How to integrate strength training into your marathon training

Strength training can be a very important component of your marathon (and, hopefully everyday) training. Ideally, you would have started your strength training regime well before your training plan, during your base building block. However, if that’s not the case, don’t despair, you can safely start introducing some basic strength training into your marathon training block slowly and carefully.

Because marathon training involves an increase in mileage and intensity, adding another new stimulus such as strength training can be a challenge. The body can only adapt to so many stimuli and balancing intense work and recovery for marathon builds is already a challenge. Adding a strength training component can be incredibly valuable both in terms of your strength and power as a runner, but also can potentially stave off specific types of injuries.

So how can you safely add strength training to your marathon plan?

There are two main keys: Slow Integration and Adequate Recovery

First, the incorporation of any strength work should be gradual. Start with one day a week if you currently do nothing at all. This one day should be a very basic, short session using mainly body or light weights, depending on the exercise. For instance, just integrating sets of squats, lunges, and calf raises using body weight may be as much as your body can handle initially, particularly for lower body. You may be able to add slightly more weight for upper body exercises, although this still adds to the stress your body is under so it can impact your training and recovery. Finally, don’t neglect core exercises. Your core is a key supporting element for all of the work that you do (it’s right there in the name!).

If you find that you are adapting to this addition of one day of strength, you may be able to add another or to split your workout into two days a week. But DO NOT do this until a couple of weeks in. It takes time for true adaptation to occur so before you start adding on, give your body a few weeks to ensure that it can absorb the additional work.

The second component of adding strength training successfully is ensuring that you are giving your body adequate time to recover from all of the training that you are doing. Add your strength training to your hard days and leave the easy and off days to recover. The saying is ‘Keep your hard days hard and your easy days easy.’ Do not neglect your rest days. This is the most important part of your training plan, especially as you add on miles and strength training.

Since you are increasing the work and stress on all fronts, it is even more imperative that you pay attention to the amount of sleep you are getting (for most of us, this should be at least 7-8 hours a day during your marathon training; sometimes it needs to be more on those really tough weeks). Sleep is essential to the body and mind’s ability to repair and to absorb the benefits of training.

Finally, when you reach taper, remember to taper your strength training too. Especially if this is a newer activity for you, it’s best to stop training the last two weeks or so before your race.

Now that you have gotten used to including strength training, don’t forget to keep this up in the off season. That way when you start training for your next race, you’ll have already built this aspect of your athletic portfolio and can ease into your race plan stronger and more resilient than before.