The benefits of strength training for endurance sports.

Concurrent training and the Interference effect.

The purpose of this article is twofold: To discuss and hopefully debunk some of the conflicts among coaches regarding the phenomenon known as the concurrent training effect, and delve into the efficacy of resistance training for endurance athletes. Concurrent training can be defined as the combination of resistance and endurance training in a periodised program, to maximise all aspects of physical performance (2). Being that the majority of sports require more than one component of fitness it is safe to say that concurrent training is required to excel for the majority of athletes. Concurrent training as a term is simply describing the combination of endurance and resistance training without any of the commonly discussed issues. The interference effect on the other hand is the underpinning aspect for all of the research we currently have on concurrent training effects. The interference effect can be conceptualised into two different mechanisms, the first relates to the physiological and anatomical rationale. The second is the practical effects, relating to fatigue, hunger, exercise timing and selection. As the main object of this article is to portray the benefits of strength training for endurance sports and athletes, I will not go into too much detail surrounding the science behind the interference effect. However, it is worth noting that the research goes both ways, despite there being a larger body of evidence supporting the statement of concurrent training having a negative impact on your strength (3,4,5,6), hypertrophy (5,6,7), and most of all power (4,8,9,6,10), a significant amount of research findings have shown no adverse relationship between endurance and strength training,(11,12,13,14,15). To sum up the results from my readings there appears to be one consistent finding, that strength and hypertrophy are least affected by concurrently training strength end endurance, and power often shows significant decrements, suggesting that if an athlete's sport is primarily dependent on strength and hypertrophy, concurrent training may not lead to reduced performance, size or strength, given the proper modality of endurance training is selected (16,8). From this information, it is safe to recommend that athletes competing in sports highly dependent on power and rate of force development, should limit the amount in which they concurrently train strength and endurance and swap out as much of their endurance training as they can for high-intensity cardiovascular training such as HIIT and Circuit training which is recommended to further reduce interference effects (17,18).

What does the literature say. Before getting into the specifics of what advantages and disadvantages you can expect to see as a result of incorporating strength training into your endurance training plan, we need to take a look at the literature to ensure the evidence we have is factual and not opinion-based. The most common topic surrounding strength training for endurance sports is the suggested decrements in the economy of movement, muscular endurance, or excessive gain in muscle mass as a result of heavy resistance training. I decided to conduct a small-scale meta-analysis where I looked at several studies to identify if these claims portray some degree of truth, upon doing so I found that not only were they false but the polar opposite. However that does not mean I am calling these people liars as I am sure there are also studies out there backing their statements, but going off what I have read my point remains that the evidence shows possible performance advancements. From the papers researched it is clear that Available information relates to both interference between strength and endurance and additive effects positively impacting the variables measured. Numerous studies note that concurrently training strength and endurance will improve running economy and velocity at V02 max (vV02max). Improvements as a result of strength training concurrently with endurance training. There are significant benefits as a result of training strength independently during pre-season training for injury prevention, reduction in muscular imbalances, strength deficits and weight reduction there are also a number of fairly specific variables. For example, a study conducted by (19- Storen et al, 2008) that was investigating the effects of maximal strength training on running economy (RE) @ 70% of V02max and time to exhaustion at vV02max, found many important factors relating to increased performance. During the study, seventeen well-trained runners (9 male, 8 female) were randomly assigned into either an intervention group that had to perform half squats for four sets of 4RM 3x per week for 8 weeks and a control group that carried on with their usual endurance training regime. The results from this investigation were as follows. Intervention group

• Significant improvements in 1RM (32.2%)

• Significant improvements in Rate of force development (26.0)

• Significant improvements in RE (5%)

• Significant improvement in vV02max (21.3%)

While these improvements manifested themselves there was no change in V02max, and no change in body weight, suggesting that strength training will not result in an increase in body mass or a reduction in V02max that could negatively affect endurance performance. Increase in muscle mass. How an increase in muscle mass might actually help with your endurance performance contrary to popular beliefs. Lets say you are someone who has no problem on long rides in zone 2 and 3 and can pretty much ride as long as you want to at a steady pace, but you get absolutely destroyed as soon as you need to do a sprint and struggle to recover. It is likely that you need to do more power specific training however there is something else that you can try, loading up on the the fuel used to perform these high intensity bouts during a race or ride (glycogen- carbohydrates) more specifically glycogen stored in your muscles, saying that you cannot choose how much glycogen goes to your muscle as oppose to your liver and brain. It is also quite likely that you have "carb loaded" and sufficiently fuelled leading up to the event, well then how can you further increase your levels of muscle glycogen. That's where resistance training comes in, as you probably already know it is almost a law that endurance athletes should be as skinny as possible, however there is one drawback with that, the less muscle mass you have the less muscle glycogen you can store! How much glycogen do you have? The average person has between 350 and 500 grams, or about 2,000 calories’ worth if your stores are fully stocked. About 80 percent of that is stored in your muscles; the rest is stashed away in your liver therefore you can see why it may benefit an individual to have a higher storage capacity along with the ability to spare carbohydrate usage as a result of being well trained in endurance sport. Slow twitch fibre development. During am examination of the studies finding that weight lifting and resistance training benefits endurance athletes it was apparent that time to exhaustion was the single biggest determent of performance gain among athletes and individuals within the studies, with a lot of those studies attributing those improvements in time to exhaustion towards a development in the strength and power of slow twitch muscle fibres. How exactly can that prolong exhaustion, by improving the strength of the slow twitch fibres you are improving their capability to carry the workload at higher intensity's, meaning that the athletes slow twitch fibres will continue to do the majority of the work up to higher intensity's or later into the event conserving glycogen and carbohydrates as the use of fast twitch fibres contributes to excessive fatigue compared to their slow twitch counterparts (20). How to use strength training in your endurance plan to get the best bang for your buck. Now that I have gone through the majority of the benefits it now makes sense to go through the best methods of implementing strength training into your plan. Guidelines for Strengths training. Focus on the prime movers These are the big muscle groups that are doing the majority of the work, you will gain large benefits training these with compound lifts if they are relatively untrained strength wise.

Use unilateral training as much if not more than bilateral movements to prevent muscular imbalances! Train specifically Try and mimic the the positions and movements of your sport in order to develop specific strength and improve motor recruitment patterns. Build slowly The last thing you want to do is injure yourself trying to gain an extra 2-5% performance as you will loose double that in a short period of time due to the reversibility effect. Therefore like increasing mileage on a running plan you don't want to increase volume or intensity too quickly as you are risking injury by doing so. Add de-loads every 3-6 weeks on average or more frequently if required as sometimes you will surpass a plateau just be resting and allowing the body to fully recover. As far as structuring you resistance training with endurance training it is suggested that it should be implemented in a periodised fashion, putting it early into pre-season where you train any hypertrophy style training, following that with the building of strength and then move on converting that strength into muscular endurance through base training whether it be increased running volume or time spend on the saddle. Throughout the rest of the season you want to be in what is known as the maintenance phase where your aim is to maintain strength and prevent muscular imbalances and keep your strength deficit as low as possible meaning your potential to use all of your muscles capacity. Another way to maximise the benefits of concurrently training strength with endurance is to leave at least 4 hours between strength and endurance sessions to reduce the interference effects as much as possible and if possible even leaving a day between strength and endurance training to further mitigate the interference effects and Make the most of your time training.

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