Before we get into anything else, strength training wise, the first question that needs to be answered is WHY? Why is strength training for endurance athletes important? Frankly speaking, it is important for two main reasons: injury prevention and performance enhancement.

If you are an endurance athlete, whether competitive or non-competitive, than you live the endurance athlete lifestyle. Your days, nights, work, family functions, etc. revolve around you getting your training in. And if it’s that important to get your training in, why would you let an injury, a preventable injury at that, get in the way of what you love to do? Ankle sprains, muscle, tendon, and ligament damage could be greatly reduced, even eliminated with a good, solid, strength program.

The second reason to strength train is simpler than the first: good, old fashioned, performance enhancement. Your times will be faster and the hardest parts of races and training sessions will feel easier.

When designing any training program, strength or otherwise, the first place to start is the annual plan. Since endurance training is your priority, that plan must be set up first. Once that plan is in place, then, and only then, can you move onto the strength training portion. It is of utmost importance that both your endurance training plan and your strength training plan match up in regards to volume and intensity. Periods or high volumes and/ or intensities in running, swimming and biking must match up with periods of high volumes in the weight room. The same goes for periods of low volumes and or intensities.

Over the course of the year, you will modulate your volumes and intensities based on your competition schedule. As you start to decrease your endurance intensity and/ or volume, you will also cut back on the intensity and/ or volume in the weight room. If it is a time during the year that calls for increased intensity and/or volume of your endurance work, then you will increase the intensity and/ or volume in the weight room as well.

As you approach a competition, the same rules apply. You will start to reduce the volume in the weight room in conjunction with your training volumes, as you reduce the training intensities, your weight room intensities will decrease, and then 2 weeks before competition you will cut out the weight room completely, and then pick it back up once you resume your post-competition training.

The volumes and intensities need to match up perfectly, as do the most important weeks, the rest/ recovery/ restoration weeks. Without these two plans matching up, inevitably, you will wear down your body too much. And we all know what happens once you start to feel rundown. You start cutting out the weight training and preserving your energy for your runs, or swims, or bike rides. Then, because there is no weight training, you start to feel better, more energized, assume the weight training was killing you, and never go back in the weight room. You must understand that this happened not because you were in the weight room, but because your training plan was flawed from the start.

Once your annual plan (which includes weight training) has been laid out, it’s time to figure out what to do in the weight room. The most important thing to keep in mind when in the weight room is that you are not chasing weight room numbers. You are chasing performance. On bike, on road, on trail, in water, performance. Because of this, your goal in the weight room is simple: Do not do any more than what will help you the most. Do not do one more rep, one more set, one more exercise than the bare minimum it will take to improve your times. As an endurance athlete, you need to be ultra-conscious of any added volume to your body. And not just in the weight room. Walking around an amusement park for 6 hours with your kids will take its toll on your performance as well. That’s why the strength training you include must be enough to enhance performance without becoming a liability to your body.

We need to keep it simple when it comes to exercise selection. Our primary exercises will consist of multi-joint movements, or movements that work more than one joint at a time. These are the best exercises for building strength. They will be squats, deadlifts, and the overhead and bench press. Our auxiliary exercises will include unilateral (one at a time) leg movements, posterior chain (backside) exercises, and upper body pulling exercises.

Depending on how many days a week you want to go to the gym, and how much time you have, will determine which layout you choose.

2x Week
Day 1                                  Day 2
Bench Press                       Overhead Press
Squat                                  Deadlift
Physioball Leg Curl            Step Up

3x Week
Day 1                                    Day 2                               Day 3
Squat                                    Overhead Press              Bench Press
Physioball Leg Curl              Deadlift                            Chin Ups
Step Ups

4x Week
Day 1                             Day 2                             Day 3                           Day 4
Squat                             Bench                            Overhead Press           Deadlift
Physioball Leg curl        Chin Ups                        Lat Pulldown                Step Up
Push Ups

The best part about setting up your workouts like this is that week-to-week, you can choose whatever option works best for you. If one week you can find 20 minutes 4 days a week than choose that option. If the next week you can only find 2 days but have 45 minutes, then you can choose that option.

Now let’s talk some sets and reps. For your major movements (Squat, Bench Press, Overhead Press, and Deadlift), every day you are going to warm up with 3 sets of 5 reps that get both your mind and body prepared for the working sets. Then once you’ve performed those warm up sets, you will perform either 3 sets of 5 reps (3x5), 3x4, 3x3, 3x2, or 3x1 of that movement, depending on what your training intensity for that week is. For the accessory movements (every exercise that is not Squat, Bench Press, Overhead Press, or Deadlift), you will perform either 5x10, 4x10, 3x10, 2x10, or 1x10, depending on what your training volume for that week is. You will change the sets as reps each week to correspond with your training volumes and intensities for that week. Progression will happen the next time that same set and rep scheme comes up. If 5 weeks ago you did 3x5 on the squat and today you have 3x5 again, look to see what you did last time and beat it by 5 lbs. The same goes for your accessory movements. If 3 weeks ago you did 3x10 on the lat pulldown, and again today you have 3x10, beat it by 5 lbs. I recommend starting off very light on every exercise and increasing by the smallest possible increments. For barbell work, that will typically mean increasing in 5 lb increments as 2.5 lb plates are usually the smallest you can find in a gym. For dumbbell movements, you will have to increase by either 2.5 or 5 lb increments, depending on what’s available to you.

Now I know what your next question is going to be: “What do I do when I can’t add any more weight?” First and foremost, this will not happen for a while--so stop looking for an out!! You will be starting light and increasing by the smallest possible increments. But, yes, at some point it will be hard to continue to add weight to the bar. And even though you are a good 2-5 years from that point, I will let you in on a secret. Once you hit that point, chances are you have achieved all the strength that you will need to reap the benefits of strength training for endurance. No other strength coach on the planet will tell you this, but I’m going to: There is an optimal level of strength for your given sport. What that level is depends on the individual and you will have to find that sweet spot for yourself. To get stronger would be to sacrifice one of the other elements that it takes to be successful in your given sport. Sure, you could keep getting stronger by adding body weight, but that extra weight is not going to feel too good when you’re running or biking up a steep hill. At that point in your career, there are still going to be things you have to focus on to get better. Continue strength training with those weights that you are at and move onto the next aspect of your game that needs improving.

Consistency is the key to everything and where most endurance athletes fail when it comes to weight training. The problems arise from constantly adding and then removing weight training from your program. The fact the body never gets used to weight training is the killer. It would be like moving into an apartment on the 20 floor. For the first month you live there, you take the stairs every day. After a month it starts to become easier, and every subsequent month taking those stairs gets easier and easier to the point where you will actually go back upstairs to get whatever you forgot. Now let’s just say after that initial first month of living there you decide to start taking the elevator. A month passes of you taking the elevator and then you decide to start taking the stairs again. When you go back to taking the stairs, it’s going to be like you’ve never taken them before, even though when you first moved in you took them every day. Weight training is like those stairs. Stick with it, don’t stop, let your body get used to the stress, and after a short time it’ll start to feel normal. That’s when you will start to reap those benefits.

Remember that strength is not only important, it is necessary component of any complete training program. Overlooking it could lead to injury and poor performance. Including it, in a simple to follow plan, will yield amazing results. Train hard, be consistent, and have fun.