Strength Training for Endurance Athletes

Strength training for endurance athletes is a hot topic amongst the coaches in the athletics community.  You have coaches that have their athletes in the weight room several times a week to others who simply do some core work a couple times a week and leave it at that.  The whole topic is tricky because it isn't as cut and dry as some make it out to be.  Some factors in the amount of weight training an athlete should do include age, training age, event the athlete is training for, previous experience with strength training, accessibility to equipment, and experience a coach has implementing strength training in his or her program.

Now since we are talking about endurance athletes and not football or hockey players I think we should begin there, began age won't factor in as much as with those sports.  Endurance athletes tend to be ectomorphs, or those who are naturally lithe with a fast metabolism who will usually not gain much muscle unless on a very strict program.  While these athletes can be naturally strong, they usually are starting from a point where they have minimal strength training experience and will struggle with issues dealing with proprioception and kinesthetic awareness and will have a much smaller threshold for tolerance to strength work.  This is true, in my opinion, regardless of age with ectomorphic athletes.  I find my high school athletes without strength backgrounds will struggle equally at the initial strength training phases as my middle school and junior high athletes and at this point we are only talking about pushups and lunges, not even weighted exercises.

From this point I find that most coaches dismiss strength training because of how long it takes to develop those neural receptors that make strength training as natural as walking or running, or because of the necessary technical aspects of weight training.  This is unnecessary as much strength can be gained from simple body weight exercises that can be added to the end of practice a couple times a week.  The technical aspects, while not non-existent, should not be too difficult for a coach to aide his athletes with.  You must remind your athletes that a strong body recovers quicker, is more powerful, and is less injury prone.  The body weight exercises also reduce the need for equipment, can be done regardless of training age or physical age, event, and is the base for potential weighted exercises down the line.

For some late high school and most college aged athletes, a more regimented strength training routine will be necessary, but for the majority of middle school through high school aged athletes should focus on the basics and become proficient in exercises that establish a strength training base.  I will show some sample training regimens for younger athletes since my focus is the age-group athlete in AAU or USATF.  But to be sure, these exercises are the base of the future strength routines the athlete will encounter down the road.  Most can have weight added to them when the athlete becomes mature enough to handle them.  One last thing, this strength plan does not deal with plyometrics with is a whole issue unto itself.  This deals with the basic exercises necessary to develop strength, not simply power.

Here are two strength plans that should only take a few minutes but can help a young team become better athletes:

Workout A-  10-30 pushups, 10-30 prisoner squats, 10-30 lunges, 10-30 crunches, 30-60 seconds of planks on each side and the middle, and 30-60 seconds of Australian crawl

Workout B-  20-40 step ups, 5-20 tricep pushups, 30-60 seconds of bridging, 10-20 dips, 30-60 seconds of pedestal, and 30-60 seconds of scissor kicks.