Photo: iStock.com/Bojan89

Until a few years ago, strength training in endurance sports was a voluntary extra session. That has changed. It is increasingly recognized as an indispensable element to be more efficient on the go.

For a long time, only the hours and kilometers covered counted in running and cycling. Only a few athletes or their coaches, who were more forward-thinking, engaged in strength training. In recent years, numerous studies have clearly demonstrated that strength training or plyometric exercises reduce energy consumption at the same pace. It is also well documented that strength training reliably increases maximum strength itself, which benefits you on the final climb or in the sprint to the finish. Thus, at least for the ambitious, there is no longer any way around strength training.

But there are also many health reasons for strength training, from blood sugar regulation to fall prevention. From this perspective, two aspects are most important, which can be positively influenced by strength training:

• 1.

  The health span, i.e., the period of life that a person spends in good health and in which they can still climb stairs, get up from a chair, and open bottles even in old age.

• 2.

  Life expectancy, i.e., the actual time between a person's birth and death.

Especially for endurance athletes, there is a third point, namely injury prevention. However, the research on this is less clear than often claimed: Across all studies, no universal protective effect can be demonstrated. The key is implementation: If the training is carried out consistently and under guidance, such as with a coach or physiotherapist, a significantly reduced risk of injury is evident. This is probably because training is much more consistent and regular than in unsupervised programs.

The Most Important Questions and Answers

There are countless ways to build muscle, and some are indeed more effective than others – but the differences are smaller than one might think.

• How much weight? For those who are not weightlifters or bodybuilders, the specific weight hardly matters. Muscle mass and strength can be built with both heavy weights that can only be moved six times and lighter ones that allow 30 repetitions. The key is to train to a similar level of fatigue – usually a few repetitions before muscle failure. Then all muscle fibers are engaged, regardless of the weight. This allows for a lot of flexibility: machines, free weights, body weight – whatever is available works.

• How many repetitions? Training to muscle failure is effective but also risky: The risk of injury increases, and recovery until the next session may be too short. Several recent studies show that it is sufficient to bring each set to a few repetitions before muscle failure – this is at least as effective, sometimes even more so.

• How often per week? Even a single set per week with 6 to 15 repetitions per exercise can already bring measurable progress, according to a recent review. However, the sweet spot, according to the new position of the American College of Sports Medicine, is training twice a week with two to three sets per exercise – much less than many assume, and far from the two hours daily that some ambitious teenagers spend in the weight room.

The Most Important Thing: Just Start

Endurance athletes face the great challenge of finding the right time to incorporate strength training. There is much discussion about the so-called interference effect, i.e., the idea that endurance training blocks some of the strength gains that would otherwise be derived from strength training – and vice versa to a lesser extent. There is probably some truth to this, especially if both sessions follow each other directly. To mitigate this effect, energy stores should be replenished as consistently as possible between sessions, as the interference effect may partly be related to an energy deficit in the body.

Nevertheless, many first complete endurance training and then directly train strength. This is not optimal but practical. And this compromise – strength training following an endurance session, even if the quality suffers as a result – brings the central message to the point: It is always better to do something than nothing at all. You can endlessly tweak weight, repetitions, and frequency. However, most benefits can also be achieved without fine-tuning. Therefore, it is most important to start strength training now – you can take care of the details later.