There are several objectives we may have for run training sessions. We prefer to call these sessions ‘practices’ because this implies that there is skill involved and skills need to be practice and can always be improved. Even when the session is focused on physical performance of some kind, like going a certain pace, skill still plays a central role in making that performance possible with least energy cost and risk of injury.

Strength is not about being ‘tough’, it is foremost about being ‘safe’. The stronger your body becomes – especially the joints and more vulnerable parts – the more safely it can handle the normal stresses of running and a training lifestyle.

There are some parts of the body that get stronger relatively easily, and quickly. But don’t mistake this for being strong because your body is only as strong as the weakest member of the system. The small muscles and connective and stabilizing tissues of the joints take a lot longer to strengthen in proportion to the large muscle groups. Strength practice is about paying attention to the small parts, the fine details, the subtle signals of the body to make sure the more vulnerable parts are catching up to the bigger ones.

The guidance below is aimed primarily at those who are following the 5K Run Training Plan….

 

Run Strength Practice

Can you find some hills to run on? This practice will have you climbing in order to develop more strength. And, it is not merely muscle strength that you are building. You are building your attention and motor control to hold up under more strenuous running conditions. The whole point is to build more muscular strength for precise movement patterns. If you let form deteriorate on hills then this defeats the purpose of this kind of specific muscle+motor control training.

And, we must point out that running on hills is about building strength for both running uphill and running downhill. Many mountain runners will tell you that the downhills can actually exhaust the legs more quickly than uphills can. Good form is just as important on the downhill because it protects your knees, hips, and back, which can come under different and perhaps greater risk of injury because of the greater forces involved in falling farther down on each step.

The hills you choose can be a gradual climb or steep, though you should aim for easier slope for the first few weeks if you are new to running on hills.

Hopefully, the length of the climb is long enough to have you running uphill for at least 1 minute continuously before it levels off or heads downhill again.  

The Strength Practice assignments will give you an overall distance to run and then prescribe a certain amount of minutes you should stay on the hills during that run.

For example, the assignment may be to run for 3 miles continuously, with 12 minutes of that being done on hills. This would be written ‘3 miles, 12 min hills’. It would be better to have that 12 minutes broken up into up-and-down the hill intervals, so that you can work your running form and muscles in both the uphill and downhill modes. You may certainly run for several minutes continuous if you like, but be sure to include some downhill work also.

If you are close enough to a hilly section of town you may start your run on the flats, and then head into the hills for the assigned minutes and then return to the flats to finish. If you live in a hilly section you might be challenged in finding a flat section to run in!

If you are not near a hilly section of town, you may know of a short section of slope somewhere nearby that would allow you to do repeats up and down for several minutes – a short hill or a long, paved ramp in a park, or a sloping section of a park. It might even be a series of stairs in a park or stadium.