High Rep Low Weight "Strength" Training - Has anyone had success?

You lift weights to get strong and/or big. If you want to improve your endurance, run more.

In general I think the other poster is right. You lift for size and/or strength, and you do other endurance related stuff to really build endurance.

That said, over the years I've had a lot of luck doing high rep and high frequency (near daily) practice with certain lifts. Bodyweight stuff, like pushups, pullups, and lunges, work great. I also enjoy work with kettlebells and you can get a lot of strength and endurance with high rep swings and clean and presses and stuff like that.

When you say high rep do you mean like 20 or would you go high as say 50+ on anything

eg: Would you benefit from being able to do 100 squats with a light weight.

I'm just looking at best way to make use of 10-15kg kettlebells and/or bodyweight exercises for lower body. Pistol squat cause me knee pain before so i'm staying clear of that.

High intensity low rep seems to be in vogue now but in the past many runners had success using high volume low intensity protocols. Is it as efficient or effective? Let the experts debate that. However you will have see gains from it as most runners did. Do what you can and congratulations.

Hicham El Guerrouj.

I think the glute guy did research on jane fonda like training vs. heavy weight training and found them to be roughly the same at building butt muscle as doing heavy squats etc. but not as good as doing hip thrusts

Ever try kettle bell swings, 1 legged box squats, rear foot elevated split squats or step ups with your kettlebells? Sets of 30+ swings and 15 to 20 squats work for me.

gunnerdrog wrote:

As the title suggests, has anyone had success strength training this way?

I have another baby on the way so I've left my gym days behind in favour of my daily run/training and some light weights in the play room. I know there's not much strength to be gained via this method but I'm hoping the endurance comes across to my 800. I'm quite big for an 800 runner as is so shedding some muscle up top shouldn't be a problem.

Has anyone used this method throughout a whole season and found it good/bad? What did you do?

I've always been in the belief, as I've been regularly lifting weights since I was 14, high reps low weight isn't necessarily best for athletic function. I guess it's all what you're looking to achieve. I've always understood this approach was more for building muscle aka hypertrophy training, traditionally how body builders train. They don't train to be athletes, more so for show though. Your diet also plays largely into how much mass you can gain too.

I really enjoy seeing more discussions around this, as in endurance running specifically here, there are a lot of varying opinions if it's necessary or not, but talk to any veteran, aging runner..one of their biggest regrets once they're 45 and above was never appropriately strength training. There's an inherent fear and obsession with building the aerobic engine, which is obviously important, but as we age, it needs to become more well rounded.

The amount of weight one lifts is entirely relative, so it's hard to say what's heavy and what's not. Putting in miles is already an endurance workout. I don't care what study says what, or what a "respected" coach preaches about runners not needing to strength train, if every other sport in the world swears by it, I can't fathom how runners can't benefit from it. The hormonal response in the body when strength training is profound as well.

Brett Contreras and others swear by the hip thrust but does the OP want a nice round butt or does he/she want to be a healthy runner?

coach wrote:

Brett Contreras and others swear by the hip thrust but does the OP want a nice round butt or does he/she want to be a healthy runner?

I'm pretty sure having the first is part of the second. All the runner rehab exercises are butt rounders.

gunnerdrog wrote:

When you say high rep do you mean like 20 or would you go high as say 50+ on anything

eg: Would you benefit from being able to do 100 squats with a light weight.

I'm just looking at best way to make use of 10-15kg kettlebells and/or bodyweight exercises for lower body. Pistol squat cause me knee pain before so i'm staying clear of that.

I guess high rep depends on the exercise and how strong you are at it. With pullups, for example, I would get anywhere from 30 to 100 in a day, and about 400 or 500 in a week. So some days might just be two sets of 12-15. But other days I would do as many sets of 8-10 as I could just mixed in around whatever else I was doing.

For whatever reason, high rep squats never worked well for a hip and knee issue I have, so I never did them. But with lunges, I was good. I'd often do sets of 20 or so, and just pile on however many sets felt good.

If you are interested in high rep squats, they could work well for you. Look up the Hindu Squat and the kinds of workouts people work towards with those. I've heard of people working up to 500 continuous squats.

For me, the idea of high rep is about getting a lot of repetitions in, not training to failure but getting close to where things are pretty tough. Take a break (maybe a couple minutes, or maybe a couple hours if the day is busy) and then do more. A lot of military athletes will train this way (particularly old school guys).

As for the kettlebell, I'd recommend starting with at least a 16kg. You'll most likely need a heavier one pretty soon if you use it regularly. For reference I'm a lean, 150 pound 6'1" runner and I pretty much only use the 24 and 32kg bells, though I occasionally drag out my 40kg that I used more regularly when I was primarily a lifter before I got back into running.

Of course, all this starts to stray from 800m running. Will any of this help you? Maybe a little bit. Certainly not as much as training specifically for the 800. But if you want to be pretty solid at the 800, have a weird schedule to work around, and also just want to be relatively strong and healthy, then yeah, approaches like this can be great.

That's interesting alright thanks for that, some good responses thanks

LateRunnerPhil wrote:

Hicham El Guerrouj.

Strength work:

He works on the main muscle groups, but the coach believes in working the small ones as well – those that have major influence in the posture, in a varied way, through the utilization of free weights and special gym apparatus.

During this stage he has done the following exercises:

Half-squat 6 x 20 reps with 25 kg bar

Half-squat 4 x 16 reps with 30 kg bar

Squat 4 x 16 reps with 20 kg bar

In machines/apparatus:

Hamstrings 4 x 16 reps

Quadriceps 4 x 16 reps

Abductors 4 x 16 reps

Adductors 4 x 16 reps

Lunges 4 x 20 reps with 25 kg bar

Step-up 1 x 20 reps with 30 kg bar with each leg

Abdominal 300-400 reps

Back 300-400 reps

I have a coach i'm happy with and we train specifically for the 800. I used to run 400 so I'm well used to spending time in the gym, this is really about transitioning to light weights in my home. I will certainly have to invest in bigger kettlebells. Thanks for the post, good advice

hip thrusts are good for everyone and everything wrote:

coach wrote:

Brett Contreras and others swear by the hip thrust but does the OP want a nice round butt or does he/she want to be a healthy runner?

I'm pretty sure having the first is part of the second. All the runner rehab exercises are butt rounders.

True, but there are more functional exercises for athletes than hip thrusts.

gunnerdrog wrote:

That's interesting alright thanks for that, some good responses thanks

LateRunnerPhil wrote:

Hicham El Guerrouj.

Strength work:

He works on the main muscle groups, but the coach believes in working the small ones as well – those that have major influence in the posture, in a varied way, through the utilization of free weights and special gym apparatus.

During this stage he has done the following exercises:

Half-squat 6 x 20 reps with 25 kg bar

Half-squat 4 x 16 reps with 30 kg bar

Squat 4 x 16 reps with 20 kg bar

In machines/apparatus:

Hamstrings 4 x 16 reps

Quadriceps 4 x 16 reps

Abductors 4 x 16 reps

Adductors 4 x 16 reps

Lunges 4 x 20 reps with 25 kg bar

Step-up 1 x 20 reps with 30 kg bar with each leg

Abdominal 300-400 reps

Back 300-400 reps

FYI, that's not why he ran so fast. You can believe in fairytales if you want. But doing that will do little to nothing to making you a better runner.

You need 1,000 grams of protein a day!

RunningFarts 2019

Just to be clear, high reps is what you do for hypertrophy aka size. Is that what you're after?

https://www.bodybuilding.com/content/high-reps-low-reps-which-rep-scheme-is-best.html

That’s interesting. I have 16, 24, 32 and 40kg kettlebells. I play around with them for strength but have been worried about putting on muscle by having higher reps, even though I can swing the 32 for dozens of reps.

Would I be in danger of putting on weight if I did lots of swings for example?

coach wrote:

True, but there are more functional exercises for athletes than hip thrusts.

It works your glutes and hammies, actual important running muscles. What are your recommended functional exercises?

You could do one arm kettlebell snatches. You can have a kettlebell in each hand and they don't even have to be the same weight if you only snatch one.

A "high weight" low rep body-weight exercise is nordic curls. Strengthen the hammies and increase speed.