Tips For Distance Runners : Weight Lifting for Running

Why do athletes lift weights? Is it to have a nice tone? Cant they just run everyday and achieve the same results versus putting themselves under further strain with weight lifting? Well to answer these questions we first have to understand what lifting weights do for athletes, and there are two main reasons.

Helps to reduce injury

Injuries when doing sport is inevitable as you are placing your body under immense stress, however, a comprehensive, well-organized, properly administered and year-round strength training program results in musculo-tendon units that are more resilient to the stresses and impact forces sustained in athletic activities. It also serves as a foundation for harder training that an athlete would have to face leading up to when he or she will have competition. This claim is was backed by sports scientist Mary Beth Horodyski who said that in a focus group study seventy-eight percent of severe injuries to the upper body struck non-lifting athletes, or those athletes who were not in a controlled weight-lifting program.

Packing Power

The stronger your muscles are equates to more strength while running as well as greater recovery after training. It also allows coaches to increase the intensity of the training programs as their athletes muscles become stronger and more developed. The combination of strength training and specific skill work also has a positive influence. Larger, stronger muscle fibers (especially the “fast twitch” variety), result in a higher rate and level of overall muscle force production, which results in the ability to demonstrate pronounced power output in designated athletic skills. In essence as we learned in physics force is equal to mass multiplied by acceleration, therefore speed is dependent on (force), and how this is achieved is by (mass) "weight lifting" with a combination of speed work.