The benefits of strength training
The Benefits of Strength Training
Muscular strength underpins all physical performance, regardless of the sport. Scientific research has presented a great depth of evidence advocating the necessity to include resistance training in your program. This article will highlight the benefits of strength training with regards to injury prevention and how it can impact performance in cycling and running. Hopefully this will encourage you to include strength training within your current program.
How can resistance training reduce injury occurrence?
Resistance training has shown to significantly reduce the chances of injury during exercise. It strengthens the muscles and tendons whilst enhancing the flexibility of ligaments, therefore decreasing the chance of a tear or strain. This enhanced strength will further protect your joints as stability will improve and the joints optimal range of motion will be kept at its best. Furthermore, resistance training will increase mineral bone density, reducing the risk of skeletal injuries. With regards to the neuromuscular benefits, resistance training will improve the recruitment and firing rates of the muscles. This will provide a greater unconscious activation of dynamic restraints to protect from repetitive or powerful sporting movements.
To put this into perspective, marathon runners have shown injury rates of 19% to 58% during training and competition, with inadequate strength being highlighted as a predominant risk factor. Furthermore, athletes ≥40 years old have shown a significantly greater injury rates compared with younger athletes, emphasising the importance of resistance training as your sporting career progresses. Additionally, in triathlon, up to 33% of injuries occur at the muscle/tendon and about 29% occur at a ligament or a joint capsule. Different sources and publications will indicate slightly differing findings, but all will emphasise a relatively high injury risk in endurance sports as presented here. Hopefully this indicates a solid reasoning to implement resistance training in order to reduce the likelihood of picking up an injury in the future.
How can strength training impact performance?
Throughout this article I have used the term ‘resistance training’ as a lay term to indicate the injury preventative influence all resistance training can have on injury risk. Within this section I will look primarily at strength training and go into more depth on how it can improve performance.
Strength training incorporates the use of both heavy resistance training and explosive/power resistance training. Heavy strength training focuses on the ability of a muscle or a group of muscles to generate maximum force, usually involving a load equal to 1RM (repetition maximum) up to 6RM. Explosive/power training involves low repetitions with maximum force at 0-60% 1RM. Both variations will have different but influential benefits to performance, and both can be implemented during different periods of the season which I’ll get into more later in the article.
From a performance perspective, enhancing your muscular strength can have a major benefit. Performance within endurance sports is 80-99% dependent on aerobic metabolism. There are three main characteristics which impact individual performance during these sports: maximal aerobic power (VO2max), lactate threshold and running/cycling economy (RE). VO2max is the maximal rate of oxygen consumption during exercise. Lactate threshold is the exercise intensity whereby the bloods concentration of lactate increases exponentially. RE is defined as the steady-state of oxygen consumption/energy demand at a standard power or velocity.
Research incorporating strength training into an endurance athletes’ program has demonstrated significant improvement in RE. These included heavy strength training for 6-14 weeks, 2-3 times/week, showing significant improvements in RE in elite and recreational athletes of up to 5%. This 5% improvement in RE has shown a three-to-four-fold increase in time to exhaustion when exercising at 85-100% VO2max. In lay terms, the energy cost to exercise at a submaximal intensity is reduced following the combined endurance and strength training. This may also allow you to exercise at a greater intensity whilst not expending more energy to do so. Improvements in 1RM of up to 25% and rate of force development are also highlighted from strength training, with certain studies additionally showing enhancements in anaerobic capacity and a proposed enhancement of the lactate threshold. No increases in body mass were shown, nor any compromise to an athletes VO2max.
There may be several reasons for this improvement in RE. These include enhanced type I muscle fibre strength, delaying their time to fatigue and delaying the activation if type II fibre activation. Type I fibres are slow activating but are very fatigue resistant as energy is supplied from the oxidative pathway, whereas type II fibres are fast activating and include type IIA fibres and type IIX fibres. Type IIA fibres are also fatigue resistant as energy is supplied from oxidative pathways and the glycolytic pathway, whereas type IIX fibres are very fatigable as energy is supplied solely from the glycolytic pathways. Therefore, the increased type I fibre strength will postpone the activation of less efficient type II muscle fibres. Enhanced proportion of type IIA fibres compared to type IIX fibres may indicate the improvement in RE. The type IIA fibres will contribute to endurance performance better as they are more fatigue resistant yet have a strong power output.Another possibility is that the training induces a greater rate of force development (RFD), enhancing the blood flow to the exercising muscles. This enhancement in RFD is usually an indication of increased neural activation, and several studies have presented these adaptations when utilising heavy strength or explosive/power training.
Periodisation:
As mentioned earlier, there are certain periods of the season when it is best to implement specific training. This is the same with incorporating strength training into your programs, and some athletes can find it hard to know when this should be completed. This is classed as periodisation which is the process of adapting training throughout the season to achieve peak performance during the competitive season. Usually this involves dividing the season into four phases: off-season, pre-season, competitive season and the transition period. Each phase will be planned with varying time constraints to allow for progressive overload and recovery within each phase. A macrocycle is the whole training period, usually about 1-2 years, a mesocycle can be several weeks up to a couple months and a microcycle is usually around a week.
As you cycle your endurance training throughout the season, the same should be completed for your strength training. Although there are several ways of periodising your training throughout the season, the following is just one example of this. The off-season is where most athletes will make the greatest gains in their strength. This phase is usually split into two 4-6week periods: the muscle hypertrophy phase and the strength phase. The hypertrophy phase will induce muscular growth in order to prepare for the strengthening phases, which is where the major strength gains are sought after. The pre-season is when explosive/power performance can be developed. This is where plyometrics and Olympic lifting are introduced to the strength program. The competitive and transition phases are usually maintenance periods where the volume is reduced. Please note, it is very much possible to make strength/power gains within both these periods as long as training load is monitored to ensure sufficient recovery and prevent overtraining.
Conclusion:
Hopefully this article has provided you with some insight into the benefit of incorporating strength training alongside your endurance training. This article has only scraped the surface on strength training and there is a lot more information out there on the benefits and how this should be implemented within your training. If you feel you may benefit from this and would like more advice on such training, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.