Good Strength Exercises for Runners

Six Seriously Good Strength Exercises for Runners

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While it’s true that a runners’ most important training focus should be running, strength training will improve your running performance, make you more efficient and guard against injury. You don’t need a gym or a lot of equipment, and you don’t even need to spend an hour doing it. 

I know you’ve got questions. Questions like…

Why is strength training such a big deal for me if I’m a runner?

For several reasons. Running is high impact and highly repetitive. What that means in practical terms is that your feet and legs take up to eight times your body’s weight in impact on your joints and tissues. Eight times! If you haven’t prepared those joints and tissues for that level of repeated force, you’re looking for trouble. Running is a single leg sport–you literally, by definition, are delivering those forces to one leg at a time. That means you’ll gain the most sport-specific benefit from single leg strength work.

The benefits of strength training fall into three categories: efficiency, performance and injury prevention. As you’ll see, these categories inter-relate. 

How does strength training make me more efficient?

Obviously it builds stronger muscles, bones and tendons, but it also makes your neuromuscular coordination better since you are training the communication between nervous system and musculature. Your ground contact time gets faster because you can spring off more quickly. You are able to recycle energy more effectively too. The all-in-all is that you are able to do more work with less oxygen and don’t tire as easily. That’s efficiency for ya!

What does that mean for my running performance?

Because you’re more efficient, you go faster with less effort. You can produce force more quickly and have better push off with each stride. You can also climb hills faster (!) and have stronger finishes because of the muscle endurance strength training builds. 

What’s the low-down on the injury prevention benefits?

Having built stronger muscles, bones, tendons, fascia, you’ll be better able to withstand the 8x bodyweight forces. But that’s just part of the upside. Without strength training, energy can’t move well through the body. Your core isn’t able to transfer the force, so your back compensates (and gets thrown around), your extremities don’t stay aligned and your posture worsens. These are the source of common running injuries like low back pain, IT band syndrome, runner’s knee, achilles tendonitis, hamstring tendonitis and many other problems. Strength training helps you to have better posture and alignment even when you are fatigued. It helps you have a stronger, more consistent core to lessen compensations and transfer energy well. 

Okay, I’m in! Give me the six exercises. 

There are so many exercises that can support running. I chose six because it’s a manageable number, with enough variety to address the areas most essential to running. These exercises are time efficient, use minimal equipment and focus on hips, core and lower legs. Most of them will be single-leg format to better support that nature of the activity. They also will have you developing core stiffness while moving the limbs, another element runners have to get right if they want to be efficient, perform at their best and stay uninjured.

Exercises, Key Instruction Points and Demo Videos

For all exercises, do a number of repetitions maintaining good form to get a good fatigue (muscle burn), then 1-2 more reps. This will likely be 8-16 depending on the exercise. The video clips give specifics about performing the exercise well. If your form starts to falter, take a break.

1. Single Leg Deadlift – strength and stability of posterior chain (i.e.; back of the body)–glutes, hamstrings, calves.

  • Weight in opposite hand from standing leg
  • Hinge at hip, shoulders back, back straight, swan dive  
  • Slight bend in knee of standing leg
  • Keep trunk stiff and move in line with back leg (like a see-saw

 

2. Side Plank with variations: leg lift, knee drive – strength and stability of obliques, gluteus medius and deep core stabilizers.

  • Align elbow under shoulder and body in a straight line, bottom knee bent 90°
  • Align head/neck, look out at the horizon
  • Lift top leg in line with body (feel it in the back pocket)
  • March top leg until knee is 90° 
  • Don’t fall into the cactus garden.

 

3. Split Squat w Soleus Raise: strengthens quads, glutes and calves

  • Place one foot on ledge behind you, front foot out in front a few inches
  • Have something for balance
  • Come down as low as possible and aim to increase that over time
  • Lift heel of front foot keeping foot aligned (don’t splay out)
  • Lower heel and come up
  • Add weight as you’re able

 

4. Prisoner Calf Raise with non-working foot on bench

  • Place one foot on ledge in front of you, little or no weight on that foot
  • Hands on back of your head, elbows opening wide
  • Press into ball of the foot raising heel off, keep aligned and don’t splay
  • Keep core engaged throughout

 

5. Tibialis Anterior Foot Raises with resistance band or kettlebell

  • Place the balls of both feet onto a small loop resistance band
  • Have something for balance
  • Keeping foot slightly flexed, march knee up to 90°
  • Push standing foot firmly down, keep leg active and core strong and stiff
  • For more challenge, try a 8-10# kettlebell

 

6. Dead Bug – how to do it right (a friend can help)

  • Lie on your back on the floor. 
  • Place a strip of cloth under your back 1-2 inches below your ribs
  • Use abdominals to push your back down on the cloth – that is your focus!
  • Reach arms toward the ceiling (move only if you can keep pressing on cloth)
  • Keep knees at 90° as you lower one at a time to tap heel to floor.
  • Knees don’t come any closer to your body. 
  • Done correctly, this is HARD. Have your friend try to pull the cloth from behind your back. That keeps you honest. 

There you have it–your solid six strength exercises. As a sustainable way to begin doing them, try adding 1-2 exercises before or after a run. Rotate through the exercises and you’ll have done all of them over the course of a week or two. Work your way up to doing 3-4 before or after a run. 

If you’re in the Seattle area, our Unstill Life running and walking group is a great community! Connect with other walkers and runners, chat with a coach about strength and other ways to improve and support your activities. Meet up with us!

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