Weight training for older runners (ages 50 and up)

fisky wrote:

What's a good weight routine for the 400m and 800m?

Should weight training be on hard running days or recovery days? I've seen both ways recommended.

Should weight training be low reps, high weight or high reps, low weight? Again, I've seen both recommended. Should I alternate days and do both? Currently, I do high reps, low weight.

How should you feel after a weight routine? This may sound like an odd question, but I feel entirely different after a weight routine versus an interval workout. After intervals, I'm often wasted for the rest of the day, but an hour after my weight routine, I feel like I could do it again. Does that mean I'm lacking volume? (It's not intensity, because the intensity is there.)

Generally speaking, you want low reps, big weight. Your goal should be to improve your ability to generate power while running.

What is your current weight routine? I am an 50+ 800/1500M runner. My routine for legs includes:

1) leg presses as an alternative to squats (the bar is not comfortable for me)

2) deadlifts (start from top, "arched back" slightly bent knees, bar to midpoint of shin)

3) hamstrings

4) quads

5) calf raises

6) other exercises worked out with my trainer and physical therapist to keep me fast and healthy

I do this twice a week during the off season, once a week during the track season. It is hard for me to run the day after I do a weight workout.

It is not just the weights and the reps that matter, but the pace and how you do them. If you go too fast through the exercises, you can cheat by using your momentum to lift a higher weight and you can work in a range that is not beneficial to your joints (starting at the wrong point of the range, hyperextending).

I'm only 48-and-three-quarters so this may just go horribly wrong in just over a year. But here's what works well for me. It's called "Easy Strength" and based on what the Russians found actually worked for athletes (not bodybuilders) over several decades.

1. Do some light exercises every day taking all your joints through a full range of movement. This could be a good warmup, or at another time of day.

2. Pick a handful of exercises that require strength. Do them 5x per week

- no more than 10 reps per day. 2x5, 5-3-2, 3x3, that kind of thing

- start light. Get used to doing it daily. There should be NO fatigue; if there is, do it lighter.

- On days where the bar feels light, add some weight

Good routines include

- deadlift and press (that's the Barry Ross / Allyson Felix routine) - needs a big bar

- power cleans or romanians + front squats + overhead press + pullups - all works with a medium bar

- single leg deadlifts + single leg squats + pullups + one arm press. Works with a pair of dumbells

Do not bother worrying about when to time your lifts around your sessions. The power of the "daily habit" is far more significant. You promise yourself to show up; you do not promise to lift any particular weight. On the days when your legs are tired from training, a few light reps is a great tonic.

Get over to the Dan John forum and you will find a bunch of guys discussing how to combine strength with growing old, running and many other sports. They are unfailingly polite and helpful, unlike LRC sometimes.

http://www.davedraper.com/fusionbb/showforum.php?fid/73/

Good luck!