Unlocking The Mysteries Of Strength Training For Endurance Athletes.

In this episode of the Ben Greenfield.

Fitness Podcast, we're increasing the horsepower of the engine without adding any more weight. So it makes for better efficiency. Lower relative power output, even though it's the same power output, but it's a lower relative of your max. With each stroke or stride, whatever your.

Event is, you're storing elastic energy similar to the way you would as a spring. When that elastic energy is released, it results in some type of force output. So greater stiffness just means that that rubber band or that spring now has greater elastic capabilities. Able to spend more time in the eccentric phase, you're going to be able to have more time to perfuse those muscles with blood.

They have a better base. Then you can begin to add in high velocity training later on as you get closer and you're approaching different events that you're doing.

Welcome to the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast. We provide you with everything you need to know for total performance, fat loss, recovery, digestion, sleep, brain and hormone optimization. So whether you're an ironman triathlete or you just want to shed a few pounds, get ready for non run of the mill cutting edge content from BenGreenfield Fitness.com.

Hey folks, it's Ben Greenfield here and I would say that a quick discussion at the starting line of, say, a triathlon or any other kind of endurance race, a review of any online forum that's devoted to endurance sports, or pretty much any article in any running or cycling or triathlon magazine, seems to kind of expose you to the same standard strength training advice over and over again. And you hear stuff like, you know, sports specificity dictates that endurance athletes shouldn't be lifting heavy stuff, or that you should do high reps low resistance if you're an endurance athlete and if you're a strength athlete, you should do low rep high resistance or you'll hear that strength training will make an endurance athlete bulky. And there's no evidence that strength training makes you faster. Or another one of my favorites is show me one professional endurance athlete who lifts heavy weights and still wins races. So you hear about this stuff all the time, along with a host of other comments. So recently I was reading one of the magazines that I subscribe to called the Strength Conditioning Journal and it's a little bit more of it's not necessarily like a peer reviewed research journal, but it's a collection of really, really well curated articles in the strength conditioning fields put out by the National Strength Conditioning association. And the article is called Strength Training for Endurance Theory to Practice. And it was really one of the better treatises of this entire topic that I've read in a very long time. So I figured why not get a couple of the guys involved with that article to come on the podcast and share with us what the truth really is about strength training and endurance, how you should do it, if you should do it, what's the mechanism to where it could actually help if it does, and so on. So my guests today are both from Tennessee, or at least in Tennessee. Caleb Baziler. And I have no clue if I'm pronouncing your name right, Caleb, but that's Basler. Baszler. There we go. And Jacob Gooden. So Caleb is completing his PhD at East Tennessee State University with the Department of Exercise and Sports Science. And Jacob designs and implements programs for middle and long distance runners. He was also involved with this article and he's finishing his master's degree at the same place at East Tennessee State University. So, guys, thanks for coming on.

We also have one other author that we'd like to mention. He's on the. He's going to be here with interview as well. Chris Tabor.

Oh, nice.

You want to introduce yourself?

Yeah, I'm the weightlifting coach here at ETSU for our Olympic training site.

Okay, cool. Wow, this is going to get. This is going to get super messy. We got three guys. Be fun stuff. All right, cool. We'll try and keep everybody's voices straight, but we've got Caleb, we got Jacob, and we got Chris. I guess as I fire away questions at you guys, you can tag team it and decide who's going to respond to what. But I guess I'm interested in starting here if one of you guys wants to speak to this. And my question is, historically, why has there been conflict among coaches about the role of strength training for endurance athletes? Why is this such a controversial topic?

This is Jacob here. Well, I guess I'll start off answering this. I have a background competing in the middle distances in college and high school, and something that the authors of the study mentioned and that you mentioned earlier in your introduction, is that people tend to think that weight training always adds bulk, it adds muscle. You know, they say that, oh, if you're an endurance athlete, why do you need strength? You need to be able to endure, not be strong for a short time. The bulk is going to slow you down. We don't, you know, they see bodybuilders and they say, oh, we don't want to look like a bodybuilder. They lift weights. We shouldn't lift weights. Football players lift weights, we shouldn't lift weights. You know, it makes the athletes sore because it's a stimulus that they haven't experienced before and coaches are afraid that it's going to interfere with their endurance training.

Yeah, Ben, this is Caleb. Some of the things that coaches may be concerned with, definitely, obviously having their athletes look like bodybuilders is not going to be ideal for nurse performance, but something that their concerns is not having their resistance training transfer to their particular sport. So, for example, and it's a valid concern having endurance athletes perform a lot of upper body dominant training, such as bicep curls, tricep extensions, if you have a runner perform those exercises, for example, as far as the degree of benefit that's going to have to their performance is very low. And so adding extra muscle mass and you could say those non specific muscle groups is definitely not beneficial. However, there's more research now that we see over the past few decades stating that strength training and even increasing cross sectional area or size of the muscle fibers in the legs is beneficial for certain types of endurance athletes. And so hopefully we'll be able to get into some of that here.

Yeah, I definitely want to delve into that. But I think like you guys say in the article, historically we see resistance training and endurance training as these two completely different training modalities with completely different training adaptations when it's looking like research may suggest that that's not the case, that they might be complementary in a way. So that kind of leads me into, I guess the main question here. What is the mechanism like, what is actually going on when you strength train, when you strength train properly, that is what's going on that could theoretically lead to enhanced endurance performance.

There are several adaptations that could occur. And with an increased cross sectional area, you can produce the same amount of force with greater ease. So the percentage of your max that you're working at is going to be a lower percentage after resistance training. So if you make the muscle a little bit bigger, you become stronger, you're going to be able to produce the same amount of force easier. It's less taxing on the body. And as the rate of force that you produce increases, this decreases the amount of time your foot stays in contact with the ground. So your ground contact time can improve, which over the course of a race is going to help your times decrease and make you better. And then finally, one other mechanism could be increased tissue stiffness. So you have a stiff spring or the Achilles tendon becomes stronger and becomes more stiff and that allows you to transfer the forces greater into the ground as you're running.

And the cool thing, Ben, is that this doesn't. These adaptations, both the neural and muscular adaptations, don't necessarily have to be accompanied by increases in cross sectional area or muscle size. A lot of these are especially the neural adaptations, you know, like recruitment of type 2 fibers or synchronization of, of the motor units and the musculotendous stiffness. Those things can happen without adding any mass. And so basically, like Chris just said, we're kind of like we're increasing the horsepower of the engine without adding any more weight. So it makes for better efficiency, lower relative power output, even though it's the same, like it's the same power output, but it's a lower relative of your max with each stroke or stride, whatever you, your event is.

Now, there were two things that you said there. And this is Jacob, right?

Yes.

Yeah. There are two things you said there that I want to touch. The first is you use the term neural adaptations. Can you explain what you mean by that?

Yeah. So there's in resistance training, and I think with most training, there's two kind of general different types of adaptation that increase your performance. There's neural adaptations and muscular adaptations. And the neural adaptations have to do with like the rate of, I guess the rate of motor unit firing, the types of motor units that you're recruiting. And when I say motor unit, I mean, you know, type one versus type two fibers. Let's see what else, Caleb.

So increase in motor unit synchronization. So all the fires firing, all the fibers firing simultaneously. So rate coding or the frequency, like Jacob talked about how quickly those impulses are propagated down the nerve axon and how quickly those they're getting to those muscle fibers and causing those fibers to contract. You also have an increase in the number recruitment of motor units. So the total number of fibers and motor units that you're recruiting. So this is important because, you know, with heavy resistance training, for example, we're going to tap into some of those higher threshold, those larger motor units that are innervating those type 2 fibers. And so we're going to cause those to increase in strength. And that's going to be, you know, played a very crucial role as far as the total amount of force that we're able to generate. If we're able to increase our maximum force, as we talked about already, that means that we can produce the same amount of force with greater ease. So the relative effort or the relative intensity that we're working on is now lower for, say, if we're running at 6 miles per hour. Now, we can run at 6 miles per hour, produce that same amount of force, and it's a relative lower part of our maximum force or lower. Does that make sense? Percentage of our maximum force?

So what you're saying then is, let's say that I were to squat, say I were doing a squat set, you know, somewhere in the range of 200-250lbs, and I were to use that as training to run. What you're saying is that even though I'm using far more weight when I'm squatting than my muscles are subjected to when I'm running, that there is that. That basically I'm training my muscles when I'm doing those heavier squats to be able to be more efficient or more economical under the weight of a lighter load, such as running.

Yes, that's exactly correct. And actually that's been measured before. Typically, what they'll do is they'll have athletes hooked up to a metabolic cart and they can look at caloric expenditure and oxygen uptake during a given task. So they may have them run at a given absolute intensity, say at six miles. They'll test them before the resistance training period and after, and then they can look at the total amount of oxygen consumed, the calories expended, and they'll notice that with resistance training at least, this has been observed multiple times in runners and a few times as cyclists, although there's some evidence to the contrary that the actual amount of oxygen they consume for that given absolute, relative absolute exercise intensity is now lower after the resistance training program. And that has to do with, again, their efficiency, like you talked about. So that's not just a result of the neural adaptations that we see. That's also a result of changes in, again, stiffness of the muscular tennis unit, also the contractile adaptation. So actual changes in the muscle fibers themselves, not just the neural adaptations, but the neural adaptations are a big component of it because that's typically what we see during the first eight to 10 weeks of strength training with these endurance athletes, who are novices, they may have never lifted before. A lot of the changes they get in strength are occurring with those in those first eight to 10 weeks. And it's primarily the neural adaptations as we talked about. So firing, synchronization rate coding and the total number of motor units recruited.

Gotcha. Okay. Now, another thing that Jacob mentioned, and this was the second thing I wanted to ask him about, was type 2 muscle fibers. And, you know, that's generally thought of as more of like the fast twitch muscle fiber that you'd get from strength training. But you know, just to use an example, like, you know, back when I was not doing things like ironmans and marathons and stuff like that, I could dunk a basketball and that wasn't much of a chore for me. And as I got better and better at endurance sports, my vertical decreased and I was definitely experiencing a greater percentage of These slower type 1 fibers with a greater time to exhaustion, but less explosive capability. Now, if you're weight training and you're an endurance athlete and you're building or maximizing say, type 2 muscle fiber, does that fly in the face of what you're trying to achieve from an endurance standpoint?

You know, I think, Ben, it depends on the duration of your event and the type of endurance athlete that you are with. As you know, being an ironman yourself, endurance athletes put in a ton of volume of training. Like their volume of training is huge. And as far as fiber type conversion, that's actually an adaptation that is somewhat hard to achieve to get the actual fiber type to convert from type one to type two. And perhaps the muscle fibers don't actually fully convert, but maybe a type 1 fiber becomes like a type 2 fiber, if that makes sense physiologically, just with the type of enzymes that it has and its kind of metabolic properties. Or a type 2 fiber with all the endurance training can develop more and larger mitochondria and become a little bit more like a type 1 fiber. I think with, and I can't really cite anything any research on this that I'm aware of, but I think with endurance athletes, practically with the amount of volume of resistance training that they should do to maximize their performance, it's so low in comparison to their endurance training that I don't think it would have a huge effect on whether or not they have that fiber conversion, if that makes sense. Yeah, you know, I think being able to synchronize the recruitment of all of those fibers that they have is good. And being able to activate and use those type 2 muscle fibers that they have already, they have a few of them, even though, you know, even the ultramarathoners, they have some of them in there, being able to access those is good and crucial because they want to be able to. But I don't, I don't really think that you're going to see a ton of conversion from type 21 to type 2 maybe in an 800 meter runner, and that could be beneficial. But for you long Endurance guys, I don't think that's really going to be a huge issue with the type of volumes that we prescribe.

Okay, gotcha. I definitely want to get into a little bit more about the actual type of strength training in terms of sets and reps and things like that that endurance athletes should be using. But there was one other thing that you touched on, Caleb, and that was stiffness of the tendons. Generally, a lot of people think of stiffness as being a bad thing. Can you explain why you would actually want a muscle to be more stiff?

Sure, absolutely. With resistance training, like we talked about earlier, you have increase in stiffness of the musculotendous unit. And when we refer to the musculotendinous unit, in particular, when we're talking about the series and parallel elastic components of the fibers, this would be the connective tissue that allows us to transfer forces from the contractile elements through the tendon into the bone to allow movement to occur. So when we're talking about stiffness, you can think of something like a rubber band or a spring. So it doesn't mean that the person is more tight or they have less flexibility or less flexibility. I'm sorry, it means that we're better able to use those series and parallelastic components. So it's like a spring. For example, when we compress a spring, we're storing elastic energy. When you stretch, say a muscle, for example, you stretch the contractile or the, sorry, the series of parallel elastic components, you're storing elastic energy similar to the way you would as a spring. When that elastic energy is released, it results in some type of force output. So greater stiffness just means that that rubber band or that spring now has greater elastic capabilities. So now it's able to recoil with greater force. So in stretch shortening cycle activities such as running, for example, an enhanced stretch shortening cycle or improvement in our ability to use that elastic stored elastic energy is going to result in a greater force output. And so resistance TR enhances that. It enhances our ability to use that elastic energy stored in those elastic components of the musculotendinous unit and then transfer it or release it as a, you know, resulting in a greater force output.

When, when a muscle is more stiff like that, does it have an increased risk of getting injured?

I, you know, I think it depends. There's a difference between active and passive flexibility. I think a good. I read something on Steve Magnus website about, he talks about it. He advocates never stretching for runners. I don't know if you should never Stretch, but I think it has its place. But he was hitting on something that if you have full range of motion while you are competing or doing the activity, doing the sport that you're competing in, then I think you're fine. I think the stiffness refers to. It's a specific type of stiffness. Like it's a stiffness that you're controlling. For instance, in a runner, when your foot strikes the ground, you're generating stiffness. Your muscle is not necessarily passively stiff. You know, you see sprinters and when they're warming up and they're jumping around and the starting blocks, they look oftentimes really supple. They're flexible, you know, but they generate extreme amounts of stiffness in their legs every time foot hits the ground. Like, think of the forces that are going up from the ground through their body to propel them so fast. But at the same time, they're some of the more flexible running athletes. Distance runners tend to be maybe too stiff because we spend so much time in this small range of motion on our distance runs.

Yeah, that's why I think it's an important distinction between mechanical stiffness, like we're talking about here, and then also stiffnesses for a lack of range of motion. If anything, you can support, there's support for the idea that you can actually improve your range of motion with resistance training. Because a lot of endurance athletes, if they're not used to performing exercise through those large range of motion, performing squats, for example, may improve their dorsiflexion ability, which is gonna be beneficial for them. So the stiffness is their ability to use that range of motion actually improves and their range of motion itself may actually increase. And so the amount of force that produce in this newly acquired range of motion will increase as well.

Yeah, that makes perfect sense what you just said too, about how stiffness, stiffness can be springiness in a muscle or, you know, the ability of a muscle to store and release energy more efficiently, or stiffness could be just crappy range of motion kind of depends on the definition of stiffness.

Exactly. Yeah. And what we're referring to here is of course the former, the latter, like we talked about, you can increase your range of motion with strength training and increase strength in that range of motion as an endurance athlete, which are both going to benefit you.

So you guys cite a lot of studies in this article, and I'm curious how many of the studies have looked at these shorter athletes like you. Jacob, I believe, mentioned like an 800 meter runner versus the longer distance athletes, right? Like marathoners and Ironman triathletes. I mean, when we look at the data, I always talk about this when I'm talking about like say supplements, for example, somebody says, you know, whatever, creatine is good. But then when you look at the actual grams of creatine that are in the research studies versus the grams of creatine, you'll find a lot of supplements that you buy. It's way different. There's a big disconnect. Similarly with the studies and the research that you guys cite. I mean, is a lot of this strength training enhances endurance performance type of research being done and classifying endurance as like 400 meters and 800 meters of running? Or is it looking at what a lot of folks who, for example, are listening to this podcast are doing, like the 100 mile bike rides and Ironman triathlons and marathons and things like that?

Honestly, if you look at Ben, if you look at the majority of the studies, the majority of them are on longer distance endurance athletes. So most of the time they're testing 10k runners, 5k runners. I wouldn't say a lot of the studies are done on marathon athletes. However, I would say the majority of them are above middle distance as far as the research that they've been doing on these athletes. So it's usually 5k 10k runners, for example, or some cyclists. There'll also be longer durations as well. There's been some of the studies actually include a mix. Unfortunately, we don't usually see them result individual or differences between middle and long distance runners. As far as the adaptations to the resistance training program, typically they'll just report the mean result and whether or not it was statistically significant with some effect size statistics. So typically they're not looking at differences between middle and long distance runners as far as the effectiveness of resistance training program. I should say, however, that there are, there are a few studies that look at shorter distances, like you said, 800 meters. And that's what we refer to as high intensity, you know, maybe high intensity exercise endurance.

Right?

Yes. So, and they do even in these longer, say distance runners. So for example, Pavilion back in the 90s, he looked at a 20 meter sprint was one of the tests that he used for those athletes. And he found that, you know, the group that did the combination of resistance and endurance training improved to a greater extent on their 20 meter sprint than the group who just did endurance training alone. So even though these studies are, like I said, mostly on longer distance athletes, endurance athletes, they still Test shorter distances for some of their experimental measures.

Gotcha. Makes sense. Okay, so in the article you talk about how there's really two primary forms of strength training that has been looked at in the literature. Something you call high force low velocity, or hflv, and low force high velocity lfhv. What's the difference between those two?

The main difference between the two is that high force low velocity is what you would generally think of when you think of resistance training. So this is back squats, maybe types of deadlifts that are going to be lower on the velocity scale because they're inherently heavier. Then the low force high velocity training deals more with power movements. So these are movements like pulling derivatives of the Olympic lifts, possibly throwing some Olympic lifts in that are inherently lifted faster. So the weight is not as high, but you are attempting to move the weight as quickly as possible.

Okay, gotcha. So when we look at the former, the kind of like the more traditional, less, I guess, powerful and explosive type of lifting, this high force, low velocity lifting, what's the effects of high force low velocity on endurance training for beginners?

When you have someone just beginning to begin resistance training, high force low velocity training is actually going to have greater benefits over a wide variety of loads compared with low force high velocity training. So it would be good to begin with that standard type of resistance training and then later on, when they become proficient in those type of lifts, begin to move on to more of the power training. Because just getting them stronger first is gonna have greater benefits than if you try and do power training right away.

And also, Ben, if you look at some of the studies by Ronnestad, a lot of his papers, he uses this form of resistance training the majority of the time. You look at the RM loads. So he'll use repetition maximum loads. They range anywhere usually from 4 to 6 RM or 4 to 8 RM. So usually they're lifting heavier weights higher than what a typical endurance athlete may do, like circuit training, for example, they're lifting much heavier loads. And in his stud, he's repeatedly shown improvements in cycling time to exhaustion, for example, on maximum power output and also mean so maximum power output during a Wingate test, for example, and also mean power output during a cycling time trial, whether it could be a cycling test or exhaustion, or you know, actually a time trial where he has them cover a given distance as much time as fast as they can. He also has looked at peak torque when it occurs during the pedal stroke. He's noted that resistance training, this type of resistance training, results in reaching peak torque sooner. So that means that you're able to generate a given amount of force earlier on in that pedal stroke, which of course is going to be beneficial because actually one of the other mechanisms that we didn't get to talk about as much, and that's been hypothesized by Ronstadt and Mujica, is that usually if you're able to produce the same amount of force, if you able to produce the same amount of force sooner, then you're going to actually spend less time in that concentric phase or that shortened phase of that muscle. And so that actually, if you're spending less time in that concentric phase, that allows you to spend more time in the eccentric phase. During the concentric phase, when the muscles are shortened, you have occlusion of vessels and so usually blood is trapped and it's harder for it to get back to the veins, through the veins, to the heart. And so we're in the eccentric phase. They're hypothesizing that if you're able to spend more time in the eccentric phase, you're going to be able to have more time to perfuse those muscles with blood or to get more blood into those muscles. So that's another mechanism. So earlier peak torque that he's reported in cyclists is a really beneficial adaptation. And so heavy strength training results as an increase in. What we call here is, is rate of force development is that term that we use for being able to produce force faster. So increases in rate of force development occur with high velocity or high force, low velocity strength training. And the point that Chris was making is very important in that we get these improvements in rate of force development across a large spectrum of loads. When we do heavy strength training, when you do light strength training, you get improvements in rate of force development, but primarily only in, only at that lower load, higher velocity end. Whereas with heavy strain training, we get improvements all along that force velocity continuum. So performing heavy strain training is again very beneficial. Ronstadt has had a lot of studies that have shown that. Another important thing that he mentions from these high force, low velocity strength training studies is that the improvement in. So usually at the end of a race, he actually tests some cyclists. He had him perform 185 minute time trial. Well, cycle to exhaustion, actually. No, sorry, it was a time trial, 185 minutes. At the end of those 185 minutes, for the last five minutes, he looked at mean power and peak power produced during that five minute interval. So after they had already written for 180 minutes. He looked at those last five minutes and he found that the group that no surprising that did the heavy resistance training had greater, you know, expressed greater mean powers and peak powers during that five, the final five minutes. So it seems that, you know, as far as the benefits, you know, this heavier strength training, they may actually come out at or be maybe most noticeable during those that last part of the race where we have to finish strong and, you know, end with a sprint, we may see more a lot of benefit at that point in the race or we have to pass somebody.

Why do you think that is? Why do you think you'd have a better reserve or whatever from this high force, low velocity strength training towards the end of a long endurance event?

I think it comes down to maybe a couple of factors. I think the neural components that we talked about a lot earlier, being able to actually tap into those type 2 fibers that you do have, being able to now synchronously recruit a lot of motor units at once to increase your power output and increase your velocity, hopefully in that last little spurt. But also I think it has something to do with the metabolic components of possibly being able to handle higher lactate volumes in the muscle. Again, going back to Magnus, he talks a lot about on his blog, how to develop a kick in a runner. He talks about increasing the lactate tolerance because at the end of the race, say in a 5K, the whole field is usually going to be there, or at least a lot of the field, and able to kick, especially in a championship type race. And so who's going to be able to sprint the fastest? Well, the two biggest factors I think are your ability to now recruit those type 2 fibers synchronously and then your ability to keep recruiting them as they generate lactic acid and be able to run under that, under the press that that creates. And you know, strength training, even if we're doing the lower, lower repetitions, you know, even sets of three, that's still going to enhance the, you know, that like kind of glycolytic or that creatine phosphate ability of these muscles. And also the lactate tolerance.

Okay, got it. That's interesting. I even remember, I know it sounds like a long time ago, but like a decade ago when I was in XPHYS in college, how we were looking at studies that were showing that creatine, which we've traditionally thought of as being something we'd only use for 10 to 30 seconds of maximum explosive activity, was something that was actually playing a role in glycolysis during longer Endurance events. So it makes sense if you could store away not just more glycogen, but also more creatine from doing something like training your body via strength training, that it could definitely help you with that, that final kick, so to speak, towards the end of. Well, in this case, what sounds like a really pleasant test, 180 minutes of cycling followed by a power performance. So it sounds like this high force low velocity training has definitely been shown to be good for beginners. But does that mean that doing more explosive, lower force, high velocity strength training would be something beneficial for people who have already been doing traditional strength training and maybe not seeing more benefits from that? Or where does this low force high velocity fit in?

I think it's important to determine where that athlete is in their training. With resistance training, if they're more well versed and they've built up a somewhat of a base through standard resistance training, you can begin to add in those higher velocities into the training and gain additional benefits. Because research has shown that stronger athletes have a better ability to gain higher power outputs through training. So if they have a better base, then you can begin to add in high velocity training later on as you get closer and you're approaching different events that you're doing. So you want to set the base first and then exploit, cause those changes with the higher velocity training later on.

Gotcha. And so with the high velocity training, in terms of how often that should be included in a program, is this something you combine with the high force low velocity? The low force high velocity. Are we talking about choosing a specific time of the year and only doing high force low velocity during one time of the year and only doing low force high velocity during another time of the year in terms of programming these type of things in?

Yes. When you're beginning to design a training program, you're going to want to use the heavy strength training that's going to cause a lot of soreness early on in the competitive season before they begin reaching their really high levels of aerobic conditioning. Because it's going to be really hard to cause those strength training adaptations during those high volumes of conditioning. And you may want to switch towards more of the high velocity training in season and as you approach an event so that you can take advantage of those high power outputs closer to the competition day.

Yeah, it's somewhat similar. I know probably a lot of the endurance athletes who are listening are similar. You know, building an aerobic base, you know, whether it's in the summer before cross country or in the winter or whatever it is, it's somewhat the same. You want to build a base of strength before you start kind of honing in on that velocity specific training or the power specific training training later on when you're nearing your key events or your important events of the season.

Yeah, that makes sense. Now, what about the muscle mass hypertrophy component of things like can you still gain muscle when you're doing something like this low force, high velocity training? Or for someone who's concerned about putting on muscle, would this be a better way to go if you didn't want to pack on too much muscle?

Yeah. You mean, would this lower, like a lower volume, but higher?

Yeah. Like what? What if I'm already strong but I want to get all the benefits of strength training? Could I just do low force high velocity training, like using lower weights lifted at very explosive speeds and get all these benefits in terms of stiffness and neural adaptation, et cetera, without risking putting on excess mass?

Yes, but I guess you have to define them already strong. I guess we feel, or I feel in the office feel like there's maybe not even a ceiling. At which point you would want to stop, at which point you would say, I'm strong enough. If you think about strength, you can think about it almost as like a vessel that you can pour other components into, like power or endurance or velocity. The stronger you are, the bigger your vessel is to contain all of those other abilities. So you can actually, with the high force low velocity training, you can do that without putting on very much, if any, muscle mass, especially if you're already doing high volumes of endurance training. I mean, think about the protein turnover that you have just to support all the breakdown from the miles and miles that you're logging on the bike or on the road. You know, every time you go do a 10 mile run, there's a ton of protein turnover that happens because you're damaging the muscles and having to rebuild them. Now if you add in strength training on top of that, it's not like you're going to have necessarily enough even calories or nutrients to add on additional muscle mass on top of that. So I think, I mean, a lot of the gains that you'll see in strength, again, they come from neural pathways.

Gotcha. I also think it's interesting how in the article, I think one of the studies that you guys cite is how in many cases it's been shown that these skinnier ectomorphic body types and endurance may not even have the capacity to put on much mass, at least in A significant way in terms of, like, muscular hypertrophy. And it might not even be something that, you know, that a skinny athlete has to even worry about that much.

Yeah, and that's what I tell my athletes, too, who I coach. I said, don't worry about it. Just by. Just by looking at you, I can tell you're gonna be fine.

Yeah, I mean, and same thing for me. I've worked with, with a lot of, like, skinnier athletes, and in some cases, they've wanted to get bigger and they'll lift and lift and not get bigger until we actually introduce an ungodly amount of calories. And you don't. You don't run into a ton of endurance athletes who are lifting heavy weights and eating 7,000 calories a day just because it's freaking hard to. It's hard to go out and run when you're digesting that much food. So, yeah, hypertrophy, I think, can be less of an issue than a lot of especially skinny folks think it could be when you're lifting weights. So I want to ask you about programming and what the ideal strength training workout scenario would be. You know, based off of this data on low force, high velocity and high force, low velocity, and as far as, like, choosing sets and reps and exercises and the time of year, I mean, I know it's kind of a loaded question, but can you guys, or at least a complex question, can you guys kind of get into what you would consider to be kind of like an ideal strength training scenario for an endurance athlete?

Yeah, I'll start off and the other guys will probably jump in. So, Ben, I deal mostly with runners, so I'll talk kind of from that perspective. And the first important consideration when you're going to go about programming for a runner is obviously you have to take into account their competition schedule. Not just the first few races, but you want to look at the year or even two to four years if they're an Olympic athlete as a whole. So what we do is we start with an annual plan. You set out your most important competition, and you work backwards from that and you determine the mesocycles. When are you going to be building a base of strength and endurance, or when are you going to be, you know, transferring into the, you know, those high or low force, high velocity movements, when is your competition phase, etc. So you need to map all of that out on a calendar, first of all. And, you know, then from there, the second thing is synchronizing what you're doing in the weight room and what you're doing out on the track or the roads. Because something that sometimes people forget is that when we are working these opposite ends of the spectrum, although they are both beneficial, we can't necessarily do them back to back or on the same day or one right after another. For instance, if you go on a 10 mile run, as soon as you're done lifting heavy sets of three in the weight room, you're going to have a big interference effect and you're not going to get as much gain from either of those and you'll just be really fatigued, you'll have a lot to recover from with less benefit. So it's important to send the body a synchronized signal of adaptation as much as you can so that you are making the most use of the time and effort that you put into training. Does that make sense?

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So in terms of the timing, would you split a strength day up onto. Split a strength training session up onto a different day than an endurance session or would you simply do for an athlete who might be doing a two a day, different times of day?

Yeah, both. With most endurance athletes you need to be running or swimming or cycling every day. So it's really hard to find a day where you're not doing the endurance activity. And if there is such a day, you probably want to be resting on that day. So it's hard to separate the days. Ideally we would, but because we need that frequency of running or swimming or biking, it's impossible. So like you said, two days often work because I think it's. And Caleb and Chris would know better, but I think like six to eight hours between sessions allows enough time for the different cellular pathways to sort of run their course. For instance, you know, mtor being stimulated from weight training or the AMPK or cellular pathways from endurance training. So we wouldn't want those to be happening at the same time or within the same session. So we can separate that by six to eight hours. And as far as team sports go, like soccer, which is kind of like an endurance, like a speed endurance activity, it's been shown that you can strength train in the morning and have your skill session or your conditioning session in the afternoon be unaffected by it. So splitting it up into two sessions is probably the best way to go if you can't do that. However, what I do with my athletes is I couple the strength training days with those days during the week when their endurance training is most similar. So for instance, I've got an 800 meter guy right now. Anytime he's doing speed work on the track those same days he's going into the weight room because he's got a busy work schedule. He can't make two a days. So he'll do his weight training first or his track training first and then go into the weight room and get his sets in.

Okay, got it. Makes sense. Now, excuse me. In terms of sets and repetitions, what do you think would be considered appropriate in terms of what you've seen in the literature for a typical high force, low velocity workout and then also a typical low force, high velocity velocity workout?

So that, Ben, that's going to depend on, you know, what block of training you're in. And if you look at the paper that we wrote, there's a diagram at the end where it shows all the sets and repetitions with along with the exercises. For those people who are listening who, you know, may want more details on this because obviously we can't. There's only so much we.

And that's actually a good point too. I'm going to put a link to the article in the show notes too.

Yeah, yeah.

So I mean, I think it would be helpful if people are interested in looking at more details. We have it all there in the annual plan or macro cycle. That's the listed at the bottom. But as Jacob said, you know, we start with the competitions. And so the general preparation period is the first part of that program during the summer break where they have no competitions. During this time period, we're trying to build that neuromuscular base like we had talked about before and increase their work capacity in the weight room. So especially for somebody who's unfamiliar with resistance training, typically we're starting having to do three sets of 10 repetitions on exercises such as the back squat, overhead press, maybe first trying to teach them how to pick the bar off the ground correctly, like on a deadlift. So pulling the bar to their knee, hopefully later being able to teach them how to transition into a mid thigh position and perform even a power clean at later stages. But so during that strength endurance block, which will be that first four weeks we typically have, the athletes may have performed three sets of 10 repetitions and hopefully ideally three times per week. And here their mileage is still relatively lower compared to what it is during the specific preparation phase, which is what's coming up next. So for those strength endurance block, we're building a neuromuscular base. Three sets of 10 repetitions with very basic strength training exercises. Nothing very complicated like a clean or a jump squat. The Next phase we would focus on. So the next block of training would be a strength phase where we may emphasize teaching them transitioning into that mid thigh position, performing a clean pull maybe so picking up the bar point to their knee, transitioning into a mid thigh position and going up and shrugging with it like they're going to jump. And so that would be a clean pull. May have them start performing push presses rather than just strict overhead presses. We usually have them perform three sets of five repetitions during this period. And because they're performing fewer reps, typically the loads that they're lifting are going to be much, much heavier during the strength phase compared to that strength endurance phase. And the next block would be a strength power block. And that's where we'd start focusing more on those explosive type movements. So having to perform jump squats, push jerk, for example, or a half squat with the triple extension. So having them come up on their toes like they're going to jump with the bar on their back. So a half squat with a triple extension, clean pulls from the knee, having to perform it with a triple extension as well, high pulls maybe even. So these would be different explosive type movements or ballistic movements that we haven't performed during that strength power phase. And usually the repetitions here are lower. So performing three sets of three repetitions. Although their mileage at this point has increased, they're still, some of the sessions are still going to be they're going to have to lift some heavy weight. So we never completely get away from high force, low velocity training. So even though the majority of the time now they may be spending more time trying to move the bar quickly, maybe not lifting as heavy loads as often as they were during the strength phase, they're still going to have to lift some heavy weight. And that's because we don't want to lose those adaptations that we've gained during the strength phase. Prior to this and even during the strength strength endurance phase, we'll still want to have them perform some heavy weight training. And typically so this will be leading into the specific preparation phase. They may have like an active rest following the competition period. So they may take one or two weeks of lighter resistance training, performing fewer reps, fewer sets and basic strength movements. And then they'll make the transition to the competition period. Or I'll let someone else take over.

That part in the competition period. Yeah, yeah. So like Caleb said, what we're doing is we're emphasizing a specific ability at a time and de emphasizing the others. But we're never Completely abandoning them. So even though we're not emphasizing strength, pure strength during the competition phase, we're still keeping, you know, things like a back squat or sometimes we switch over to front squat and, and these exercises that we're throwing out. For those of you listening who aren't familiar with Olympic weightlifting derivatives and movements, you know, go on YouTube and type it in people like Catalyst Athletics or. I know there are some good CrossFit sources that.

Yeah, find a US weightlifting coach.

Yeah, yeah. Come down to the center of excellence here at ETSU and Chris will show you some of them. But yeah, in the competition phase now, we're going to start shortening the range of motion. So when Caleb says that mid thigh position, that's like the power position or like a hang clean or hang snatch position that we're working on, working on those joint angles that are the most specific to running or cycling or whatever it is, and increasing the power output. So doing like a power clean from that mid thigh position is requiring very high rates of force to be generated. And it, there's a very high power component to that. Now, as we go into a taper, obviously we want the athlete to feel fresh and good and strong and fast all at the same time on their key competition day. And Caleb has actually done a lot of research on this, but you want to overload them with some type of concentrated load or increase in volume 21 days out, like an overreaching phase about 21 days out from that key competition. So we increase the volume in the weight room, we go back to some of those more basic movements and then we dramatically decrease the volume of both weight training and their endurance training in order to see hopefully an overshoot of type 2 fibers. We hang on to those positive adaptations, but the fatigue starts to fade away as they recover and we maintain intensity but decrease that volume.

Gotcha, gotcha. And you're right, it's a pretty complex chart that you guys have in terms of the actual cycles that an athlete goes through throughout their season. But I mean, like the, for me, the big takeaway message here is that if you're going to whatever your, your body pump class two or three times a week to get you ready for a marathon or you're wanting to stay strong for Ironman and using the circuit machines at your, at your gym, you know, a couple of times a week at, you know, three sets of 20 or whatever, then you're really leaving a lot on the table when it comes to your potential for improvements from strength training. And also really, you know, as far as what I've seen and including the article you guys have written, like, none of the studies that, that you guys cite include any of those type of things as far as the actual weight training, that helps. And instead it's. It's higher forces, lower reps, or else very explosive plyometric type of activities, but not much of what you'll see a lot of folks doing in a traditional gym setting. So I think that for any out there who are listening, who are interested in getting the benefits of strength training and getting them the right way, this would be a good article for you to check out. And I'm going to link to it in the show notes. And you guys also have a Facebook page that I'll link to called the center of Excellence for Sports Science and Coach Education. And what exactly is that?

The center of Excellence is here? It's with the Olympic training site. And the mission is to develop both sports scientists and coaches in a scientific manner so that they can work together to develop athletes more efficiently. So not only do we focus on the science side of sports, but we also focus on the coaching side. So the two of those work together. They merge their methods and their ideas together so that we can develop a better product when we're trying to develop athletes.

Gotcha. Cool. Cool. Well, I'll link to that too for any of you who want to check out that page. But you guys are a wealth of knowledge and I want to thank you for coming on and sharing this stuff with us.

Thanks for having me.

Thanks for having us, Ben. Thank you. Really appreciate it.

Cool. And we even pulled it off with four people on a podcast. Might have set a record there. All right, well, again, you can check all this out if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com it's a long one. StrengthForEndurance BenGreenfieldFitness.com StrengthForEndurance. That's the word for strength for endurance. You'll be able to get more information on these guys, get a link to the article, and all sorts of other information on strength training for endurance. So, guys, thanks for coming on.

Thank you, Ben.

Thanks, Ben.

All right, later, visit BenGreenfieldFitness.com for even more cutting edge fitness, nutrition and performance advice.