Well, it’s December and time for the annual debate about whether endurance athletes (especially runners and cyclists) should do strength training, usually referred to as “lifting weights.” I’ve already started receiving emails from athletes pointing out that other coaches are adamantly opposed to it.
As you probably know if you’ve read one of my Training Bibles, that I suggest many if not most athletes will benefit from lifting weights. But the science goes both ways on this. Some research has shown no benefit while others have found significant endurance performance. I’ve written about this before and you can find a more complete discussion of the pros and cons here.
In that piece I commented that those who are relatively new to an endurance sport (let’s say that means less than 3 years of experience) will likely benefit from strength training. Others that I’ve found also seem to make respectable performance gains from lifting are older athletes, women, and “ectomorphs” (skinny). Of course, this implies that the strength exercises being done are appropriate for the sport the athlete participates in. A runner can’t just do biceps curls and expect his or her 10-km time to improve.
The reason for this blog post is point out the most recent research on the topic that is a review of several previous studies and describes the many benefits found by them. You can read that short abstract here.
Have I had all of the athletes I’ve ever coached lift weights? No, I haven’t. Some just didn’t have enough time to fit it in. Given the choice of lifting or working out in one’s primary sport—either/or—I’ll take the primary sport every time. I’ve also coached a few athletes, all men, who gained muscle mass very quickly who were already muscular enough, or perhaps even overly muscled (“mesomorphs”). There was no reason for them to be lifting. More muscle would only hinder their endurance performance.
A side benefit of lifting weights for cyclists especially, is that research has shown that they are much more likely to experience osteopenia (reduced bone density) than athletes doing weight-bearing sports such as running. Lifting weights has been shown to be one of the best ways to counter this trend.
Strength-building programs for triathletes and road cyclists may be found in my Training Bible books and on this site (scroll to near the bottom for the download links).
Feel free to comment on your personal experience with strength training.
