Strength Training For Endurance Athletes

Weight training workouts provide big payoffs for endurance athletes

•  Gmail

Endurance athletes often spend the majority of their training time engaged in their particular sport. Runners run, cyclists cycle, swimmers swim. They’ll typically add some stretching or core work after  their main workout, and perhaps do a bit of cross-training in the off-season, but in general, they quickly become specialists in one sport. In fact, the principle of specificity is one of the fundamental tenants of a training routine that helps good athletes become great athletes.

Although spending time building endurance is the primary focus of endurance athletes, an ideal training program should also include a healthy dose of strength training. To maintain a high level of fitness, to avoid overuse injuries, and to keep up with the competition, endurance athletes need to add strength training to their routine.

Strength Training Reduces Injury Risk

​​Overuse Injuries

The most common injuries for endurance athletes include nagging chronic aches and pains that often end up as atendonitits due to excessive use of the same muscles in the same movement patterns for hours on end. To develop the smooth, fluid skills for running, swimming, skiing and cycling, certain movement patterns need to become so engrained in the body that they are automatic. Yet it is precisely this automatic movement patterns that can also lead to chronic issues, muscle imbalances, and soft tissue irritation and inflammation.

Sprains and Strains

Sprains and strains are another common type of injury for those who pound the pavement day after day. As with the overuse injuries, strains are more likely to occur as muscle patterns become so routine that the agonist and antagonist muscle groups no longer maintain a nice balance, but begin to get out of balance—one side becomes strong and tight and the opposing muscle group becomes weak and lax. This is often a set up for a pulled muscle or even an ankle sprain.

Reducing the risk of injury can occur with as little as 10-15 minutes of resistance exercise several days a week. Ideally, an endurance athlete will include 1-2 full weight training sessions per week, but even a few focused exercises each day can help improve muscle balance and reduce injuries. The main way resistance training does this is by building structural integrity of the bones, ligaments, tendons, and muscles. Choosing exercises that balance out the muscles and help maintaining overall body alignment goes a long way to avoiding long-term aches and pains.

Strength Training Increases Strength and Power

Another benefit of strength training is an increase in speed and power during endurance events.

When endurance athletes perform sport-specific strength training, they can build more muscle fibers as well as train the cardiovascular system to work more efficiently and even boost the lactate threshold.

The best way to get the most from strength training exercise is use heavy weights for fewer repetitions.  

Strength Exercises for Endurance Athletes
 

Compound Exercises

Compound exercises are great for all athletes because they combine movements in real-world patterns rather than isolating one or two muscle groups.  Compound exercises are those that include the basic movement patterns, such as bending down, pushing and pulling things, and picking things up. The exercises most commonly recommended include: deadlifts, squats, lunges, pull-ups, chin-ups, push ups, burpees, and weighted step-ups. These exercises target functional, real-world movements that we do everyday, and most likely use in sports.

Bodyweight Exercises

Bodyweight exercises generally provide an ideal workout that you can do anywhere. Most bodyweight moves are already compound in nature, so you get the benefits mentioned above. This type of routine can ensure you don’t skip your resistance training, and allows you to customize the time and intensity as you like. Try a basic bodyweight routine and build it up as you get more comfortable with the options.

The best bodyweight exercise that you can do anywhere include: wall sits, lunges, jump lunge, push ups, planks, side planks, v-sits, and lunges.

Glute Activation

Most people sit for many, many hours every day. Even if you have a daily exercise habit, odds are you are spending time sitting at work, at home or in the car. With extended periods of sitting, the glutes can become inactive and weak, while the hamstrings and hip flexors can be excessively tight and inflexible. A few basic glute activation exercises can correct some of these issues, and get your glutes firing properly before you launch into an endurance exercise routine.

Hip and Knee Exercises

Many knee injuries, aches and pains actually start with weak, poorly functioning hip. The abductors and adductors, in particular, are critical for providing integrity of the hip joint and proper functioning throughout the lower body. To do their job, they need to be exercised through an entire range of motion. Along with the quads and hamstrings, the hip flexors help keep the knee cap tracking properly and reduce the risk of developing knee pain, IT band pain or patellofemoral syndrome.

Strength training sessions for the endurance athlete don’t need to be extensive. Choose 5 exercises and do 8-10 reps of each for 2-3 sets. Use a fairly heavy resistance. You’ll know it’s too heavy if you can’t maintain proper form for all 8 reps. If you lift heavy, you only need to lift 1-2 times a week.

Strength Training Tips for Endurance Athletes
 

• Lift after your endurance training or on a non-training day. Because strength workouts are often high intensity efforts, you want to have enough energy to maintain good form and provide enough effort to make lifting effective. If you are fatigued, your strength workout will be marginally effective or possibly lead to injury
• If you haven’t been doing much (or any) strength training, start slowly and start with the basics until you build your foundation. Select as little as five minutes of strength exercises with about five exercises. Over a few weeks, increasing your intensity, or add more exercises to the routine that cover a variety of movement patterns.
• Bodyweight sessions can be low-to-moderate efforts that can be performed most days of the week after your endurance work. Add a cool down of core exercises: crunches, planks, and push ups as a go to routine any day of week.
• Use a foam roller regularly. While technically not a resistance exercise, using a foam roller regularly should be a part of any endurance athlete’s cool down routine.

The Bottom Line

Strength training is a good addition to almost every athlete’s training program, but endurance athletes have some very clear benefits of beginning a weight workout.

Exercises for Stronger Hips and Knees

Build hip and knee stability with a few basic exercises

Felix Hug/The Image Bank/Getty Images

By Elizabeth Quinn

Updated July 04, 2015

Do you do specific exercises for your hips and knees? Do you work your hip through the entire range of motion and engage theabductors and adductor muscles? If not, maybe you should.

The abductors and adductors are critical for providing integrity of the hip joint and create a strong, balanced link between the lower body and the torso. They also need to be exercised through an entire range of motion.

If you work these muscles only in one direction (forward and back) by walking, running or using common cardio machines then you are not building structural integrity of the hip, or the entire lower body.

These muscles, along with the quads and hamstrings, play an important role in allowing the patella (kneecap) to track properly as the knee joint bends. If the abductor and adductor muscles are not strong, flexible, and balanced, knee painsuch as patellofemoral syndrome, and injury is more likely.

Strong Muscles Support Joints

Strengthening and balancing the muscles that surround the knee can take the pressure off the joint and decrease the amount of total weight absorbed by the ligaments, meniscus and cartilage in the knee. Because the knee is a hinge joint and only moves in one direction, it's important to maintain both strength and stability.

The hip joint, on the other hand, is a ball and socket joint that works best when it has mobility as well as strength.

The hip is a much more complicated joint, and needs to be exercised in a variety of directions, including rotation, in order to increase overall stability. If the muscles that support the hip joint (quadriceps, hip flexors, glutes, hamstrings, and even thecore muscles) are strong and allow appropriate mobility, the amount of pressure and wear and tear on the hip joint, as well as the knee joint, decreases.

Proper Alignment Reduces Pain

The soft tissues of the body (muscles, tendons, ligaments, etc.) help maintain proper alignment of the bones during movement. If bones aren't properly aligned when they move through a range of motion, there can be a great deal of friction, a lack of stability, decreased mobility and compromised function. This can set an athlete up for a variety of injuries.

The best way to maintain biomechanicalintegrity during movement is with the proper balance of strength and flexibility around the joint. Muscles work in pairs (extensors and flexors) and maintaining the proper balance of strength in these muscle pairs can go a long way to prevent joint pain and injury.

Begin with a Functional Warm Up

Consider using the core workout as a warm up before strength training. This routine activates the core stabilizers as it warms up the larger muscles to prepare for more powerful strength training exercises. Also see:

• Glute Activation Routine
• Why Warm Up?

Exercises for Strong Hips and Knees

This list offers some great exercises that athletes from all sports can incorporate into their training routines to help keep the hips and knees properly aligned, strong, flexible and able to withstand the rigors of sports.

Beginner Exercises

1. Clam Exercise
   A basic glute medius strengthening move.
2. Bridge Exercise
   A hamstring and glute strengthener.
3. Plank Exercise
   This basic strengthening exercise can improve overall core biomechanics.

Intermediate Exercises

1. Side Plank
   This basic hip abductor strengthening exercise can improve alignment.
2. Lateral Mini Band Walking
   This simple exercise can improve thestrength of the glute medius, which helps pelvis and knee stability.
3. Single Leg Bridge
   A bit more advanced way to build stability.
4. Lunge with a Twist
   Adding a twist to the lunge improves core stability.
5. Weighted Step Ups
   This simple and effective exercise improves strength and power without excessive stress on the knees or hips.
6. Squat
   The basic full squat is the overall best lower body strengthening exercise. Just be sure to do it correctly.

Advanced Exercises

1. Walking Lunge
   Walking lunges, with or without weights, can improve strength and balance.
2. Lateral Plyometric Jumps
   Side-to-side moves to improve hip mobility and strength.
3. Weighted Adductor | Weighted AbductorExercises
   Deceptively difficult exercises for athletes.
4. One-Leg Squat and Reach
   This exercise builds strength and stability in both the lower body and core.
5. Overhead Lunge
   Increase the difficulty of the lunge and add core stability by holding weight overhead.
6. Plyometrics
   Plyometrics build explosive strength and help reduce the rick of knee ligament injuries when performed correctly.

Real Life Exercises for Hips and Knees

When it comes to preventing injury, usingcompound or "functional" exercises that use a variety of muscles and simulate real life movements are generally considered the ideal way for athletes to train. Such movements include exercises like squats, lunges and lateral movements. Exercises that isolate a specific muscle (such as a leg extension or biceps curl) do have a place in athletic training, but are often reserved to help isolate and rehab a muscle after an injury or to recover after a surgery. (Read More: Compound vs. Isolation Exercises)

Basic Knee and Hip Exercises

If you are starting from zero or getting over an injury, you can begin to build strength and stability in the hip and knee joints by going back to basics and using these simple exercise routines.

• Basic Knee Exercises
• Basic Hip Exercises

The 6 Best Butt Exercises for Athletes

Strengthen your glutes and add power to your sports performance

The butt muscles, specifically the gluteus maximus, medius and minimus, are some of the most important muscles for generating speed and power during many athletic movements. The gluteus maximus is the largest muscle in the body as well as one of the most powerful, and it plays a major role in running and jumping. For an athlete, a strong backside is essential for preventing injuries, maximizing acceleration and power, and improving overall sports performance.

Many people today, including both athletes and non-athletes, have poorly functioning glutes due to the excessive amount of time we all spend sitting. Extended periods of time spent in a seated position can harm your health in a variety of ways, including weakened, inactive glutes, tight hamstrings and tight hip flexors. During exercise, poorly functioning glutes can cause the hamstrings and the lower back muscles to become overused and more prone to injury. To avoid such pitfalls, it's helpful to actively engage and strengthen the butt muscles so they can do what they're meant to do.

Athletes in almost every sport can benefit from actively engaging and strengthening the glutes. But before diving into glute strengthening exercises, it's helpful to do a few glute activation exercises to essentially "wake up the glutes" and get your backside firing properly. Once activated, the glutes can more easily respond to a variety of targeted strengthening exercises, including the following.

Best Butt Exercises For Athletes

1

 Walking Lunges

 Dumbbell Walking Lunge. photo (C) Assembly / Getty Images

The walking lunge is another great glute strengthener that can be done with or without added weight. Once you have practiced the basic movement pattern, performing the walking lunge while holding holding dumbbells not only builds glute strength, but it also engages the quads, hamstrings, and core stabilizers while it improves hip flexibility.

Read more about how to do the Walking Lunge safely. More »

2

 Weighted Step Ups

 Weighted step up. image courtesy of Procegrabber

The weighted step up is a straight-forward exercise for targeting the glutes while minimizing the stress on the knee joint. By starting with a lower bench and little to no weight, you can slowly build up glute strength and power. By working each leg individually, you can avoid favoring one side as might happen during the full squat movement. As the step up becomes easier and you have more control of the movement, simply add height to the step and add weight.

You can use dumbbells, a barbell, or a weighted vest to increase the resistance of this exercise. The key to a good step up is to maintain control, and keep your knee tracking forward rather than caving inward.

Read more about the benefits and modifications to the Weight Step Up Exercise More »

3

 Single Leg Bridge Exercise

 Single Leg Bridge Exercise. Photo (c) Hamish Blair / Getty Images

Another excellent butt exercise that isolates each side while providing glute activation is the single leg bridge. If you are just getting started, you may want to use the standard bridge exercise until you build enough strength and stability to do a single leg bridge without compromising your form. You can tell if you aren't quite ready for the single leg bridge if you see your hips sinking to one side during the movement.

Read more about how to do the Single Leg Bridge Exercise safely. More »

4

 Hip Extension on Exercise Ball

 Hip Extension on Exercise Ball. (c) Carol Schiff/Getty Images

Doing a hip extension on exercise ball is deceptively challenging. It looks simple and straight-forward, but the stability required to master this move take a bit of practice. Performed properly, it targets glutes, hips and hamstrings while engaging a variety of smaller stabilizers through the hips, back and core. To decrease the difficulty when you first begin, roll forward farther to support more of the hips and pelvis. As you improve, you can increase the difficulty by rolling back a bit to increase the leg extension.

5

 Full Squats

 Barbell Squat Exercise. (c) Cameron Spencer/Getty Image

The full squat is the king of all power exercises. You can begin with no weight or a very small amount of weight in order to learn the correct movement patterns. Over time you can slowly add more resistance to the movement. The squat not only builds powerful glutes, but done properly it will improve hip and ankle mobility, often lacking in athletes.

Read more about how to safely do the Full Squat. More »

6

 Single Leg Squats

 One Leg Squat and Reach. Photo � E Quinn

Practicing a single leg squat, with or without the additional reach, is a good way to activate the glutes as you improve yourbalance and proprioception. By focusing on a smooth, controlled and steady motion throughout the movement, you will engage a variety of muscles from head to toe, while also increasing ankle strength and flexibility.

Watford's Odion Ighalo wants to play against Aston Villa as a tribute to his late father

Watford's Odion Ighalo wants to play against Aston Villa as a tribute to his late father

Watford coach Quique Flores has revealed that Nigeria international Odion Ighalo has asked to play for Watford in this weekend's fixture against Aston Villa as a mark of respect/tribute to his late dad.
Ighalo's father, Paul Ighalo died in his sleep on Monday but Ighalo didn't fly back to Nigeria despite the club offering to give him compassionate leave.

‘I asked Ighalo what the mood is for this week,’ He wanted to stay here training and at the end of the season he wants to go to Lagos to see his family'.said Flores to pressmen during the club's pre-match press conference

‘His father passed away. He is sad but focused on the game.

‘I said do you want to train and do you want to be here? He said “yes I want to be here and I want to train. At the end of the season I want to go to Lagos but now I want to be here. He wants to dedicate the match for his father.’

Flores paid tribute to his 26 year old 16-goal top scorer saying he doesn't need extra motivation.

‘This is the kind of player who doesn’t need extra motivation,’ he said. ‘He is an amazing player, scoring goals for us at the start of the season

3 Benefit of green tea

zhaolinghe/Moment/Getty Image

Considered by many to be one of nature's healthiest beverages, green tea is rich inantioxidants that could help fight off heart disease and cancer. Made from unfermented leaves of the Camellia sinensis plant, green tea is also lower in caffeine than other caffeinated beverages (offering about 8 to 30 mg per cup, compared to 100 to 350 mg per cup of coffee) and contains the amino acid L-theanine (shown to induce relaxation and relieve stress in preliminary research).

A number of studies are exploring the benefits beyond green tea's heart-healthy, anti-cancer, stress-reducing effects. Here's a look at some of the most promising findings so far.

1) Healthy Teeth and Gums

In a 2009 study, scientists sized up the periodontal health of 940 men and found that those who drank green tea on a regular basis had healthier gums than participants who skimped on the drink. For every cup of green tea sipped daily, in fact, there was a significant decrease in several indicators of periodontal disease (such as bleeding upon probing of the gum tissue).

Past research also indicates that drinking green tea may help avoid tooth erosion.

See Natural Remedies For Gum Disease.

2) Stroke Prevention

Another 2009 study suggests that drinking green tea each day can significantly slash your risk of stroke (the third leading cause of death in the United States). In reviewing nine studies on a total of nearly 195,000 people, researchers found that three daily cups of tea reduced stroke risk by 21%.

What's more, consuming three more cups a day appeared to decrease stroke risk by an additional 21%.

More: Natural Approach to Stroke Prevention and Acupuncture For Stroke.

3) Better Brain Power

Drinking green tea could preserve your brain power as you age, according to a 2006 study. The study's authors looked at tea consumption2009.

Disclaimer: The information contained on this site is intended for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for advice, diagnosis or treatment by a licensed physician. It is not meant to cover all possible precautions, drug interactions, circumstances or adverse effects. You should seek prompt medical care for any health issues and consult your doctor before using alternative medicine or making a change to your regimen.