Hopefully there has been enough publicity and promotion over recent times for everyone to realise that the sedentary lifestyle of many Australians is at concerning levels. This sedentary lifestyle can go hand in hand with weight and obesity issues, and lead to chronic health conditions, such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease, that could otherwise be completely avoided.
The recommendations for adult Australians (18-64yo) is to complete 150 – 300 minutes of moderate intensity physical activity each week, or 75 – 150 minutes of intense physical activity. But what is often missed in these guidelines is another two critical recommendations: firstly to perform 2 sessions of strength training per week (which we’ll cover in this blog) and secondly to minimise the amount of time we spend sitting and in sedentary postures (but that’s for another time).
Within the clinic, it is nice to see that many of our clients are (at least) aware of the activity guidelines, and try and participate in some form of walking, swimming, riding etc, however the vast majority are not aware how important it is to add strength (or resistance) training to your weekly schedule.
Even when in the gym, many who are trying to do the right thing tend to lean towards the slower, endurance, cardio based activities (which is great) but aren’t so keen to join the “big guys and girls” down near the back mirrors. Well…you don’t need to necessarily join them, but perhaps we could all take a modified leaf out of their strength training regimes.
As we get older, the necessity to do strength training increases. As we age, the fine balance between muscle growth and muscle breakdown naturally tips to the side of muscle breakdown (a process we call sarcopaenia) and results in a progressive catabolic (to break down into smaller pieces) effect on our muscles. So as we get older, and certainly from middle age onwards, it is critical that a strength component is added to your fitness regime to help offset the sarcopaenia process.
But for the purpose of this article, we’re going to focus on why strength is important in athletes, and we’ll make the focus even more specific and look at strength in endurance athletes, as there has been a long held belief amongst endurance athletes that stretching is the panacea, and strengthening will result in bulking up and slowing down. In the average endurance athlete program, there is miles and miles of running. And they’ll usually find a spare hour a few times a week to stretch. But if there happens to be a few left over minutes in their week – they’ll run another mile!
Whilst stretching may have some benefits, if stretching is the main thing you do to prepare for running you’re not going to reduce your injury risk or increase your performance! In fact research shows that strengthening can reduce injury risk by up to 69% whereas stretching only reduces risk by around 4%. So for any person out there participating in physical exercise, it seems that the one thing you should add to your program is strength training!
So if we can prove to you that strengthening is good for endurance athletes, then hopefully you can transfer that across to the fact that strengthening is important for us all, young or old, fast or slow, athlete or non athlete!
One of our great physio/running educators, a guy by the name of Rich Willy has studied endurance athletes extensively, and talks about some of the common myths in the running athlete fraternity. Here’s a summary:
- Strength training will make me run slower
- Strength training should be high rep, low weight to mimic the endurance demands of running
- The gluteal muscles (“glutes”) are the most important muscles for running
- Runners should do “functional” exercises