Pfitzinger Pete - Advanced Marathoning

Hold your feet together, and align your body in a straight line (from front to back) from your heels to your shoulders.

Lift your hip off the floor and hold (photo b ). Lower to the floor, rest briefly, and repeat on the other side.

Resistance training using weights, bands, or your own body weight can correct muscle imbalances and prevent injuries. We’ve already discussed core stability training, which is a type of resistance training with a specific purpose. Other types of resistance training will get your arms and shoulders, which don’t get much benefit from running, in shape and strengthen your leg muscles. Done correctly, weightlifting can reduce your risk of injury by strengthening the connective tissue, including tendons and ligaments. Weightlifting may even improve your running economy so that you use less oxygen at a given pace.

If done to excess, however, weightlifting will make you muscle-bound, tighten up your muscles, leave you injured, and give you extra bulk that you might not want to be carrying around come the 23-mile mark. Marathoners, after all, want to be the classic vertical hyphen, with no extra baggage – Deena Kastor and Ryan Hall probably don’t get asked for help too often on moving day. Resistance training does have a role, however, in a marathoner ’s overall training program.

Whether weight training can improve marathon performance is still open to debate; however, it can reduce your likelihood of injury and may improve running economy. The greatest gains for marathoners are obtained by including exercises that strengthen your propulsive and stabilizing muscles. The closer those exercises simulate how you would use those muscles during running, the greater the benefits for your running performance.

If you decide to lift weights, get advice from a coach or trainer who understands that you are weightlifting to improve your running, not to look good at the beach. If you decide to weight train your legs, schedule your weight sessions so that they’re not right before or after a hard running workout. If you run before or after work, lunchtime is an excellent opportunity to get in lifting sessions that won’t detract from your running.

An early study by biomechanists Peter Cavanagh, PhD, and Keith Williams, PhD, found that most runners naturally use the most economical stride length for a given speed (Cavanagh and Williams 1982). This led to the belief that runners shouldn’t alter their stride length. That advice is correct for the short term, but that doesn’t mean you can’t or shouldn’t attempt to improve your body to make it a more-effective running machine. Over months and years, you can increase your stride length by improving your strength and flexibility. The gains per stride will be small, but when multiplied over thousands of strides, the benefits can be substantial.

If lifting weights isn’t for you, then try another form of resistance training – hill training. During hill running, your body weight is the resistance. There is some evidence that running hills can produce improvements in running economy similar to those that occur through “normal” resistance training.

Running uphill requires that your legs propel your body weight upward against gravity. Moreover, they do so under conditions that more closely replicate racing conditions than does even the most well-designed weight machine. Anecdotal evidence for the benefits of hill running comes from the Kenyan and Ethiopian runners of today and goes back to coaching legend Arthur Lydiard and the great New Zealand runners of the 1960s and 1970s. The best runners in the world run hills day after day. Of course, genetic factors separate elite runners from recreational runners, but it certainly appears that hill training is an important element that, unlike your genes, you can influence.

Another advantage of hill running over lifting weights is that you simultaneously build your cardiovascular system. Doing some of your O 2max sessions on a moderately steep hill will build muscle strength and power that in theory should improve your running economy and that will definitely build your confidence for a hilly marathon.

If lifting weights isn’t for you, then try hill training. Running hills can produce improvements in running economy similar to those that occur through “normal” resistance training.

Resistance training can improve running performance by increasing the force that your slow-twitch muscle fibers develop. This requires relatively low resistance and high repetitions. Lifting to increase muscle size is counterproductive to endurance (and particularly marathon) performance. During endurance training, you work to increase the capillary density and mitochondrial content of your muscles. When muscle size is increased, the capillary and mitochondrial density of the muscle is reduced. It’s important, therefore, that you design your resistance training to avoid gains in muscle size. The program that follows is designed to improve strength specifically for your running without adding unneeded muscle.

Resistance training should generally take place two times a week. With this frequency you will see steady improvements in strength but will not compromise the rest of your training program because of excess fatigue. As discussed previously, core stability training should be done more frequently.

• A gentle aerobic warm-up will enhance the safety and effectiveness of this program.

EXERCISE 1: PUSH-UP

How many:10 repetitions per set

How it helps:strengthens the chest, shoulders, and arms; helps improve arm drive when running powerfully (e.g., hills, finishing kick) and ability to maintain good upper-body form when tired

How to do it:

Start in the push-up position shown, with your toes on the floor and your hands slightly wider than shoulder-width apart (photo a ).

Bend your elbows and lower your body down until your chest is just above the floor (photo b ).

Push your body back to the start position.

Don’t dip your head toward the floor or allow your hips to sag during this exercise.

Your elbows will move out to the side when performing this push-up.

EXERCISE 2: DUMBBELL LAT ROW

How many:15 repetitions per side per set

How it helps:strengthens large muscles along side of upper back; improves running posture by balancing strength of the chest and shoulder muscles

How to do it: