Strength and Conditioning for Runners

Over the past few months, I’ve gone back to school. Big school. Big grown up school with squat racks and dumbbells, and terms such as scapula (shoulder blade) and hypertrophy (pronounced with a truh). With people who not only know how to progress and regress any exercise under the sun (impressive enough) but are heads of national sports’ programmes and elite athletes. Like I say, Big School.

Thanks to Sports Wales, I secured a subsidised place for the UKSCA accredited S&C Trainer programme, meaning that I officially know how to safely and consistently pick heavy things up and put them down again. But the co u rse wasn’t just for CPD or because I wanted to meet some cool people.

Being a runner without doing Strength and Conditioning (S&C) is like eating soup with a fork. It can be done, but it’s a lot less efficient and a lot more risky.

The human body is a complex system and running – while theoretically simple – requires the kinetic chain to move in perfect harmony. Each stride contains two phases; the stance phase, where the leg impacts the ground, and the swing phase, where the leg returns. Each phase is a sonnet of joints, muscles and neurological signals working together.

Over 10k, a runner might take 9,500 steps. If you average 30 miles a week, that’s 47,500 steps of impact and release that your body is absorbing. If there is any misalignment, any part letting the team down, that’s a lot of steps for pain to appear or to be running at less than full strength (literally and figuratively speaking).

Let’s take an example – shin splints, one of the most common injuries for runners. Let's say that like most runners, you realise that the pain isn’t your shins, it’s your tight calves. So you Google tight calves and start doing lots of stretches, but weirdly, the pain never gets better. That’s because your tight calves are caused by overworked hamstrings. Which are overworked because your glutes are taking the literal back seat and not working properly. Those weak glutes and grumpy hamstrings - likely caused by your desk job and bad posture - don't do their job in bringing the leg forward while running, causing you to overstride. That overstriding creates the impact on the wrong part of the lower leg, perpetuating tight calves and – wait for it – shin splints.

So your painful shins are a pain in the bum in more ways than one.

That’s why S&C is important. Those glutes not firing, those hamstrings feeling bedraggled, the calves so tight you could crack walnuts creates the system imbalance that more running will only compound not cure. The injury risk is obvious, but you also waste energy that could be used to propel you forward.

Every individual runner will have their own quirks, their strengths and their weaknesses. Sure, there are some standard moves that all runners would benefit from – squats, deadlifts and lunges will form the basis to most programmes. But a bespoke programme, which assesses where you are across all areas of strength, power, flexibility and mobility, and prescribe specific exercises to address weaknesses will provide the biggest return on your time investment. If you can work with a trainer to help you with form, programming and motivation, even better.

Finding the balance between running, life and S&C isn’t easy as ultimately, runners want to be running. But in order to keep doing just that – as well as we can – then S&C is as fundamental as hydration, nutrition and sleep. It's eating soup with a spoon.