Lifting or body weight for high school distance runners?

It is not an either or situation.

In asking this type of question over the last several decades, the responses I get are similar to those I would get if I asked "what is the best religion"?

Everybody has their beliefs, but there's little objective comparative research done in context. Just as with religion there's potentially much to be gained with any choice if followed with fidelity.

Things become very confounded when working with adolescents at various stages of physical maturity and when there's a fixed amount of time available for practices. Things become even more complicated when you consider that some athletes begin their Macrocycle for Track and Field in Dec/Jan and others won't start until March. Creating an appropriate periodized plan to fit each situation is brutal unless you're an expert in the field of strength training or a full time coach.

In the summer/fall, I don't even try to get them in a weight room. Our runs are on trails, in parks, no where near the weight room. Many kids don't drive. Doing body weight exercises moves us in the right direction, even if they aren't optimal for each and every athlete. They can be done where ever we might be practicing.

In the winter, I have had them begin working in the weight room. For years I stuck with body weight work even during indoor track. However, the guys WANTED to be in the weight room for reasons other than optimizing their running performance. I paid a professional trainer to put together a periodized plan for the more experienced athletes, but they still weren't individualized beyond the amount of weight used. The trainer also couldn't be with them on a regular basis, so adjustments/modifications that should have been made weren't.

By the time outdoor season rolled around and all the in-season newbies showed up, lifting was chaotic. The experienced guys from indoors were still following the 18 week plan developed in January, but everyone else was kind of doing their own thing. The time I would normally set aside for strength work (body weight) was consumed by time in the weight room that many but not all were doing.

The body weight work was tailored to strengthen areas typically weak in most adolescent runners. When we did body weight work infrequently, they would complain about how sore they were, which only told me that what they were doing in the weight room wasn't effectively getting at these problematic areas.

Since athletes need to be supervised in the weight room, you need to determine what do to with athletes who may finish their workouts well before others while they wait for you to finish up with everyone else on the track. They could be doing body weight work and get on with the rest of their day if they aren't waiting to get into the weight room.

Unless you have expertise, or regular access to expertise, I wouldn't spend much time in the weight room at the expense of doing targeted body weight work.

They can certainly both (body weight work and free weight work) be done, but when time is limited choices have to be made.

Great post, Another Option. Very practical and very realistic approach and thoughts. I know many of us struggle with the same issues and constraints. It's one thing to come up with what you believe is the best approach and program for your kids. It's quite another to actually make it work successfully in the real world of high school track practice.

Along those same lines, one of the real challenges is, as Bob Seger said, "what to leave in and what to leave out." There are dozens and dozens of good body weight exercises for runners. And once again, very limited time.

What's your routine like? What do you view as the essentials, and what do you try to fit in if possible? Thanks!

For the first time in my coaching career, I skipped ALL core, body weight, etc. exercises with my athletes & I really think--in retrospect--that I did the WRONG THING. I think the kids could have been a bit stronger (like in year's past) if we would have done the following:

Early season: body squats, wall sits, planks, push-ups, flutter kicks, etc.

Mid-season: various single leg squats exercises (single leg squats, single leg split squats, single leg hinges, etc.)

Late season: single leg plyometrics (double leg hops, single leg hops, etc.)

But, as someone said, there's a finite amount of time & energy per practice each day. What do you want to focus on?

I start my kids off with 3 months of bodyweight training.

After those 3 months we start with some basic stuff like goblet squats and RDLs.

Then we start doing basic barbell lifts, advancing to eventually doing Olympic lifts.

If a kid runs track then doesn't train over the summer and comes out for xc they have to start at square one with the bodyweight work again.

This way you only get kids in the weight room who know what they are doing.

I'm normally in the weight room to supervise but if not I can just write the workout on the white board. Kids aren't that dumb. You just have to teach them from the beginning to do the workout and be time efficient.

I think others are giving good advice. Yet I'll add that it might be wise to consider medicine ball work. It's fun (to me anyway) and I feel that there are many natural movements involved and hence perhaps a lower risk of injury. Medicine ball work can involve jumping and therefore be a good preface or supplement to other ballistic or plyometric work. Also, unlike most weight room and body weight work, it tends to involve more power, more explosiveness, which is often lacking in the training of middle distance and distance runners.

In my experience it really depends on what your group of guys look like.

Top 5k guys on your team are going to be running higher-intensity WO's + more mileage. Their bodies are under a lot of pounding and stress already and are most likely going to benefit more from more stretching, body weight exercises, and core work.

If you have slower guys on your team who aren't really hammering out workouts and running relatively low mileage, implementing some lifting is great for overall fitness. They'll also become stronger runners so they can handle the mileage the top guys are running in the future. Still it's more about reps not weight, it'll only start slowing them down if they gain too much muscle weight, at least without aerobically burning calories in the process.

Positive thread with very good answers. All I will add is to assess your athletes and give them what they need. I use NASM's overhead squat assessment and I also have athletes squat on one leg, balance on each leg, hold a plank for as long as possible, do push ups and pull ups or a bar hang.

Favorite strengthening activities with body weight (in no particular order):

* Front Plank (elbows) or Pedestal (hands) (30 - 60 sec repeated 3-5 times through a 20-30 minute routine). Increase difficulty by using one arm and/or one leg at a time.

* Back Plank (elbows) or Pedestal (hands) (30 - 60 sec repeated 3-5 times through a 20-30 minute routine) Increase difficulty by using one arm and/or one leg at a time.

**** I believe it is crucial to monitor these closely and actively correct improper technique on these planks. Too often they become "hangs" where the hips are anywhere but in a constructive position. *****

* Side Plank/Pedestal (20-30 second/side repeated 3-5 times through a routine). Make sure the hips are forward and the head is kept as far from the feet as possible. Variations include lifting the top leg, slowly swinging the top leg forward and backward, and doing side "dips" (increase the amount of time to 30-60 seconds with dips).

* Push-ups (30-60 seconds repeated 3-5 times in a routine with a focus on proper posture not # of reps). Variations include spiderman push-ups where a knee is brought up near an elbow when going down alternating side each time, or holding for 3-5 seconds in the down position.

* Self-Throw Downs (30-60 seconds repeated 2-3 times through a routine). Keep hips on the floor. Pull toes towards shins. Keep legs reasonably straight. Don't let heels hit floor but come within 2-3 inches of the floor. Don't come up higher than you can without bending your knees. Variations include adding scissor motions at the top and or bottom and bringing legs down slightly to the side

* Three-way leg lifts (3 sets of 10-12 on each leg in three positions -(inverted, neutral, everted.). Lay flat on ground with hips vertical. Similar to side planks keep hips forward, feet as far from head as possible. Keep motions slow and deliberate - try to minimize the role of momentum.

** There are many other activities that I include with any combination of the above to keep things fresh, but they aren't as crucial as the ones above **

We do most of the above activities on aerobic/recovery days.

On harder days where we're tearing down the body with harder runs we do routines that may include:

* Speed rope (500-1500 ground contacts depending on ability and week in the cycle, typically before the run during indoor track season)

* Gambetta Leg Circuit:

http://www.functionalpathtrainingblog.com/2010/12/the-gambetta-leg-circuit.html

Don't advance the kids too quickly through the progression. Most will be sore even at the beginning levels. if you don't do this pre-season (during indoor track), I definitely wouldn't introduced it to them once the outdoor season begins. The combination of this routine and hard workouts is incredibly stressful to young runners and you'll have a bunch of very sore/injured kids without the proper build up. This is done after the hard workout once outdoor track starts. During indoor we usually do this before the harder workouts, but there are logistical issues driving that rather than optimizing benefits of the run training.

* Sumo Squats (1-2 sets with 20-40 reps)

* Single Leg Squats/Water Pumps (focus on moving knee over the big toe - don't let it collapse to the inside or outside). I think I got this from a Scott Simmon's book. Have the runner lift one leg behind them and place on a chair/ledge/etc. or have another athlete hold the foot while they squat with the other leg.

* Single leg hurdle walk overs (forward & backward, 2-3 sets of 10-12 with each leg)

* Leg raises with heel drops (1-3 sets of 20-30 reps) Stand with forefoot on a stair and the back half of the foot hanging over a step. Drop down as low as possible and raise up as high as possible. Do these at a moderate tempo but be deliberate with the motion - under control up and down.

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There are certainly strengthening components in many of the dynamic warm-up activities we do as well. Indoor we often spend many consecutive days emphasizing proper mechanics and what we want to accomplish with each motion. In season, we still do mobility activities/warm-ups/drills almost every day.

We change our routine up a bit each year, again to keep it fresh and to incorporate things we might have learned. Last year what we did was similar to what Dathan Ritzenhein does in this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhzzpZVMtl4

I especially like this video because he's in tights with a red line down the side which makes it very easy to identify motions/positions to the kids.

With regard to A skips and B skips it seems like there's a wide variety of styles. I like the following video with English Gardener (I think) and John Smith:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFGw5pTcUl4

While most distance runners may not race with anywhere near that level of range of motion, I think there's a beneficial component to strengthening the hip flexor by going through that range of motion.

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I don't believe that there's an optimal routine for a group, but the best routine is the one that is done. Do what you need to as a coach to avoid activities with poor mechanics or that become drudgery. Change things up regularly. Teach a quick routine (10 minutes) as a fall back that's easily memorized and can always be done even when time is short.

As I'm always looking for good ideas, I look forward to reading other ideas...

Wow good stuff, I have to say as a distance runner I kinda looked forward to doing MORE of this stuff between XC and track.

Because it gets dark at like 4pm and the weather can be pretty terrible, it's a really good time of year to get in more of the ancillary work.

I always found it to be a refreshing change of pace.