Strength and Conditioning For Runners, Plus Habit Tracker

Most of running strength comes from running. Strength is very gradually built during the long runs, while haring up and down the hills, during the short rep speed sessions and in the drills. Your running can also benefit from strength training outside of the runs. You need a strong core to support your posture while running. You need arms and shoulders strong enough to keep pumping all the way through a marathon to keep good running form. So yes, strength and conditioning for runners is useful.

Get the downloadable guide and the habit tracker.

Jump straight to the exercises.

What runners also often forget is that you need your legs to be strong in ways that running doesn’t train. So if you suddenly twist while on a trampoline, you want your legs to be ready for it. Or if you pick up something heavy in daily life, you want your back to cope, rather than failing and putting you out of action for a few weeks. This latter strength can be gained from resistance training such as weight training or body-weight training.

However, strength training requires different recovery systems from aerobic training. Science shows that long aerobic running or short bursts of high intensity running will both inhibit muscle growth activation processes if performed closely either side of resistance training. In the opposing direction, strength training sessions cause glycogen depletion and fatigue that could impede improvements during aerobic sessions.

Therefore it’s important to understand how to fit strength work into your running training so that you actually get some benefits without holding back your running progression.

When to do Strength and Conditioning?

Everyone is different, so you should experiment over time to see what works for you. Here are some guidelines to get you started.

I expect most runners reading this are more focused on running progression then gaining mass. We are looking to add a bit of strength training but still get maximum running gains. In this case, do a fast running session, followed by strength training on the same day. The fast running session will be quality on fresh legs and the strength training will top up strength already gained in the running session. Ideally, make the following day a rest day if possible, or certainly a very easy run day.

If weights are involved, how heavy should I go?

Once you are confident with a movement, you should aim to make the first set heavy with few reps and go lighter on subsequent sets. However, when you first start out with a new exercise, go low weight, high reps so that you can dial in the movement for a couple of weeks.

How many repetitions and sets?

If you could do maximum 6 Press Up in total control, then do 4 (“reps”), then rest for 90+ seconds, before another “set” of 4 reps. More rest time is better than less, to perform the next set well. If you feel ready for a third set, go for it, but best to go easy in the first few weeks while you learn.

Struggling to complete a set of reps? Stop! The risk of injury during a desperate effort repetition is high, because tiredness makes you perform the exercise poorly. Instead, rest and get ready to be strong in the next set with reduced repetitions, or on a different day.

Note that if you do lots of sets, there is more chance your legs will be too sore to run the next day, so adapt the number of sets you do according to how well you recover! Otherwise, your running will suffer.

Guide and Habit Tracker download

Download your Strength and Conditioning Guide and Habit Tracker (press the button below). It’s two pages, so you can print them out and put them on your wall. Tick off the days you’ve done on the Habit Tracker to remind you to keep at it!

Strength and Conditioning exercises for runners

On this page, you’ll find a list of exercises, grouped into three blocks. Pick from one of the blocks on any S&C day. Two days per week will be plenty. Don’t do them at all during race taper weeks.

Each block includes:

• Lower leg
• Upper leg
• Core
• Upper body

Press each exercise name to jump to the detailed explainer video!

#1
Blind Single Leg Balance
Single Leg Hip Pivot & Twist
Plank
Air Traffic Control

#2
Knee Rotations
Single Leg Squats
Superman
Press Ups

#3
Eccentric Heel drops
Wall Hip drive
Deadlift
Bicep Curls

BLOCK #1 EXERCISES

Blind Single Leg Balance

This balance exercise is simple to describe. Stand on one leg and shut your eyes. How long can you last before putting the other foot down? Three seconds? Or 30 seconds?

Use the other leg, plus arms to help you stay upright, but the most important areas to recruit are the ball of the foot, big toe, ankle and knee. If you feel all of these straining and moving, you are working hard.

There is no real way to get this wrong if you have your eyes shut and are standing on one leg!

The benefits of the blind balance are increased balance and Proprioception (for runners, the ability to feel the feet in relation to the ground), especially in the big toe, but also ankle and knee strength.

Single Leg Hip Pivot and Twist

The knee isn’t supposed to twist much. If it does, there is a risk to various knee tendons and the meniscus in the joint. Running is great until suddenly we change direction unexpectedly and nothing is ready for it. To pre-empt this, try the Single Leg Hip Pivot and Twist.

Stand on one leg and tip forwards at the waist, holding the other leg out behind you for balance. Reach down and touch the ground in front of you with the opposite hand in a controlled movement. So if standing on the left leg, use the right hand. Raise back up again. Repeat but touching the ground a little to the right of you and to then to the left of you. You should feel it in the knee and the hamstring.

Whilst it’s not imperative to keep your back straight during this exercise, try it if you can. Performing the exercise too fast is where most people go wrong because the movements become uncontrolled swinging motions at the waist instead of motions of the pelvis controlled by the knee.

The benefits of the pivot and twist are providing knee stabilisation strength in a twisting motion, to lower your injury risk in tight corners or unexpected direction changes. It also provides eccentric loading to the hamstring to reduce tightness and increase strength.

Plank

Runners need a strong core, with abdominal muscles around the stomach and sides of body, along with the back muscles to keep everything controlled while trying lift the legs off the floor and maintain that excellent running form and posture that we’ve been practicing!

The basic front Plank exercise covers all of those. Kneel on the floor and place your forearms flat on the floor in front of you. Try to make your upper arms roughly straight down, perpendicular to the floor, so 90° at the elbow. Straighten your legs so the knees are off the floor – you may need to shuffle your feet forwards or backwards slightly at this point to keep resting straight down on to your elbows. Find neutral position for your shoulders by moving your torso fully up and then fully down and finding somewhere comfy in the middle. Your body and legs should be in a completely straight line. Start counting!

To start with, you may find it hard to do 30 seconds. After a few weeks of trying, you’ll easily do a lot more than that. The world record is more than 8 hours.

Make it easier for yourself by doing it on knees instead of feet if you want.

People get Plank wrong if they either arch the back upwards, or let it droop down underneath.

Air Traffic Control

Your upper back has to support your arm movements during running and keep a great upright posture. To keep the upper back, arms and shoulders in shape, do Air Traffic Control.

Stand with great posture, holding weights or bottles of water. Move your arms in opposing cirles while keeping that posture like a statue. Try a couple in one direction and then a couple in the other, then repeat.

People get this exercise wrong by using weights that are too high and thus losing control of the posture. Start small and work up.

BLOCK #2 EXERCISES

Knee Rotations

Knee Rotations provide similar benefits to the Reaching Twist in terms of knee strength and stabilisation.

It’s very important to get muscle engagement right in this exercise. All the muscles around the knee, above and below it should feel tensed and in control. If you let them relax, you might over-rotate the knee.

Stand with feet in an L-position, so 90° angle between the feet. Hold your arms close to your body so that the core has less work to do. Gently twist left and right a small amount, not to the extreme. Engage and tense the muscles around your knee. Once you feel like you are in control, try twisting a little faster and change direction quickly, without twisting any further. It’s worth saying that again. Twist small amounts quickly. Do not twist large amounts.

Repeat the exercise with feet parallel.

Knee rotations are performed poorly if bouncing off the limits of muscles and tendons at either side. Rotational direction should be changed well before then.

Single Leg Squats

Many people are used to doing squats with both legs, perhaps even holding a weight. However, when running, we only use one leg.

Stand on one leg, with the other leg bent behind you a little. Gently squat down, as if about to sit on a sofa, not as if about to kneel. If you feel you are going to tip backwards, stretch you arms out in front of you for balance. Squeeze your glute muscles as you do it. Note that because you are doing a squat on one leg, suddenly, your bodyweight is worth double, so there’s no need to squat down nearly as far as you would on two legs. You may find that 45° at the thigh is plenty. Then raise back up to a straight leg.

Try to minimise any wobble in the leg, keeping movements super controlled. People get this exercise wrong by losing their posture and curving their back over. Keep that back as straight as possible.

The benefits of the single leg squat are knee and glute strength.

Superman

There’s no point in having strong abs without having a strong back too.
To do the Superman exercise, lay flat on the floor. You might want to use a soft mat for comfort. If you are new to this exercise, raise one arm and the opposite leg, hold for a couple of seconds and lower back down in control. Repeat for the other arm and leg.

If you can easily keep that going for 60 seconds, then it’s time to move on to doing both arms first, again holding for a couple of seconds, lowering in control and then doing both legs. Then repeat.

Finally, after a few weeks of those, attempt both arms and legs at the same time, again holding for a couple of seconds before lowering in control and repeating.

You should feel your glutes go tight while doing the Superman. The benefits are strength for the lower back and glutes.

Press Ups

I’ll cover two types of Press Ups. Tricep Press Ups are done with hands close to the body. Wide stance Press Ups are done with hand placed wide apart. For this demonstration, I’m using hand grips because I messed up my wrists in a motorbike accident.

For the Tricep Press Up, lie on the floor face down and place the hands flat on the floor close to your chest. Push the body up, keeping the body super straight. Lower the body down again. The exercise works the triceps a lot.

For the Wide stance Press Up, lie on the floor face down and place the hands flat on the floor at chest level, but away from the body so that the elbows are above the hands. Push the body up and lower it again. This exercise works the chest a lot.

People get Press Ups wrong by bending the body or doing more than they are capable of to remain in control of the shoulder blades. If you don’t feel in control, stop immediately.

Make them easier for yourself by doing them on knees instead of feet if you want.

The benefits of Press Ups are that you have to move your arms while running, driving the elbows back with the shoulders. It also balances out back strength.

BLOCK #3 EXERCISES

Eccentric Heel Drops

To perform the Eccentric Heel Drop, find a step and stand on the edge with just the toes. Raise up on both feet, go down slowly on one foot. Hold it at the bottom for a second. Put the other foot back on before you come up, so you are using both to come up. So it’s always easy up on both, harder on the way down on one foot.

If you get Plantar Fasciitis, also do some where you lean to outside of the foot that is lowering, so if the right foot is lowering, lean to the right a little.

People get Eccentric Heel Drops wrong by lowering down too quickly. It should be something like counting slowly out loud 1, 2, 3, 4 HOLD.

The benefits of Eccentric Heel Drops are calf strength, balance, coordination, plus lengthening tight calf muscles. It’s an essential exercise for all runners.

There’s a whole article about Eccentric Heel Drops here. These can be done on a few days a week if you want.

Wall Hip Drive

To perform the Wall Hip Drive, lean a forearm against a wall, with body positioned so that if you were to walk forwards, you’d walk next to the wall, not away from it. Take the inside foot off the floor and let you pelvis relax, sagging down as far as it will go. Prod the side of your glutes on the outside cheek – it should feel soft and relaxed. Now, with brilliant upright posture, drive the pelvis in towards the wall and upwards, lifting the raised leg. Prod the side of your glutes again – it should feel tight and engaged. Lower back down again in a controlled manner and repeat.

People get this wrong by letting their posture sag when their pelvis drops. Keep a strong upright posture throughout.

The benefit of the Wall Hip Drive is Glute Medius strength, which is the muscle you were prodding. You use it all the time to move your hips from side to side with every step while running during Knee Drive and Triple Extension. However, many runners have weak Glute Medius so don’t use it enough. Try the Marching A Drill again now. If the Glute Medius is soft during that drill, engage it to recruit a little more pelvis movement.

Deadlift

If you don’t have dumbbells, get some large empty milk bottles and fill them with water instead. Each litre = 1KG. You could hold a couple in each hand.

Place the weights on the floor slightly wider than shoulder width apart. With straight back and head up, bend the knees and waist, hold the weights with straight arms, pull the shoulders back. Then lift the weights off the floor by standing up straight. Don’t lean back at the end.

The benefits of Dead Lifts are strength in lower back and legs. The lower back is a common injury in daily life, perhaps when picking up something heavy, so strengthening this area reduces your risk of being out of action due to non-running injury.

If you have super tight hamstrings and find this exercise too hard to perform with a straight back, try Eccentric Sits. Stand up straight with a chair behind you. Keeping that back straight and shoulders back, lean forwards at the waist a little until you feel your hamstrings go tight. Then sit down super slowly by bending the knees.

Bicep Curls

You have to keep your arms bent while running. The fitter and further you run, the longer you have to keep them there, moving back and forth.

Stand tall, with elbows by your hips. Then curl the forearms upwards without allowing the elbows to move away from the hips. Curl down again in control. Repeat.

You can use band for bicep curls, or you can use weights or water bottles.

BONUS EXERCISE – PULL UPS

Pull Ups are great for the back and upper body, but they didn’t get included because not everyone has access to a pull up bar. For those that want to get one and incorporate it, here’s the video.

If you can get hold of a safe pull-up bar or visit one at a local park, Pull Ups are great for upper back and arms.

If you can’t do any Pulls Ups, this is quite common. Instead use a step or chair to start at the top with elbows bent and hands gripping the bar either palms towards you or away. I suggest starting with a narrow grip rather than a wide grip. Lower yourself down as slowly and controlled as possible. If you can pull yourself up again, then great.

People get this exercise wrong by doing too many. There’s large risk and little point in straining your whole body to get the final pull up in. You should stop before that one.

The benefits of Pulls Ups are arms and back strength. The back muscles hold your posture in place, so your running form can stay stronger for longer.