C. Dorr said:Again I want to thank everyone for their kind advice that they've given me in the past. I've got
some pretty hefty goals for 2004, but hopefully reachable.
Tonight while watching TV, I was wondering if adding a lower body weight lifting regimine would do
me any good. Any thoughts on this? I am doing lots of ab work and doing chest, shoulders and
triceps work as well (hoping to get that 6 pack sometime...and I don't mean beer!).
This would be done on my off days, which right now is 3 days. Main goal is to continue to build up
to 20 miles a week and perhaps beyond. Right now I'm at 16.
Is weights going to help or will more running be better?
If you're only running 3 times / week, then I'm guessing that some lower body functional strength
training on your non-running days may help at least for injury prevention if nothing else - this may
or may not be "weights".
In the stuff I've read, I think they found experienced and/or elite runners (forgotten details) who
were already strong did not benefit (or very little) from strength work alone, but they did benefit
from power-type exercises, iirc. Mortals benefited from building strength first then progressing to
power. I don't remember the details of their training programs, if they were even mentioned. Most
things I've read suggest non-machine type exercises to recruit the balance muscles, and closed chain
(feet in fixed position like squats) rather than open chain (like ham curls).
My experiment of one. I like to run hilly trails and was prone to AT. My PT did an evaluation last
fall and found a number of muscle imbalances as well as some structural/functional issues in foot
and ankle. He gave me some functional stretches and strength exercises to deal with these. While I
did most of them fairly religiously, I didn't do some as much last winter as I should have (let cross-
training class have priority), and it definitely affected my hill running during the summer and
snowshoe running this fall. I'm more religious about doing them this year although I still get side-
tracked sometimes. BUT now that I've seen the negative effects of not doing them, I'm more conscious
about them.
FWIW, the types of exercises I do are single-legged balance squats, lunges, toe/heel raises (one at
a time, not levitation 😉 , toe walk with opposite foot dorsiflexion, and some stability ball stuff.
The progression on some of these is to do them unweighted and slow, then add speed, weight,
instability (eg cushion rather than hard floor, leading to wobble board), close eyes, etc. This can
be increased iteratively. Also be sure you work in all 3 planes of motion - front/back, sides,
diagonals. I do most of these while waiting for dinner to cook or watching tv but also during office
break or standing in line at grocery or in field camps. And if you get really good and can do a single-
legged balance squat on wobble board with weights with your eyes closed, I guess you might be able
to get a job in a circus 😉 I'm not anywhere near there.
The idea behind the single-legged drills is to recruit the fine balance muscles. Also, you can
improve your aerobic capacity more by doing 1-legged aerobic drills, rather than 2-legged. Running
has at most one leg on the ground at one time, thus the emphasis on balance and 1-legged drills.
Just my thoughts. And like I said, these target *my* weaknesses, but I've also seen these types of
exercises written up in a number of places for strength and eventually power for running. YMMV.
Dot
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"Success is different things to different people" -Bernd Heinrich in Racing the Antelope
