Strength Training Improves Sports Performance

One of my first clients as a strength and conditioning coach was a marathon runner with absolutely no strength training experience. Yep that’s right a marathon runner….this was going to test me!

I pulled together a strength and conditioning program for her, put in place a number of monitoring tools to ensure we were tracking how she was feeling and I saw her twice a week in the gym.

I knew starting strength training was going to help her running, but I was in for a surprise at just how much and how quickly things happened.

For the first couple of weeks, we focused on lifting technique (and of course there was some muscular soreness) and then we looked to periodise the weight she was lifting and intensity week on week.

She came in at the end of week four beaming….she had shaved 15 seconds off her average speed and managed to only slightly decrease her speed while running on an incline. Big win!

The speed at which this happened left me speechless and I was of course thrilled for her!

Fast forward to comp day and it will come as no surprise she ran a PB (coming second in her category) and we found she also recovered faster than previous competitions.

I imagine many of us wouldn’t associate improvements in endurance running with strength training, but the results spoke for themselves.