Friday, 7 October 2016

Strength training for the endurance athlete


Strength training for the endurance athlete



For years endurance athletes have denounced the use of most types of resistance training, and  hold dim views on the weights room. This may be a view you yourself take or at least use as an excuses when leaving it out of the weekly training program. Recent scientific studies have found that significant and measurable benefits can come from concurrent heavy load low rep weight training along side existing endurance training regimes.




Ill break this down real simple into positive and negative effects, in case you are reading this on the trainer or after bonking on a long run.

Positive effects


Neurological (brain and nerves)


An increase in muscle tendon stiffness is a common result of strength training. This in turn creates a greater ability to store potential energy and transfer it into movement (particularly in running) allowing the athlete to move from the breaking phase of the running stride to the propulsive phase more effectively.

RFD (Rate force Development)

Increase in rate force development is one of the many beneficial outcomes of strength training. This allows for an increase in speed of required contractile forces. This is influenced by two factors.

1-      A Shift in muscle fibre type from IIX – IIA, which is a less fatiguing and more aerobic type muscle fibre (due to increased mitochondria density, higher capillarization and greater oxidative capacity… so like, more endurance shit)


2-      Greater muscle fibre recruitment. – This means that more of the muscle fibres available within a muscle are actually used, resulting in a stronger contraction. This is caused by improved signalling from the brain to muscles.

Perfusion rates (rate at which the body delivers blood to working muscle tissue)


The benefits of this are rather obvious, more blood means more of the stuff that blood carries
      -          Oxygen

-          FFA (free fatty acids) used for energy

-          Glucose and glycogen also used for energy

-          Hepatitis

Improvements to this can be attributed to

1-      Increase relaxation phase of movement pattern. – Due to the increase of RFD the muscle has a greater period of relaxation, reducing occlusion of capillaries during contraction phase and allowing blood to flow into muscle.

2-      Higher capillary density, this refers to the above point on muscle fibre type.  More capillaries means more flow of blood to muscles.

Older athletes (athletes that are old)

One of the greatest notable differences between older and young athletes is a decrement in strength. This reduces force production and has a negative bearing on performance. Strength training has been shown reduce age related differenced in endurance athletes.

Economy (amount of energy required to maintain a workload)

Improvements to economy will allow athletes to run, ride, swim or CrossFit faster, for lower oxygen costs.

This effect closely relates to several of the previously stated factors.

-          Tendon stiffness – energy transfer

-          Contraction time

-          Muscle firing patterns

Negative aspects


Signalling interference

If you are hoping to bulk up, and at the same time doing a shit-load of endurance training, you may want to rethink your approach. Cell signalling involved with adaptation to endurance training has been show to interrupt signalling for hypertrophy (muscle growth). Meaning that muscle size does not increase. However this may also be seen as a positive effect for the pure endurance athlete looking to minimise body mass (Chris Froom).

Time availability

We all struggle with limited time for training between work, family, social life and maintaining a pretend sport science blog. When push comes to shove the most important sessions to complete are the specific ones to the sport. Strength training however can offer the extra 1%  

Recovery time

The quicker the recovery the quicker you can get on with the next session. Heavy strength sessions can take days to fully recover from in the initial stages, this has the potential to hamper more specific types of training. If this is a problem, consider taking huge doses of steroids.


Active wear

Active wear doesn’t come cheap. And having a fresh cycling kit for every group ride is a handful in itself, so the cost of a low cut side singlet and a flat bill cap may be enough to deter you from entering a weights room. And i don’t blame you.

Injury

There are two ways to look at this. 

-         Increase training load can lead to overuse, thus injuries occur.

-         Improvements in economy, muscle firing patterns, stronger connective tissue and strength help prevent injuries.



Practical applications


Prescription suggestions


Sets
3
Reps
3-6
Resistance
80-100% of rep max
Frequency
 2-3 x week

Heavy load and low reps weight training will result in a high level of stress on the muscles and surrounding tissue. Putting athletes who do it at a higher risk of injurie, especially over a prolonged period of time.
It may be a good idea, in the early stages of a program use light resistance and higher repetitions and progress to higher load and lower reps closer to peak in a periodised fashion. In much the same way a running program for example would first focus on high volume them progress to higher intensity.
Or how at a new job you start off slow and pretend you don't know anything, so no one expects too much of you.

Type of exercise

Closed chain exercise –Exercises where the end of limb is fixed.

-          Squat

-          Deadlift

-          Lunges 

-       Twerk

These are also examples of multipoint or compound exercises which are the most beneficial in a sporting context. 

Hopefully this has been as enjoyable to read as it was to write. (I was eating ice cream as I wrote it) and hopefully it has provided a few practical points to further improve your training.

If you have any further questions after reading, please feel free to reach out via social media. We are now on Facebook, Instagram, twitter and tinder.


Reference:
 Jason Martuscello, MS, CSCS, HFS1 and Nicholas Theilen, 2014, “”Do the Benefits of

Strength Training Out-Weigh the Dangers for Endurance Athletes? “ Strength and conditioning journal, VOLUME 36 | NUMBER 4

P. Aagaard1, J. L. Andersen, 2010, “Effects of strength training on endurance capacity in top-level endurance athletes”, SC&J med sports, Vol:20, no 2, pp 39-47

  
Kyle R. Barnes Andrew E. Kilding, 2014, Stratergies to Improve Running economy, Sports Med (2015) Vol: 45, PP: 37–56

 CalebD. Bazyler,MA, Heather A. Abbott, M.Ed,Christopher R. Bellon,MA, Christopher B. Taber,MS, andMichael H. Stone, 2015, Strength Training for Endurance Athletes: Theory to Practice, NSCA, VOLUME 37 | NUMBER 2
Julien Louis  Christophe Hausswirth Christopher Easthope  Jeanick Brisswalter, 2012, Strength training improves cycling efficiencyin master endurance athletes, Eur J Appl Physiol, Vol:112, PP: 631–640
Kris Beattie • Ian C. Kenny • Mark Lyons, Brian P. Carson, 2014, The Effect of Strength Training on Performance in Endurance Athletes, Sports Med, Vol: 4 PP: 845–865