#81: Strength Training for Runners with Kyle Long

saying, say I'm going to do a bunch of lunges and bodyweight squats and pull up some push-ups, and the next day I go in, I'm going to do some more bodyweight squats but then some bench pressing, and just kind of like sporadic all over the place. Like, sure, you're getting some work done, but it's not going to build for a run program. So it's kind of like stacking up miles for, say, training for a marathon, right? Like, if you just went out and just randomly ran every day and the distances were all over and there's no steady build to it, it's not good. You're going to get fit, sure, but you're not going to perform that well when it comes to race day. And the same goes for strength training. So lack of progression is probably the biggest thing I see over time.

Welcome to the Extramiles Show, where I interview guests about ways to become a stronger, healthier, and happier athlete. The Tokyo and London marathons are right around the corner, and we have several community events planned for these races and for future events as well. To learn more and to RSVP, check out extramiles.com/events. The day before the Tokyo Marathon, we have a shakeout run and a get-together. And also before the London Marathon this year, we have a get-together and catch up with our community. In today's episode, I have a conversation with Kyle Long. He's a strength and conditioning coach about strength training for runners. This is a bit of a different episode than usual. This was actually a live Q&A session that I hosted with Kyle and that we recorded for PATH Projects, uh, for an actual video on the YouTube channel. The conversation has a ton of valuable info, and I wanted to make sure that I spread this to the Extramilers podcast audience too. If you would like to watch this full video on YouTube, you can see the link in my description, or you can find The Path Project's YouTube channel and you can basically just type in strength training for runners. Several great follow-along videos there too. This episode was brought to you by Precision Fuel and Hydration. I've been using their energy gels for about 18 months now, and those are the ones with and without caffeine. I use them for all of my races and for the longer training runs. I will also be racing the Tokyo and London marathons with these. The PF30 gels is the most efficient way to get 30 grams of carbohydrate and 120 calories into your system fast. The gels have a very mild, neutral taste, and the good thing is their texture is pretty thin, so you can actually take them down without fluid— fluids. So you can really take them without an aid station inside. You can get 10% off your first order of any Precision Fuel and Hydration products with code extramilest24 at precisionhydration.com. That is extramilest24, the number 24, at precisionhydration.com. Hope you enjoy my conversation with Kyle Long.

We have several different topics we're going to talk about: strategies to implement consistent strength training and how to really stick with it for longer a week, when to do strength training, should you do it before your run, after your run, on separate days, like how many times per week should we be doing, at what intensity should the strength training be done, common mistakes that we should avoid. So there's definitely a lot there. Let's start at the beginning over here. A lot of runners understand the importance of strength training, but quite a few people don't do that much strength training. Do you have any strategies to implement strength training on a consistent basis and actually stick with it longer than just one week? Because we often that initial excitement and then kind of after a few weeks that might fade again. So just curious to hear your thoughts there.

Sure. So I think one of the biggest problems that people have in terms of implementing strength work into a run program is kind of twofold. The first is that they jump into it at such an intensity level that it starts to negatively impact their run performance. And so after that initial kind of excitement wears off, they notice their run performance starting to drop because they're training too hard in the gym. And they're not using it in a way that's an accessory piece to improving their run performance. So one thing that I find most common with runners is that I have them scale back their strength training. Actually, is they go in too hard, they beat themselves up, their run suffers, and then they kind of, you know, stop the strength training. So the first thing I always tell people is you're probably doing too much if you're having a hard time finding it sustainable to balance with your running. The second thing is, is I find most people, they just kind of bounce around between a lot of like kind of, I call 'em the sexy exercises, right? You're not following a steady progressive build over 6 to 8 months. Rather you're going in and just generally throwing together some leg work and just kind of, there's no, there's no pattern and growth over a period of time when the reality is the workouts really shouldn't look that different over the course of a 4, 6, 8 week block. They should be more progressive with weight reps, kind of intensity of the movements. And so having an actual built program out over a 6 to 8 week plan really helps you stick to it more, just like a running plan. If you know what your plan looks like for the next 3 months, it's a lot easier to follow through it rather than just showing up at the gym and grabbing 6 random leg exercises out of the air and just kind of jumping into them. So kind of the two things is balancing intensity and also actually developing some sort of structure around it rather than just winging it and kind of going kind of by the seat of your pants.

And I think the, the part as well about doing too much too soon, I think one good measurement there is the soreness level. Because I hear quite a few times from athletes of like, all right, starting to implement strength training and all of a sudden I'm so sore that I either can't run for a few days, I can barely lift my arms for a few days. And I've personally been like part of that as well, where I start to go crazy on the pull-up bar, do way too many too soon, and you have to take 4 days off before you recovered again, right? And so finding that balance of backing off at the right time so you can show up again, recover well, and then, and then do it again.

And if you're new to it, there's always— no matter how— no matter what your first few days in, there's always going to be a week to 10 days of kind of that initial ripping of the Band-Aid off where it is going to beat you up a little bit more, even if the intensity is about right. But beyond that, kind of, you know, my rule for my runners is always that your strength work should never ever negatively impact your priority run performance. So if you have 2 to 3 important runs a week, your strength work should never decrease your performance in those, especially after that first week. You know, the first week, like I said, you're going to get a little laid up. It's just the the nature of the beast.

But beyond that, it should always be a positive part of your week in terms of performance. Yes, well said. Here was one question by Stefan: do you do strength training and running on the same day, and in what order?

Sure. And that's a very common one to get thrown out there, is kind of order of operations, right? And what I usually tell people with that is the first, the first thing to kind of analyze is, does my strength work? Is the goal of it solely focused on my run performance, or do I have secondary goals? Do I have aesthetic goals? Do I do other things like my cycling, climbing, doing something else that I also am trying to get my strength work built towards? So for the sake of this conversation, I'm just kind of always gonna speak in the vein of the strength work is specifically focused only for run performance. And with that, I always try to have people have what I call A runs and B runs through a week where you have 1 to 3 runs that are your priority runs. And those are the runs that we really wanna focus on the performance of the run. And around that, we always want to try to have about 36 hours between a heavy strength session and that run, because that will give even a hard gym session time to be recovered from. On your non-days that are kind of your B-list runs, you can stack that strength work, whatever is going to get it done through your day on top of that run. So it's much more a personal preference than it is a physiological response. So if my big runs, my long run for the week is on a Saturday and a Wednesday,, but the rest of the days are, call 'em junk miles or more of a shakeout run. Those days, it's whatever you are gonna be able to get in and get the work done is what's gonna be the best bet for you. So in terms of the physiological responses, it's negligible. You can ask 100 experts and you're gonna get 100 answers. And so I always default to whatever will get you into both of those on those off days. Do that on important priority run days. You really shouldn't be stacking the strength work before the run. There's less harm in going in after, depending on kind of the distance and intensity of the run, you're obviously gonna be in a little more fatigued state. So on priority run days, always after. On days that the runs are more just kind of filler runs, it doesn't matter in terms of before or after.

Yeah. Spot on. I have one, I have one additional thought to add to that, and that is sometimes some of the people on this call here, they have busy family lives, they have kids, they have work, they have a lot of other things going on and the stress levels might already be pretty high.

Sure.

If at that point, like sometimes I'm looking at, let's say you do a high intensity run and a long run. Or like a 10, but like basically 2 sessions a week. Like if I would be doing that and I would be doing 2 or 3 strength trainings a week. Yeah. Sometimes I on purpose try to do the strength training after, after the high intensity run that, that is my day that my cortisol levels are gonna be high. Yeah. So that my recovery on some of these other days I have, otherwise I would sometimes have 5 high cortisol level like days in the week and that on top of high stress levels, it's already quite a bit for me. Sometimes I try to stack it that it's like, all right, I have 2 or 3 days that are going to be higher intensity or higher cortisol levels, and the other days are more of a recovery kind of thing. So I think even there it's different for athletes as well of how much recovery you have outside of training, right?

Yeah. And I would rather an athlete stack strength work on the days they are doing big efforts outdoors rather than sprinkling them in between because your body's primed. The weight you are moving in the gym might be less than if you were going in completely fresh. But the fact is, like, your body's primed, everything's activated and ready, even if you've gone out for a lot of miles. And so I would rather someone on big days stack the strength work after the long effort or the harder effort rather than taking the rest of the day off and then having pretty much you get in a rhythm of like every other day ends up being a hard day, whether it's in the gym or out on the road. And so like you said, you just never get that total release.

So yeah. Yeah. What are some common mistakes that you see runners make around the topic of strength training?

Probably the most common is not actually progressing a program. It's they go in, say, 2 times a week, 3 times a week to the gym, 30, 45 minutes. And the workouts, if you zoomed out over the course of 2 months and looked at them, there's no real steady linear progression when there really should be. And that can be in the form of volume or load moves. And so it's not exciting, but really, like I said earlier, over a 6 or 8 week program, the primary movements in a workout in a 6 to 8 week block really shouldn't change that much. It's more about building them, whether you're trying to do more of an endurance-based thing where you're increasing volume over time, increasing load, meaning the weight or time under tension that you're using. And so really over a 6 or 8 week block, the workouts should look the same and the progression should be pretty steady through it. And then at the end of whatever time period you're working through, that's kind of the time to then change the movements up. So for example, If I'm doing a 6-week block where I'm back squatting and I'm doing kind of a progressive build where I start really high volume and then I decrease the reps and I increase the weight over 8 weeks, at the end of that maybe I'm tired of back squatting. And so at the end of that I'm going to change that to a front squat for the next 6 to 8 weeks. So similar movement pattern but a little variation, and then I'm going to build that over time rather than just going in and saying, say I'm going to do a bunch of lunges and bodyweight squats and pull-ups and push-ups, and the next day I go in, I'm going to do some more bodyweight squats, but then some bench pressing, and just kind of like sporadic all over the place. Like, sure, you're getting some work done, but it's not going to build for a run program. So it's kind of like stacking up miles for, say, training for a marathon, right? Like, if you just went out and just randomly ran every day and the distances were all over and there's no steady build to it, it's not good. You're gonna get fit, sure, but you're not going to perform that well when it comes to race day. And the same goes for strength training. So lack of progression is probably the biggest thing I see over time.

What about warm-up?

How do you—

what, what is a good way of going? Like with running, you can obviously start out with a walk and you can start with a slow jog and you pick up the pace. What about strength training?

Sure. The old school of thought and kind of the old school running world is kind of just your traditional stretching, right? But that's really kind of in the gym what we want to avoid a little bit. Because if you think about strength work, you think about elasticity, right? You want some spring to whatever the movement pattern that you're training is. And so the 3 kind of main horsemen that I push for athletes is soft tissue work to kind of prep the tissue. So whether that's foam rolling, taking a lacrosse ball, some manual massage, mobility work, because rather than just stretching a certain movement pattern, we want to actually start greasing a joint up. So if we're squatting that day, we want to actually make sure the hips are greased and moving through a different range of motion. And then some activation work, which typically like banded work's really good for that.. And what activation work is basically flipping the light switches on from the brain into wherever we're about to train. So if I'm going into a lower body day, for example, I'm probably going to do some lateral band walks and some different banded movements to fire up my glutes and my hips and my hamstrings and my quads because I want those switches flipped on before I get under weight rather than just, it's kind of like when you wake up in the morning, if the light slowly turns on, it's a little friendlier wake up. But if you just throw the light on and slam the music real loud, you're going to jump out of bed and feel like garbage. So the biggest thing is, like I said, soft tissue work, mobility, and activation work rather than just stretching and jumping into a warm-up set.

Yeah, and it's, it's so easy whenever I often see it, even at group runs. You join a group run and everyone just seems to go like from the moment you leave to like a full sprint within literally like a minute. But I do see that happen with strength training too, that people just right away start grabbing the heavy weights, start going for it.

And like, and a really, a really good metric of it is like if you just got up right now and did a bodyweight squat versus in an hour if you spent 10 minutes stretching your hip, loosening your hips up, and, you know, moving a little bit before, and then did a bodyweight squat, it would just feel drastically different. And then if you apply that to anything with load, it's going to be the exact same concept.

So for sure, is it better for runners to lift heavy or lift low weight with high reps?

So that goes back a little bit kind of to one of the first things I said in the vein of this conversation, just speaking that your hypothetical training is specifically geared around run performance. We're gonna generally want more volume. So higher reps, a little bit lower weight, but there is a place for some high, um, some heavier loads. And a lot of that's for injury prevention more than anything. So big movers, squatting, hinging, like a deadlift, is our areas that we can probably throw some heavier loads in. But in general, we're gonna wanna look for a higher volume. And rather than just kind of alternating between like a heavy week and a high volume weight or week, you eventually can just add weight to that volume. So it's like, use lunges for example. Starting off with some lunge work with some higher volume will really get the glutes, hamstrings, hips really fired up. But as you progress through that 6 or 8-week block, instead of decreasing volume, you would just add some weight to it to increase the load and time under tension. Because when you're prepping specifically for running, it's time under tension you're trying to work towards. Because obviously if you're on your feet for an hour on a run, that's a long time to be moving. And so having a really heavy 2-rep back squat isn't going to transfer directly to that very well. But being able to knock out some high-volume lunges and some good long form kind of work through the hamstrings and hips is really kind of what we want to aim for.

So generally speaking, higher volume over lower volume. When— so, so there's two different elements we can look at, right? We can look at the volume, but we can also look at the rest or recovery time in between. What about the recovery time over there? Like, let's say we're doing pull-ups. Do we want to have like 1 to 2 minutes in between, or do we want to go like 3 to 5 minutes in between there?

For most, for most people that are training for, we'll say, just generally longer runs, let's say like 10K and up, we're gonna just basically at least a 1-to-1 work-rest ratio. So if a set takes you 90 seconds, you want to typically rest at least 90 seconds as well. But more often than not, it's kind of— you want to go by feel. So you want to feel like you're recovered to the point that you can perform about 90% of your previous set. So if I'm doing 5 sets of pull-ups, for example, and I, I do 15 pulls my first round, I want to rest long enough that I can get probably at least close to 10 or 12 that next round. If I'm, you know, getting back on the bar And I'm only not able to knock out 4 or 5 reps, I probably didn't take enough time off. Shorter, kind of more explosive-based stuff, you get into kind of some nuance of really measuring rest periods. But in terms of stuff for a longer, more endurance-based athlete, really just getting a full recovery is probably the most important thing. So at minimum, 1:1 work rest.

Yeah, that makes sense. What about, I think there's quite a few people on this call here who, yes, they're into running. They might not necessarily have that much experience with strength training, whereas other people might have a lot of gym equipment at home already. Are you able to do— I know you've put together several different follow-along videos, and half of those videos don't even include any type of weights. For anyone over here wanting to start setting up a consistent strength training routine, what are some of the minimum required tools, or can you get away with body weight only? Or if you would have to buy a few things, what would those things be that you would recommend?

Sure. So if you think about kind of the way we move, there's typically— there's some nuance to this, but in general, you're either moving horizontally or vertically. So an example of a horizontal movement would be a bench press. You're moving along the horizon. An example of a vertical movement would be a pull-up. You're moving vertically up and down. So pretty much say a program at home with no or minimal equipment, you want to find ways to move within both of those planes for as much of your body as you can. So upper body, lower body, anterior and posterior, pressing and pulling. And so at home, if you just kind of run through in your head some examples of all that, you can do a fair amount of vertical work. Squatting, lunging, step-ups, anything like that is really the same version of a movement you're going to do in a gym. Flexion of the hips and the knees, just you're not going to load it the same way just because you're not loading it with a barbell on your back doesn't mean that you're not getting the benefits from it. And then in terms of upper body, you have pushing and pulling is typically your main primary movers. So you have push-ups and you have various ways of angling that, right? And same with pull-ups and chin-ups, you can play with different grips and widths. So you can get a lot done with really minimal equipment to a point. If you're pretty proficient in terms of strength work, if you're a pretty strong runner, you're going to get to a point where you're finding you have to to throw almost an unnecessary amount of volume to feel like you're getting some work done at home. But if you're pretty new to strength work, you can get away with a strictly bodyweight program. And some kind of nice low-entry kind of pieces of equipment would be some resistance bands, usually 1 or 2 kettlebells, or a set of dumbbells up to 15, 20, 25 pounds will get people mostly what they need. I have clients that I work with that they have the adjustable dumbbells up to 50 or 60 pounds, but they never touch anything above 30. So When people ask, you know, hey, I want to grab a few things for home, I usually say grab a couple bands and then grab 15, 20, and 25-pound dumbbells, a set of each. And those 3 things, you're going to be able to get a lot of work done for a long time. And then beyond that, you know, it gets a little more complicated, but at that point you're getting into the more advanced territory for strength work for sure.

What are your thoughts on weight vests, like not just for strength training but even for running?

Yeah, so I'm a big fan of I call it rucking, but carrying weight for distance. And so whether that's in a weight vest or in a rucksack loaded with a plate or sandbag or whatever, I find it builds a lot of joint resiliency— ankles, knees, and feet. And it's a nice way to— I prefer athletes going out and carrying weight, to be honest, over just going out for a shakeout run or junk miles. Because, you know, if you put yourself into the end stages of a race, whether it's a marathon or an ultra, When it's like, what's the common thing we see? We see people hunched over crossing the finish line because their posterior chain's broken down. And that's typically where we break down first. If you spend some time under weight, you're going to have that brace built a lot differently than if you haven't. And so I'm a huge proponent of— I don't— I'm not a big fan of running with the vest. I think it's a lot of unnecessary impact on joints. I know people that swear by it, but personally, I, I go out with my dog and I have my weight vest on sometimes just because I'm like, hey, I'm out 4 or 5 miles a day. Why not throw a little load on it on days I'm not running hard and my hips are getting a little bit more load to bear? And I've noticed that on years I carry more weights, I hold up much better in the end stages of big efforts. And I think that's a big part of it.

For anyone listening, what would be a good weight to start out with? This is for both men and women.

You definitely want to ease into it because what we see most often is you, you're at risk of developing some stress fractures if you just jump into going and doing a 10-mile, you know, hike with 30 pounds. So I have anyone that's new to it, I have everyone start with 10 pounds and I say go out for a mile and see how it feels. And then that's usually a pretty good gauge. If you can go out and carry 10 pounds for a mile, you know, you can inch it up to the point that a runner specifically training for running doesn't need to go much over 20 pounds at any point, whether it's a weight vest or a pack. A man or woman, no matter what your strength level is, you never want to end a load carrying session just exhausted and trashed. You should never be hunched over. Like, you should, you know, take the pack off, the vest off, feel like you did some work. But you never want to take that to a point of breakdown unless you're training for a super specific, like, mountain objective where you know you're gonna have to carry a 50-pound pack, you know, for 3 days in the mountains. But yeah, I definitely, you know, keeping it under 10K once or twice a week, really awesome way to kind of add some extra engine building in there.

Yeah. Quick, quick chat question here. Yeah. Rest means no movements or walking a bit also?

In terms of between strength work, like at a gym, say you're, you know, in between sessions or sets, it's really mostly kind of personal preference. I, I kind of usually walk a little lap around my area, but the difference between just sitting there, standing, um, pretty nuanced. So I would say just whatever feels good to you. Yeah.

Can you discuss knee strength and stability? Like, knee issues come up so frequently with runners, and even in some of the questions submitted, some people said like, some strength exercises I cannot do because I have knee issues. Can you talk a little bit more through Yeah, yeah.

So I mean, like, anyone that has spent a lot of time running has some degree of a knee problem, even if it's not causing pain. Like, we all have small tears in our meniscus and, you know, whatever it may be. And it's, you know, even if it's totally pain-free, there's usually some dysfunction going on. One of the best things I find for athletes to kind of keep both knee pain away, knee stability strong, and also to work around pain are isometrics and eccentrics. And so isometrics would be a movement that doesn't involve movement. So an example of that with a bilateral movement, meaning two legs, would be dropping down into a squat to the point of comfort and then holding it for a set period of time. So maybe if squatting with weight causes you pain and you feel like, hey, I can't go squat, but I can descend halfway down into a squat pain-free, we've stopped before that point of pain and we go through sets of just holding that for 10, 15, 20, 30 seconds. With the idea being over time we're building up some strength around that joint without pushing through pain.. And you can do the same thing with something like a split squat or a lunge. And so that's usually a good first point of attack. If certain move gives you pain in the full range of motion, try shortening the range of motion and go into an isometric hold there. If you can build up some strength around that, and then we start working on eccentrics, which is the lengthening portion of a movement. So on a squat, that would be the descent or on a lunge, same thing, we're descending. And so you focus on, again, very slow controlled descents into that movement, stopping between a point of pain and then working through that limited range of motion with some slower, more tempo-based stuff. And over time, the goal is between the two of those, that range of motion you're able to work in should increase. And then to a point that, hey, all of a sudden now I can actually squat to depth with no weight. And then we build strength there. And then from there we build into squatting with some weight and building up over time. But kind of a combination of isometric, eccentric, and also making sure we're training unilaterally and bilaterally. So unilaterally meaning one leg, bilaterally meaning two. So spending time in both squat types of positions, hinge positions, as well as split positions. So single leg stuff as well, because oftentimes we kind of just train in one or two planes. But if you think of yourself as kind of a 360, you know, angle, we want to try to train in as many angles as we can and get strong in those angles.

And that's really going to hammer everything down. Spot on. Here's another good one by Andrew Block. What would be a simple workout that anyone can find time for to make enough of a gain in strength, as in 10, 15 minutes? So no excuse could be had. Like, so before we dive into that, I do want to just mention that resource that we talked about earlier. Yeah. So I just, I just wanna share it real quick because here's basically, are you guys able to see my screen? Yes. Here's basically the blog. So here are the 4 different follow-along videos that you have put together over here. So it's, it's this one, 10-minute strength follow-along. Like some have actual kettlebells and weights, whereas others do not, whereas purely body weight. So here's like an initial one, like 4 videos that are already great resources, but high level.

Would absolutely love to hear more. Yeah, so if I'm kind of talking to somebody and they ask me that question, I would just have them ask themselves a few questions. I would ask— have them ask themselves, how many days a week do I want to run through this? Am I doing this twice a week, once a week? Am I doing this 4 days a week? And then based on the frequency and the amount of time available, I'm going to run through 4 things. I'm going to run through an upper body push, an upper body pull, and a lower body push and a lower body whole. And that might mean I only have enough time to do one exercise for each of those movements, but I'm gonna pick a timeframe, I'm gonna do 10 to 12 reps of everything, and I'm just gonna cycle through for that time period. So an example of that might be pushups, pull-ups, bodyweight squats, and glute bridges. So really simple, it's nothing sexy, but it's efficient, it's effective. You don't need any equipment for that. And that's gonna give you some meat and potatoes work done right there.

Say those, say those 4 one more time a bit slower.

So, yep. So we would say if I have, say, really short on time, 12 minutes, my upper body push would be a pushup. My upper body pull would be a pull-up or a chin-up. Lower body press would be a bodyweight squat. And then the lower body pull would be a glute bridge.

And so could you show me those last two? And sorry to like throw you, like, don't mean to throw, throw you off over there, but I think when you mentioned those things, I don't know if everyone over here knows what you're talking about?

Yeah, so the glute bridge will be easier for me to talk through because it involves me laying on the floor. So a glute bridge is basically laying flat on the floor with your feet pressed flat on the ground. You're driving into your heels, pressing your glutes and your butt up towards the ceiling, squeezing, and then descending. And then a bodyweight squat is similar to a back squat or a goblet squat. It's just using no weight basically. So standing tall, sitting down on your heels, going to about 90 degrees and then standing tall from there. And so like I said, that's a super bare bones. But if you did that for 12 minutes and you cycled through a set of 12 of each of those as many times as you could in 12 minutes, you're not going to— it's going to feel like you did something. And you could have an iteration of that a few days a week, some different examples of those movement patterns, but same setup. Or you could say, I only have 2 days a week. I could go through those 2, that same workout twice a week for for the next 3 weeks. And then in 3 weeks, same setup, but I'm gonna throw some different movements in there and just give myself a little variety. So bare bones, keeping an idea for an upper body push, upper body pull, lower body push, lower body pull, will give you some bang for your buck in a short amount of time.

And the good part is too, as you progress throughout this, it's going to become easier, right? And so we can start making a little bit more difficult. Angles. For example, with the push-ups, we can change the hand positioning. With the pull-up, once we grab the bar wider, it's going to start getting more challenging and it starts to work out different parts to some extent. Once we start doing like the squat, you can carry some weights. And so there's still different ways throughout that that we can make it harder.

So yeah, you can get a lot of work done just by playing, like you said, with angles, with reps, with pace and tempo. And so for someone that's really just trying to get some work done around the run, you can get a lot done with very little in terms of equipment.

Here Here's a good question by Ashley, kind of a follow-up on what you just said. How little can I get away with while still having a positive impact?

That's the million-dollar question. Generally, I tell people twice a week will give you some linear progression over time. And so, you know, it depends on the time you have available. If you do one session a week and it's a longer session, you're sure going to make more progress than if you didn't do that session. But in terms of something that you're actually going to notice, twice is is typically kind of your minimum, and you can make a lot of forward progress with 2 good sessions a week, especially if you're running around that.

One more question here. This one is by Ivan Acosta, one of our friends from Path Project. I'd like to work a program with a focus on hyper— hypertrophy. How do I pronounce hypertrophy? Hypertrophy. That's my Dutch right there. I always put it up. So an increase in body volume, basically, while running I'm running 30 to 50 miles a week, so that's like 50K to 70K a week. Sure, I have an idea on how I would structure my running training, but how would you structure your actual strength training? Like, can probably do strength 3 or 4 days a week.

Yeah, so, you know, hypertrophy program is going to be built typically on rep schemes of like, we'll say, 8 to 12 reps of most movements, 3 to 5 sets. And then in terms of the number of movements, it's kind of based on how much time you have. Really. For something like that, a workout should be pretty much no more than 60 minutes, maybe a little bit longer. And a 3-day pretty classic split for that would be really a good bet for that. So an upper body push day, an upper body pull day, and then a lower body day. And what we mean by upper body push day would be horizontal pressing like bench press patterns, push-up patterns, as well as overhead pressing, so shoulder work. Upper body pulling would be things like deadlifting, pull-ups, rows, things along that line. And then lower body day would be exactly what you'd expect, you know, quad work, hamstrings, and glutes. The one thing I'll say with hypertrophy work is obviously you're adding size if that's your goal with that type of training. And so that is going to feel a little bit different in terms of how it interacts as a runner. But a lot of people, they have some aesthetic goals built in with their running programming. So a program that's built around something like that where you're working in kind of mid-rep ranges of 10 to 12 reps is still gonna give you a lot of positive benefits. I think there's a, a more movement to call them just bigger runners now. And I think to have that, you need to be able to fuel that muscle tissue. And so yeah, you can work within that 10 to 12 rep range. 3 days a week would be a really solid split for that. Like I said, upper body push, upper body pull, and then a lower body day. With the lower body day hopefully furthest away from your biggest run of the week, just for the sake of keeping legs and hips fairly fresh.

Yeah, spot on. Here's another good one. What are, like, is there any difference? Let's say there's runners training for a road marathon and there's runners training for like a mountain race or for like a trail race or a lot of, a lot of elevation gain. Sure. Would you, would you approach strength differently? Like, how do you go about that?

There's definitely some shared components. You know, there's obviously the movement pattern of running is generally the same for both. Someone who's training for, we'll just say something more rugged, for lack of a better term, whether that means more elevation gain, less quality terrain, trails, mountains, whatever it may be. The main things we're going to encounter that they're going to need some specific workaround is going to be some deceleration work because you're going to be descending a lot more typically than a road run. And so the way we work, we work on deceleration is basically think of running downhill as tapping the brakes every time you step downhill. So we need to train the mechanisms around that, which the best way we can go about that is with those kind of previous we mentioned isometrics and eccentric work. So really slow descent on a lunge and holding the bottom of a squat, maybe even with weight for long periods of time. And we wanna spend time under tension in that sense. And then in terms of the opposite of that, we also have more of a climbing aspect, right? So typically some form of a step up is gonna be a really nice thing to play with as more of a trail or mountain runner of varying heights, right? Because obviously on a trail with a lot of climbing, each step up's not measured the same. So getting comfortable and getting your hips trained in a really high box step up versus maybe some heavier step ups, dumbbells in your hands on a lower step, and just kind of training your body to move through a little bit more of a dynamic universe versus a roadrunner who's saying their goal is to a little more performance based in terms of speed is going to be able to want to maybe throw a little bit of explosive stuff. So more plyometric based box jumps, kind of working on taking the impact that a hard concrete, you know, base is going to be putting into the knees. So we want to work on landing, kind of training our body to receive shock a little bit better. You're also just going to be—

tend to hit harder on a hard surface like that. Last November we were— well, like basically last fall, we're in the Grand Canyon and we were doing a photo shoot for Pat. Sure. We had a bunch of camera equipment on the back and we were going into the Grand Canyon. Yeah. And you start at the rim at 6,000 foot and you go all the way down, you descend 5,000 foot to the Colorado River. This was just a downhill. The amount that it beat up our quads was absolutely unbelievable. And I think sometimes people forget that it's not necessarily the climbing uphill, it's very often the downhill that every time I experience that, I'm like, I wish I would have trained my quads more. I wish I would have like done some more specific workouts for these areas. But yeah, I don't think we can underestimate that sometimes.

No, I think anyone that's done a long ultra in the mountains knows that fear of, you know, that last quarter of the race, seeing a downhill, you know, as shocking as it is, ends up being worse than a big climb for a lot of folks. So it's definitely something that can be trained for, you know, the more muscle you have around that knee capsule, the more you're going to take that shock better. And the more you've trained, you know, in slow tempo based stuff, the better you're going to handle it to a point. Yeah, absolutely.

Okay, a few more questions. I want to be respectful of everyone's time, but there were so many good questions that came through here. Yeah, there's quite some runners who experience lower back pain. Do you have any thoughts on strength training exercises if you have, like, whether it's strength, mobility, anything in particular? Yes, this could have to do with your running form, your footwear, and any of those kind of things, but let's take this from a strength training aspect.

Yeah. Yeah, chronically, I mean, most people are compromised through their posterior chain. So when we say posterior chain, we just generally mean your backside. That low back pain that a lot of people are experiencing a lot of times will come from kind of— I call it the cranky neighbor. So it might be dysfunction in your glutes, it might be higher up in your thoracic spine around your shoulders from being seated all day and internally rotated through your shoulders. It might mean you're in the car a lot, you know, and we're here rotated forward. And so oftentimes the thing that's causing the pain is something around where the pain is. And so if you suffer from kind of chronic low back pain or just general feelings of weaknesses, and you— it's always good to make sure that there's not like an actual diagnosis first, right? Like a disc issue or something kind of more serious. If it just feels like you're chronically weak and kind of just hold on to that tension, really taking some time to strengthen the glutes and the hamstrings and the low back and the upper back will really do a lot of work for that. And it kind of goes back to— we all have that classic image of people like hunched over at the finish line of a marathon or an Ultra, and, you know, back rounded forward, hands on the knees. And the reason that happens is because they broke down in their posterior chain. And so if you think of it kind of like a crane holding you upright, you know, there's big tethers that are holding you upright the whole time. The stronger those tethers are, the more upright we're going to be and the more support you're going to have around that low back. So movement-wise, we love bridging patterns, whether that's that glute bridge we talked about earlier. Deadlifting is a fantastic movement pattern for people. I like for runners, for almost all my athletes— so deadlifting is essentially just picking a barbell off the ground and putting it right back down. You can do the same thing with dumbbells and kettlebells. I like to have runners and most of my endurance athletes do it with either dumbbells, a kettlebell, or a trap bar. So a hex bar, it's basically the bar you stand inside of and there's handles on either side. The barrier to entry is a lot lower, the risk to a back injury is much lower, and it's just generally a more functional way to lift weight off the floor. So anything that's basically a hinging pattern. So if you're like, I'm going in the gym tomorrow, I want to get some ideas, if you just look up hinging patterns, you're going to come up with some good ideas to get into that. And then upper body pulling— don't shy away from pull-ups, chin-ups, dumbbell rows, things like that. We want to try to paint that whole back. So if there was kind of a heat signature on your back as you're going through a workout, we'd like to try to light it all up from basically the base of your neck down to the back of your knees.

Yes, very well said. A lot of runners talk about strengthening that core. Can you talk a little bit more with what is meant with that and what are some of the ways that we can do this, kind of in addition to some of the things you just talked about here?

Yeah, so I think when it's mentioned, typically people aren't thinking about it quite right. We think about core as, you know, our 6 little box right up front, and that's about it. And so when we think about core, we really want to think about it as a big waistband that wraps both sides of your mid, mid line. So it's front and back, anterior and posterior. It's your low back. It is in your entire abdomen. And so there's traditionally two ways to train that. It's flexion and extension, which an example of that would be a sit-up, leg raise, something where your hips are flexing and extending, or it's rotation-based. So, you know, a Russian twist where you're seated and rotating left to right. We've all seen cable twists and all things, you know, things like that. So it's important when you think about training that midline train it dynamically, meaning you want to train both of those movement patterns. You're not just in doing one or two of those. And then we really want to kind of think about what are my needs as a runner. So like, I'm a trail runner, and so I have a lot of steps where when I step, I don't want my body to rotate, right? And I need my core to pull that into place. And so we do work called anti-rotation work, which is exactly what the name implies. It stops your body from rotating. So what that might look like is standing in kind of a tall athletic stance with a band in your hands attached to a, a bar off to the side, pressing out and just holding that. So the work is being done when I am stopping my body from rotating in. And if you translate that to a trail, so I'm training here doing this work, all of a sudden if I'm out running and I step down on my left foot and my body wants to rotate here, which then might pull my hip up, I've trained myself to stay centered and more focused in terms of that forward movement. So kind of training a variety of realms and not just, hey, I did a bunch of sit-ups and some twists with a band or a medicine ball. We want to work on both, you know, flexion and extension, rotating, but also anti-rotation work, stopping things from rotating. And there's a lot of ways to do that, but the anti-rotation is a really big one for injury prevention. And even if you just kind of go through the dynamics of a running gait, your body is naturally wanting to rotate. And so the more we've trained ourselves to not rotate through that midline, really the better we're going you can just perform as a runner.

Once again, when you're talking through like some of the, some of the counter movements over here, all you need is a, is a rubber band, or all you need is— it's, it's very simple to train some of these things. You don't need a whole lot of bells and whistles for this.

And you can do anti-rotation work in a doorway, right? You can stand in a doorway with your hands together and press the hands into the doorway, kind of into the frame of the door, and, you know, you're not rotating, but your body wants to rotate into the door. And so, you know, you're creating tension without movement, which is what we want.

So yeah, you can do it very minimal equipment. Yeah. What about this question comes up sometimes too. Any suggestions on skipping rope for strengthening the lower body?

Yeah. So if you kind of think about the mechanisms of what you're training skipping rope, it's, you know, a lower leg movement primarily. So your calves, um, your soleus and your gastroc, the two main muscles of your calf, are gonna get a lot of work there. The one kind of thing people want to watch for that is if they're jumping into it new is to take it pretty conservatively at the start because you can kind of overactivate that Achilles, the bursa sacs around it. So I see a lot of people, they, I'm gonna throw some rope skipping into my sessions, they get into it a little bit too hard, too quick, and all of a sudden their Achilles are inflamed, they've got some, you know, bursitis in their heels. But definitely a nice way to kind of, you know, obviously it simulates a running gait and kind of that repeated impact. So definitely would be a nice way to the low legs and you get the volume aspect that we talked about earlier through that.

Yeah, perfect. Let's see, there was one more question here that just came in the chat. This is from Jason Cohen. What's up, Jason? Good to, good to see you on here. He asked, let's see, any favorite stretches for injury prevention, ones that you cannot live without? Before we dive in, I want to say to anyone here who's into running documentaries, check out— this is Jason's running documentary, Heavy as Lead: From 300 Pounds to Running the Leadville 100. And it's an incredible journey that he has put together. It almost has a million views, this video. I'll post it in the live chat, but it's—

we'll get into a— we'll get him to a million now.

Exactly. Uh, Jason is a beast, so it's, uh, it's awesome. But yeah, curious to hear your thoughts here.

Favorite stretches for injury prevention? Yeah, so generally speaking, being stretching is not necessarily a huge mechanism for injury prevention as much as mobility-based stuff. And to kind of distinguish between what is mobility and what is stretching is probably important. And we think about mobility work, we want to say identify a joint or two, so my hips for example, and we want to start playing with kind of maximal ranges of motion that my hip can move in some different directions and ways. And over time, the goal is to increase what that range of motion is. Ultimately, that's probably the biggest single thing you can do to prevent injury is increase the range of motion to a healthy point that a joint can move through rather than just stretching muscle tissue. There's a process called controlled articular rotations, CARS for short, C-A-R, and it's kind of a series of movements around all the main joints in the body that you can do a lot of variations of, a lot of different versions of it. But the idea is you're training an individual joint to move through the maximal range of motion it can and over time improve that without helping it by using other joints. So an example would be being kind of in a kneeling position with my shoulder and drawing a true maximal outer range of motion around that that joint, but focusing on not opening and closing my chest at all, rotating into it, because the goal is to see, hey, this is what this joint can move truly on its own. And then over time, practicing that and both lubricating the joint, stretching out the musculature around it, and just building some more functional mobility. And the more domains you can move in, the less likely you are to be hurt in them, basically.

Yeah. One more question, kind of going back to the reps that we were talking about. There was a chat clarification about this, or what is the number of reps that you consider high volume?

We'll say for the sake of most, you know, endurance-based athletes, 15 to 25. And that is again painting with a fairly broad stroke, but there's not a lot of occasions you're gonna work beyond a rep scheme of 25, um, as an endurance athlete, unless you get into some really high-level stuff and, you know, some personal preference stuff. Anything 12 and under is gonna either be focusing more on hypertrophy, so that lean muscle mass, or more power strength-based stuff.

But if you're working, we'll just say generally 15 to 25 would be that higher volume. And then what are you building to? Is it typically max lift or total volume?

So again, kind of going back to the idea of we never want to negatively impact run performance, there's very seldom going to be periods where you're actually building to anything near a, a 1-rep, 2-rep max as a runner. Again, if our goal for the point of this discussion is just to talk about run performance, We always wanna work on most, a lot of runners are familiar with an RPE scale. So if we said RPE of 7 to 8, typically on most working sets is kind of where we wanna live. So we wanna always have a little gas in the tank. We're not typically training till failure, but we also wanna feel like we're activated and working. So as we build again, like say for an example, if I'm gonna do sets of, if I'm doing 5 sets of 15 squats today for a workout, the first set might be a little on the lighter side. I'm kind of gonna feel out where I'm at for the day. And then the next 4 sets, I'm either gonna have a consistent weight that feels challenging around that 7 or 8 on the RPE scale, or I'm gonna slowly build and kind of feel out where my body's at for that day. Always having gas in the tank, never going to a point of failure, but progressively over those sets getting to a point where maybe those last 2 sets I have things dialed in a little bit better.

I have one more very important question. Question, but before we do, where can people find out more about you, Kyle? Like, I know you offer one-on-one coaching in both strength training and in endurance coaching. Where can people find more about you?

The best place is probably either on my Instagram, it's 100milekyle, or you can email me kylelongfitness@gmail.com. You can reach out with questions if you have any thoughts on coaching, wanting more information. I can definitely give you both, but also just happy to answer any more questions we didn't get to today.

Gotta be there. Cool. Well then, one more closing, closing thought question though. Do you have any more— like, we've already discussed a lot over here about strength training for runners. Do you have any other closing thoughts about like recommendations for athletes to improve, to become a stronger, healthier, happier athlete, to really set themselves up in, in training success?

Yeah, I think the biggest thing is the thing that— things I like to see my athletes do the most is have some goals through the year that you're actually going to built towards. And those don't necessarily just need to be a race. It can be a self-guided project. It can be some performance-based stuff in terms of times, distances, and really kind of take a look at where you're at and what needs to be there and actually make a list of what needs to happen to get you there. I think a lot of people, they say, hey, I've run a marathon and I'd like to go run my first 50K later this summer, but that's kind of about as far as the planning goes. And they might just kind of generally increase their mileage or maybe go I'm going to the gym once a week. But if you really sit down and actually build a plan up to that and have some structure around it, you're really going to want to enjoy the journey to get there a little bit more and you're going to perform a lot better. And that's where having a run coach or a run program or having some system that you follow, whatever it may be, is really, I think, the most valuable thing an athlete can do. And it will make your time training much more enjoyable. I think I'm guilty sometimes if I look back on a 3-month period, I'm like, I kind of just floundered a little bit in my sessions. I was just kind of— I was going in, I was showing up, I was training hard, but I didn't really get anywhere with it. And, you know, in that 3 months, if I— the next 3 months, if I actually put my head down, kind of have some structure around it, the benefits are just massive compared to if you're just showing up every day. So just generally building structure, whether it's run program, run planning, strength work, will just really do you wonders.

Spot on. I just want to add one thing to that, kind of from my own perspective as well. Sometimes I think it's, it's really good to indeed have a base fundamental of like, hey, here's the training schedule I want to follow, here's the workout plan I want to follow. Yet sometimes things happen on the daily, day to day, right? Like our kid might get sick, keep us awake at night, something might come up at work. So that flexibility to kind of adjust on the day to day and move things around versus 100% rigid sticking to a training schedule is pretty important as well. But absolutely. And again, at least having an idea of like, hey, this is what I'm aiming for for the week, this is my bigger picture goal, this is how I'm breaking it up, like you're saying, there's a lot of people are just kind of wandering around and having some of that structure is absolutely helpful there.

So yeah, none of us are David Goggins. We don't have to wake up and go run 40 miles every day because the notepad says to. So it's good to listen to life a little bit too.

So exactly, exactly. Well, Kyle, thank you so much. Really appreciate it. And like, yeah, in the chat over here, Kyle's details, and then also pathprojects.com/blog where you can find all these follow-along videos.

Thank you for listening. What was your favorite lesson, takeaway, or quote from this episode? Please let us know in the comments on YouTube. More podcast episodes are in the works. I'm about to fly out to Tokyo and hopefully get a chance to catch up with Eliud Kipchoge, and we will see if that's gonna happen. But if so, you'll be the first to know. Um, and I would say have fun out there on your runs, take it easy, and, uh, yeah, talk more soon.

Bye now.