Strength training increases ENDURANCE....

Today's post: Monday, 6-23-2008

In sports & sometimes in life it can be very desirable to have high levels of endurance.

And, it is true that if you do an endurance related activity such as running & you run regularly, your endurance usually increases as your body gradually becomes more fit to adjust to the running you are doing.

We now know that interval cardio of relatively brief duration is often the fastest & safest way to build this kind of endurance.

But whether people train for endurance the older way or with interval cardio, it’s quite common for them to only do that activity, running, swimming etc & NOT do strength training.

We’ve posted many times on the health benefits of also including strength training as well as cardio or endurance training. So, we have recommended it on that basis & still do.

But today, we have news.

If you strength train the muscles you use in your chosen endurance activity, in addition to all the other benefits of strength training, your ENDURANCE when using that muscle also goes up more than it would have if you only trained directly for endurance.

We’ll comment on probable reasons why that’s so in a bit.

(There is even reason to think your endurance in all the rest of your body will improve to some degree as well.)

First here’s the article with the news.:

This article appears courtesy of Early To Rise, the Internet’s most popular health, wealth, and success e-zine. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.earlytorise.com.

“Runners Need Strength Training

By Craig Ballantyne

Runners are notorious for trying anything to improve performance, from eating "power gel" to buying space-aged shoes. But most runners are missing one key performance booster: strength training.

In a study published in the journal Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, researchers had eight subjects (four men and four women) perform heavy barbell squats three times per week for eight weeks in addition to their regular endurance training. A control group did only the endurance workouts.

Not surprisingly, the strength-training group got stronger (by an average of 33.2 percent in the squat). However, it was a surprise that these men and women also increased their endurance by an average of 21.3 percent. In comparison, the control group did not get stronger or increase their endurance.

This study proves that strength training will make you stronger and improve your endurance - and that will make you a better runner. All it takes is three strength workouts per week for eight weeks, focusing on an exercise such as squats or split-squats.

[Ed. Note: Long, slow cardio is NOT going to help you get healthy. But strength training and short-burst interval training can. ....]”

X* X* X* X* X*

It’s very useful to know this tested as happening as there might have been something that prevented this effect.

But it’s not surprising that this is the case either.

Here’s why. When you do strength training, several things occur that all are likely to increase your endurance as well.

1. If you do progressive strength training, eventually each set other than warm ups or take it easy sets requires considerable effort to do that last few repetitions. And, you often have to support this effort by breathing harder & having your heart rate increase. This is exactly the same set of things that happens in progressive interval cardio (or aerobic) exercise that directly increases endurance.

2. If you do progressive strength training, your body releases growth hormone that improves all of your physical systems somewhat in addition to greater improvement on the body part you are exerting force with.

3. When your muscle gets stronger, it does so by either growing in size or by responding more efficiently to the orders your nervous system gives it – or both.
That means that any endurance activity you do with that muscle is then easier to do. That means that the endurance activity will improve as it simply becomes a bit easier to do.

To use his example, without strength training in addition, running a given distance is perhaps like running slightly uphill. But running that distance after also strength training is more like running on flat ground or even slightly down hill.

So, since it’s simply easier to do, you will go faster or be able to run farther or both.