Switching to bodybuilding/powerlifting...some thoughts after a few months

And yet here you are, trying to tell runners about CNS fatigue as if none of us knew how to sprint (or knew flying 30's are much less stressful than all-out 100's...)

Anything that departs from functionality is an isolation exercise. Working multiple muscle groups doesn't mean working all relevant muscle groups as they function naturally. Invariably focus shifts to some while others are neglected.

This is besides the more obvious answer to your stupid question, which is that squats and deadlifts isolate the lower body and bench the upper body. Real-life exercises like sprinting, tennis and boxing use the entire body all at the same time.

There's also the problem of symmetry. All your major gym stuff is two-handed, and that's not how it works in real life. You throw with one arm. You box one hand at a time. You run one leg at a time. Symmetric lifts can't work everything they involve, and that's isolation.

That's because I have the balls to use a registered name, which you never will no matter how much time you spend preening and posing in the gym. You're even reduced to using the "i" word on your own troll thread! You're done, I crushed you with just one reply. 0/10.

You\'re right Bad, it takes huge balls to use a random registered name on Letsrun.com. I mean somebody could look at Bad Wigins and ruin your life if they choose. Your entire life is thrown out in the public for everybody to judge when your letsrun screen name is Bad Wigins. Serious question...do you ever look back on your posts and hate yourself? Probably not because you are ballsy enough to register a random name on a message board. That\'s badass.

ergregergregerg wrote:

You speak the truth. It's hard for pure hardcore runners to accept this, but you do speak the truth. I could run a faster 800 off of suicides, pushups, pullups, military press, arms, and deadlifts then i ever could doing traditional running training. BTW suicides are on football field, spring 5m and back, sprint 10m and back, sprint 15m and back, sprint 20m and back) That is one set. You rest till you are ready to sprint ALL -OUT again. If you do not have all out explosiveness left, the workout is over. I am never jogging during suicides. That being said, TO EACH HIS OWN. If you like running, run. If you want to get in the best shape you can possibly get in, don't run so much. Its not as good for you as you think. There ARE much better ways to get in shape.

Call us when you break 3 minutes in the 800.

I won't address the OP since I think a lot of it is nonsense (though some of it is true), but I will say that I think lifting has definitely helped my running. For me, lifting once per week is plenty. Even at that frequency I was able to make massive strength gains every week for the first several months without gaining any weight.

Over the years I have begun to think runners might actually run too much and that it'd be better for many (not all) to only run 70-80mpw and make up the rest with other exercises (bike, swimming, lifting, etc). For me, adding 1hr of lifting per week helped me more than running an additional 10 miles per week after I was up to 80mpw or so. If time and injuries were not issues, I would do more, but that mix worked well for me.

Try sitting in a chair without squatting.

Try picking something up from the floor without deadlifting.

Those movements are two of the most functional and key to quality of life as we age

To say the squat or especially deadlift only works the lower body shows your ignorance. Muscles of the upper body, while not used to create movement, are still contracted very forcefully in both exercises. Even in a good heavy bench you are not just numb from the waist down as you are contracting your hamstrings, glutes, and low back to make a strong stable platform to bench from.

Alan

Had a football player in HS who ran the 200/400 in track. On that training alone...I'd say 10mi a week...he ran 2:09 in the 800 and was a member of our 4x800 team. So his training background was gym work and sprints. You could never run a slow easy run, do nothing but gym work and sprints up to 200m and run a fast 800m.

Alan

Alan

This is besides the more obvious answer to your stupid question, which is that squats and deadlifts isolate the lower body and bench the upper body. Real-life exercises like sprinting, tennis and boxing use the entire body all at the same time.

Wiggins, normally i like your stuff, but this is just plain wrong. If you're using machines to squat or work pecs, then yes, almost pure isolation, but just try doing free weight deep squats with 1.5-2.0X bodyweight and you will be working calve, quads, major glut work, lower back, core, and yes, even my arms are tired, it's not easy stabilizing/balancing that much weight! As other poster mentioned, proper BP requires strong gluteal contraction and upper body stabilization.

But it goes way beyond getting strong, these multi joint exercises stimulate GH and T, which has systemic effects, not localized to the purported "isolated" muscles. More crucially, there are many studies on aging runners and non runners alike where these basic exercises improve running, general day to day functionality, even reducing falls and fractures

Will it help your sprinting, clearly.

Will it help your 10k? Salazar thinks so, he has Rupp and Farah doing a lot of free weight work including squats. Should it be the core/primary part of a runners program? Of course not, distance, intervals, tempos, strides and hill work are key, but as an adjunct, especially for those in the 40+, esp 50+, it can be a benefit to running and general life activities.

Bad Wigins wrote:

There's also the problem of symmetry. All your major gym stuff is two-handed, and that's not how it works in real life. You throw with one arm. You box one hand at a time. You run one leg at a time. Symmetric lifts can't work everything they involve, and that's isolation.

Wigins, after thinking about it more you are right about the one/two hand/leg point. But there are still things that double limb workouts address that is more difficult then single limb.

As for weakness of double limb, bench press is a great example, not that relevant to day to day stuff or sports, only tangentially. It's great for building upper body mass (and all the advantages of that, none of which applies to distance running), but BP is so injury prone that football players are switching to exercises like single arm land mines, or cable work, because this more closely mimics pushing off a defender (or push a door, or shovel snow).

As for legs, great single leg exercises are Bulgarian split squats or even pistol squats (tough!) to work on single leg balance/strength. However, the advantage of traditional squats is that you can load the bar much much higher and recruit more muscle fibers, more GH/T stim, as well as save time.

Not to belabor the point, i forgot to mention other benefit of strength training for older folks: injury prevention, esp if you're doing eccentric work. Even light squats, done at a brisk pace, will eccentrically pull on the hams at bottom of squat, as well as raise heart rate. After my long runs i like to do slow, medium weight single leg hamstring curls, this works (for me) much better than traditional hamstring stretching. Try it!

Cool ... now you have been able to become the "typical elitist bodybuilder" and it really didn't take that long either.

It only took gaining 22 lbs for you to become this sure of yourself?

runningart2004 wrote:

Had a football player in HS who ran the 200/400 in track. On that training alone...I'd say 10mi a week...he ran 2:09 in the 800 and was a member of our 4x800 team. So his training background was gym work and sprints. You could never run a slow easy run, do nothing but gym work and sprints up to 200m and run a fast 800m.

Alan

Alan

You said a fast 800m? We had a guy on our team that ran a :54-55 / 2:02-2:04 400 / 800m as a senior. I like to call him the 7th man on our XC team or "the guy who never ran the 4x400mR or the 4x800mR".

He was too slow.

We had a guy who ran 1:54, a senior who ran 1:56, a junior who ran 1:56 (me) and a 400m runner who ran 1:59. Our reliable alternates ran 2:01 and 2:02. Therefore our friend never got to run on the varsity relay. We ran 7:50.xx and were very disappointed that we didn't break the State Record and the 7:50 barrier. Our State Record is now 7:41 I think, but this was early days.

2:09 was what we ran in workouts when we did 1200, 800, 400, 2 x 200 or 800 plus 6 x 400.

Maybe if our good friend had known about this superior training program for the 800, he would have raised his level to 1:58 at least and made just one of the teams?