights. I’m afraid I’m gonna get too jacked. I’m going to be too big and muscley and jacked and it’s going to hurt my running performance or whatever. I think this is so amazing.

Because if you want a real honest answer to this, go to a gym and tell one of these big huge bodybuilders that you don’t want to lift weights because you’re afraid you’re gonna get too big. They’re just gonna laugh you out of the gym. Do you know why? Because as it takes a long, long time, for them to get huge like that.

It takes years of very hard work and dedication, they’ve got to show up at the gym constantly. They’re eating like 4 or 5000 calories a day. Honestly, if you’re an endurance athlete, you don’t need to worry about getting too big, heavy weights will not bulk you up. The only way you can build muscle is if you lift heavy weights regularly.

You’ve got to do it the right way, right, you’ve got to lift heavy weights, overload the system, adapt muscles grow. Right, if you’re doing it the right way, you’re going to be fine, right, you’ll build more lean muscle, your muscles will get bigger, very slowly, takes a very long time, months, months and months.

And listen, if you start to get too big, if you really start to get too muscley, all you have to do is back off on the weight training, just you know, maybe go down to once a week, that’s all you really need to maintain your muscle mass anyway, once you’ve built a solid base. So if you’re doing this properly, you should begin to lose body fat because carrying around muscle will help you to lose, lose weight. I’ll tell you more about that in a minute.

But your muscles will start to show because you’re losing body fat, and then you’re building some muscle and so your muscles will start to show through your skin a little bit better. And this is what we mean when we say we want to look toned, we want to see some muscle definition, we want to see those muscles, right?

Being toned is a function of both increasing muscle size and decreasing excess body fat. So this is what gets you that toned look. But you have to do it the right way, you have to actually build muscle. And you can’t build muscle by doing this super lightweight and a million reps, right? It’s just not gonna work.

So I think this is so funny, people are worried they’re gonna get too big. And it’s kind of like a brand new runner coming to you and saying, yeah, I don’t really want to train for a marathon because I’m afraid I’m going to do like a two and a half hour marathon. And you know, I just don’t want to run that fast. You’re just gonna be like, yeah, good luck with that.

So here are some other benefits of strength training, I’ve talked about a lot of benefits, you know that you increase your power to weight ratio, right, we can get stronger bones as well, from increasing our strength, we can prevent injury. Some of the other benefits of strength training are that you actually increase your lactic threshold.

So strength training isn’t, is an anaerobic exercise. In other words, if you’re doing it properly, you’re not in that, you know, aerobic zone, like when you’re out there running a 10-minute mile or whatever your anaerobic like, you can only lift a certain amount of reps if you’re doing this properly until your body is just like cooked, yours is done, right.

So this is like training at or above your anaerobic threshold, right? When you do this regularly, your body can actually increase its ability to handle like lactic acid and remove it from your system, which will increase your lactic threshold or the point at which you experience fatigue.

Okay, so this means that when you increase your lactic threshold, you’ll be able to work out harder for longer. This will enable you to run faster and run faster for longer periods. So it helps to increase your speed and endurance. Okay, so that increase of lactic threshold is an amazing benefit of strength training.

Another one that I mentioned earlier is that strength training will boost your metabolism. So muscles just carrying around muscles will increase your resting metabolic rate because muscle takes more energy to carry around than fat does. So just by carrying around more muscles, you are burning more fat, you’re burning more calories, right? It increases your overall metabolism.

And if you’re you know, following a more of a low carbohydrate diet and you’re already kind of an efficient fat burner, this will actually make you an even more efficient fat burner. And if you’re wanting to be a fat-adapted runner, this will help to speed up your fat adaptation process. So strength training will help to speed up that process of you know, turning yourself from a carb adapted athlete to a fat-adapted athlete, which is amazing.

So, because of this boost in your metabolism, it helps you to lose weight. So increasing your lean muscle mass strength training makes it easier to lose weight. Isn’t that awesome? I love that.

Strength training also helps to fight depression. And I think this is a really cool area of study. And I want to do a little more research into this, because studies have shown that doing an aerobic exercise like, you know, high-intensity strength training can actually boost your mood, and make you feel better, gives you a bit of a pick me up, and even helps to fight off depression, which I think is really, really cool. So if you want to feel good, you want to be just happier, do some strength training.

Also, strength training helps to reduce the risk of certain diseases, gains strength and gains in bone density, attained by doing high-intensity anaerobic training, like strength training, can actually reduce your risk for diabetes, heart disease, and other cardiovascular diseases.

So this is a really cool thing to just know that as we engage in regular, intense anaerobic strength training, that it has all these other amazing health benefits for us, not just stronger muscles, you know, obviously, we get bigger muscles, and we look good, right? And this is important to you will look good naked. So that’s, that’s an important benefit as well.

But also, you know, you’re going to help to stave off other diseases like heart disease. Also, strength training will help to protect joints because it builds stronger muscles and helps to build stronger connective tissues. Right, so we’re talking tendons and ligaments here.

So when you build up your muscle strength and your muscle mass, your joints will be better protected, meaning that you’ll have greater protection against injury, which is really important, especially for us endurance athletes, and especially as we get older.

And then lastly, just doing strength training get boosts your energy, consistent. anaerobic exercise increases your body’s ability to store glycogen, which is what your body uses as energy. And even if you’re not eating a lot of carbs, your body still produces glycogen and can store it. So when you’re consistently doing strength training, you actually become more efficient at storing glycogen, which will give you more energy for your next bout of intense activity or training. Right. So this will improve your athletic endurance and your performance overall.

So, bottom line, get out there and do some strength training, lift some heavy things. And listen, it has to be hard, it should be very hard, it should be very taxing to your system, you should get to that anaerobic threshold, you should just be, you know, cooked at the end of your strength session. Okay, it doesn’t have to take a long time. But there are so many amazing health benefits, especially for runners.

Okay, so if it’s hard, and it feels terrible, and it hurts, that’s good. That means it’s working. All right, you guys, that’s all I got for you today. As always, lots and lots of love. Keep on Running Lean, and I’ll talk to you soon.

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