Strength Training: The Missing Piece in Your Running Routine

Strength and conditioning coach Alycia Carrillo shares how proper strength training can transform your running performance and help prevent common injuries while adapting to individual preferences and lifestyles.

• Growing up as the daughter of a track coach who specialised in distance events
• Transitioning from collegiate long jump to strength coaching after a career-ending back injury
• Adapting coaching methods from elite athletes to everyday runners with busy lives
• Finding what training elements clients enjoy to build consistency and motivation
• Creating personalised programs that play to individual strengths rather than forcing traditional approaches
• Understanding the physiological benefits of strength training for runners, including improved tendon resilience
• Developing better running economy and muscle fiber recruitment through strategic strength work
• Balancing strength training volume throughout a marathon training cycle
• Adjusting expectations and training loads for clients with full-time jobs and families
• Using data and communication to track progress and make adjustments

Check out next week's episode for part two of our conversation with Alicia, where we'll dive deeper into strength training for runners.

Alycia Carrillo Website

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Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Alicia Carrillo
• 2:10 Growing Up in Athletics
• 4:40 From College Athlete to Coach
• 9:00 Coaching Philosophy and Approach
• 14:00 Creating Wins for Client Success
• 19:00 Benefits of Strength Training for Runners
• 22:50 Balancing Running and Strength Training
• 28:00 Personalizing Training for Busy Lives
• 31:30 Episode Summary and Preview

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

So you're thinking about running, but not sure how to take the first step. My name is Brian Patterson and I'm here to help. Welcome to Brian's Rompod. Well, hey there, everyone, welcome back to another episode of Brian's RunPod. And it's me, your host, brian Patterson, and this is the place where we dig into everything that makes us stronger, smarter and better runners.

Speaker 1: 0:40

Now we all know that running isn't just about putting one foot in front of the other. If you really want to stay injury-free, build endurance and keep smashing those PBs, you've got to have a solid strength and conditioning routine backing you up. Well, today you're in for a treat, and that's because we have Alicia Carrillo I think I've spelt that correctly, the surname you can correct me Alicia later and she's a strength and conditioning coach who works with athletes of all levels. She's passionate about helping runners, helping us unlock that extra gear through smart and effective training, and in this conversation, we'll dive into why strength matters for runners and the common mistakes many of us make, and some practical tips you can start using the right way to support your running journey. Also, she's worked in a restaurant, so we may even get some cocktail tips or how to serve whatever. So, anyway, without further ado. I just want to welcome Alicia to the podcast. Welcome. I just want to welcome Alicia to the podcast. Welcome, thank you. I like to be a little bit different on here.

Speaker 2: 1:52

Yeah, I like that. That might be my first standing ovation Great.

Speaker 1: 1:56

Excellent. Well, thank you very much. Into exercise when you're in high school. I know I was listening to one of your podcasts. Uh, from that you've been a guest on another one and I know you said that your mom was a athletics coach. That's right. So did that kind of translate itself into yourself when growing up?

Speaker 2: 2:27

yeah, absolutely. Um, you know she, she coached track and field my whole childhood, from the adult or the high school level to what we have in the united states here community college, like a junior college and then she she worked at the university level as well at one point. But I joke around that, you know, I grew up in the sand pit so she would bring me to track practice and I would play there and her athletes were my babysitters. And you know that was my world. My brother and I were always very into sport, very into athletics in general, and it kind of just was more happenstance that track was what I ended up being the best at as far as sports went. If I could have picked, I would have chosen soccer or, as you call it, football. But you know, we all have our strengths and so you know, much to my mother's chagrin. I wanted to be a sprinter. I did not want to do any type of endurance running.

Speaker 2: 3:31

I wanted nothing to do with that, but her, you know, her influence certainly is the reason why I was so into sport and eventually pursued track and field.

Speaker 1: 3:43

So did she teach? Was she teaching distance events or was she teaching field events? She was teaching distance events.

Speaker 2: 3:50

She was distance. So, yeah, so she was a cross country track coach and she specialized in endurance distance events, so she always wanted me to do it and it took many years before I finally was like you know what? I'll take a crack at it. Is there a bit of a Southern twang there with your, with your accent? Uh, you know, people comment on my accent a lot, but I, I grew up in California, okay, but then I've spent. I've spent the last 10 years in the south and I grew up in a very agriculture town in California.

Speaker 2: 4:24

So I think, I get a little bit of that California girl, but with a southern play.

Speaker 1: 4:31

So you from there, so from high school, you were quite strong in track and field. So did that translate field. So did that translate? Did you think, well, automatically you'd be doing the same when you were going to college or slash university. Is that the sort of path you've chosen yourself?

Speaker 2: 4:57

Not exactly so. When I first went to university, I prioritized academics more so than athletics, and so I ended up going to the University of Southern California, which is a prestigious on to the track team, and for those of your listeners who aren't familiar.

Speaker 2: 5:28

you have scholarship athletes who are recruited by the coaches into the program, and then you often have walk-ons who basically show up and they're like, hey, I want to spot to like yeah, and you can even have recruited walk-ons, meaning the coach wants you to be on the team but they don't have a scholarship, they don't have money available, so and that's just getting into american sport a little bit.

Speaker 2: 5:52

But I ended up walking on non-recruited and got a spot on the team and I specialized in long jump while I was there and and I spent two years on the team before I had a back injury that pretty much put a cap on my career. Essentially, During that time I kind of realized I didn't want to go the journalism path. I wanted to get more into sport and with the back injury I really I wanted to make sure that athletes didn't have the experience that I had, where they felt like something that was maybe preventable and I use that loosely, because how preventable is injury really, so multifaceted In my mind. I wanted to make sure the athletes you know that they felt they did everything in their power to have the longevity of career and success in their career that they wanted, and so that's when I started to pivot toward that strength and conditioning realm.

Speaker 1: 6:50

Obviously you know, going from probably what your, what the knowledge that you had growing up with your mom, and was that quite sort of an easy transition to make to, to to sort of you know academically, you know strength and conditioning, or was it kind of like, were there any sort of preconceptions that you had that were kind of you know you had to kind of relearn things?

Speaker 2: 7:17

Yeah, I mean I would say that you know, we look at strength and conditioning coaches, but most of them are heavy on the strength and not really on the conditioning, and it's only been in the last 10, 15 years that there's been a little bit more of an emphasis on that aspect of it. And you know, that's primarily applying to like field sport and sports like volleyball, basketball, but with my mom. But then you have the opposite side, right. So you have my mom, who was a runner and a coach her whole, a track and field coach, cross country coach her whole life, and they don't touch a lot of strength at all, and so it's kind of like this marriage of the two worlds that I really had to. You know, I would take things from what she had taught me and then I would take things from what I knew. But it's like you can't just add two and two together, you have to like pull back. It's, you know, it's coming up creating that harmony of volume across the board when you blend the two.

Speaker 2: 8:24

So, it was both.

Speaker 1: 8:25

It was it was learning through the books, but it was more so learning through coaching right, you know putting people through it and seeing like what worked, what's too much, what's too little, so on so, transitioning from that and because obviously you went into online coaching um, probably I don't know one-to-one type stuff so what were the sort of common misconceptions that people had when they came to you?

Speaker 2: 8:58

So, yeah, I mean I spent the first part of my career working in person, so I worked at different universities with their strength and conditioning programs and then eventually transitioned online. Just for a few reasons, but one of them being so that I could serve more people.

Speaker 2: 9:23

I mean there's things online that are a lot more challenging than they are in person. So, for example, if I'm putting you through a track session, I have the immediate feedback of hey, we need to pull back your pace, we need to extend your rest period, you can go faster, let's add on one more interval. You don't get that online, so you get the feedback afterward. Um, and, and that's if they give you the feedback, and so that's been a learning. A learning curve for me is like I now have a process where I'm like hey, you have to check in with me. It's mandatory, it's part of the coaching container, cause I can't help you if you're not telling me what's going well, what's not going well, if the volume feels appropriate, so on and so forth. I work with women, primarily women, of all backgrounds and goals. Not all of them are runners, but a good portion of them either came to me as runners or they've kind of like caught the bug and they're like getting interested and oh, I want to train for a 5k or a half marathon.

Speaker 1: 10:28

So it's been fun to play with but I know, when I was listening to that podcast because I know you though you kind of did gave a sort of timeline of your, uh, your coaching, and I know you kind of stepped out of it and then went back into it, but I didn't I know that you were dealing with people well, sort of collegiate athletes, so obviously it wasn't like you were having to. How did that? What do they say? Telling your grandmother to suck eggs, as it were? I don't know if you've had that phrase in the US, but I mean it's like you know, so they know, you know they're athletes, and so it's a very different approach, whereas I know you say you train women. I mean, I know you've got some sort of men on your books, but what was the difference in terms of the approach? Or did you have to sort of change gear?

Speaker 2: 11:24

oh, I mean, yeah, it's night and day and I, fortunately, I had the experience to work with, you know, as we say, general population, so non non-facilites in like a fully competitive sense, in person, and so I got to see what that looked like firsthand, and I'm glad I did, because I think if I had gone straight online from being in collegiate athletics, I mean, my expectations would have been inappropriate, essentially, like because when you are working with athletes, like you said, they know they're athletes, they know they have to do x, y and z and there's not a lot of back and forth.

Speaker 2: 12:04

It's also part of their, you know, job in a way yeah yeah, when you're with regular people, they have so many other things going on, um, so really like the biggest thing that I had to work with is, you know, people's preconceived beliefs about certain things, and it's again they're not athletes who are required to show up to train with me from 3 to 4 pm, so I can't just say I don't care what you think you're doing or you're not going to get a play.

Speaker 2: 12:38

You know, like there's more discourse and I have always tried to be an understanding, empathetic person but much more discourse and much more working with their preferences and their personality, which I honestly think people could do more in the world of athletes as well, count, um, playing more to their strengths because you want to build those wins for them. Um, instead of just like it's less diagnostic, it's less like this is what you're good at, this is what you're not good at, this is what we're going to work on, and more like how can I get you to like feel good, to create belief in yourself, to show you the process is working, and so on and so forth what would you say were the key points, that sort of underpinned you know those, those clients, to make them achieve, guess there's some way to achieve their goals.

Speaker 1: 13:37

I mean, either you know to create that self-belief that you know, know, because sometimes it can be, you know, quite frustrating. You know, here I am, I'm employing a coach, or whatever I've been, I know it could be trying to lose weight or improve performance or get the most out of life.

Speaker 2: 13:56

I think, probably the biggest.

Speaker 1: 13:58

Go ahead, go ahead, yeah.

Speaker 2: 14:00

Probably the biggest Go ahead, Go ahead. Yeah, I was just going to say I think the biggest one is again like stacking those wins by playing up their strengths, and so I really learned this from what probably the first client I worked with that got me into coaching runners because she was actually in the military.

Speaker 2: 14:19

All right because she was actually in the military and she was worried about passing her PT test for the Marines and specifically the running aspect of it All right and a lot of what held her back was mental and not physical, and so I learned through coaching her and she still works with me to this day. It's been five years at this point, and she still works with me to this day it's been five years at this point but I learned that I had to dose those wins in for her. So she's a power athlete, like she's strong and she's fast. She doesn't enjoy the 5K which is what they do in the Marines of, you know, just grinding it out for 20 plus minutes. And so I did a lot of speed work with her because I mean one, it was going to help, but also she was good at it and she enjoyed it, and then I could kind of just like taper down the rest periods in between.

Speaker 2: 15:15

So we're still getting that like endurance stimulus without fully being like, yeah, we're going to go do a tempo run or something. And we still did that stuff, you know, because we needed to. But it's really just, you know, picking the things that they're good at and then picking things that are fun too, that you know are still helpful. So we did a lot of agility drills together, a lot of plyometrics, things like that. So just bringing some of that like game factor, enjoyment factor into it.

Speaker 1: 15:47

So do you think? Let's say, just as a summary and a takeaway, let's say, supposing you weren't employing your own coach like me, for instance, I don't have my own coach it is to take the things that you enjoy first and then maybe sprinkle it with maybe these other things, but try, you know the emphasis more on sort of the aspects of the exercise or training and try to sort of enjoy that you know.

Speaker 2: 16:22

Make that fun and enjoyment, and then you can sort of achieve those small goals yeah, absolutely, and I think that's where a lot of people miss is that you know they say give me a plan, give me a template, give me the best way, and they don't take themselves into account or their personalities. And so that's what I'm looking for when I'm working with people is like, hey, we got to talk about like what do you enjoy? What do you like doing? What is fun for you? Is it doing like fartlek runs?

Speaker 2: 16:55

you know, where you get to like play with pace, is it like a fast finish. And it's like you know, if I were to sit down and consider all the literature and, you know, learn from the best coaches and write the best program, it's probably not going to match up to the program. That's going to that. You're going to stick to Um and that's the most important thing, because you're not going to get results if you don't do it Right. So it's it's. How do we, how do we make it enjoyable, enjoyable, how do we stack those wins to get you showing up? And then you're getting more results and then it's like, okay, now let's like sprinkle in some of the stuff that we might not be that good at or isn't as fun. Like you know, for me, I hate a threshold workout like I. I hate it I always but I'll do it yeah.

Speaker 1: 17:41

I always. I'm very much into I don't know if you've heard of this NLP, but it's kind of like neurolinguistic programming. I'm very much an image person and I pretty much see training as a plate of food and it's like I've been getting over an injury, been talking about my injury in the podcast for months, but it's like my favorite friend. So I've been getting over an injury. I've had a physio give me like a particular training program and it's like right, I want to eat my vegetables first because I like the others, I have the first because I don't like the vegetables and I'll try other things. Or, you know, even now I'm not a great fan of plyometrics because it just seems like so I might just do sprinkle that in. Do you think that's quite a good approach?

Speaker 2: 18:37

Yeah, I mean, I think that's a great way to look at it, you know and knowing yourself too, and that's like a big part, because there are some people that are like I'm going to eat the good stuff first and then. I'll eat the vegetables at the end. But there's other people that like know, and I'm like you. I'm like I got to get the vegetables out of the way, so I can really enjoy the rest of this meal enjoy the rest of this.

Speaker 2: 19:05

Yeah, um. So looking at your training that way, and that's when I say to people all the time, when they're like, well, should I lift or should I I run or do my cardio first, if they're, you know, having to pair them in the same session I'm like do the one that you hate most first, because then you can get it over with, instead of, you know, dreading it through the whole session.

Speaker 1: 19:24

So, on a general basis, what would you say are the benefits of strength and conditioning for runners?

Speaker 2: 19:36

I mean there's so many but one. I use the term injury prevention loosely because, like I said, we can't really predict or prevent injury. There's so many things that tie into it. It can be if you're not sleeping well, your stress is high, those factors but we can still do as much as we can to make our bodies resilient. So the injury prevention in that sense of creating thicker, stiffer and more responsive tendons A lot of runners deal with tendonitis, whether that's patellar tendonitis, achilles, things like that, and a lot of that comes from, you know, just doing the same thing repetitively and not adding in anything to strengthen those tissues, anything to strengthen the muscle around those tendons.

Speaker 2: 20:27

So that's a huge benefit. The second one is it's going to make you a better runner, and I kind of caveat this because it's like it might not make you a better runner right away. And I think this is where a lot of runners kind of you know runners fall off and they're like I don't want to do that Because they might add in some strength training and then see their running performance decline a little bit. But it's like that's normal because you have to have an adaptation period. You push through that, an adaptation period.

Speaker 2: 21:01

If you push through that and if you're doing it correctly, if you're balancing the volume correctly, your running economy is going to improve. Your nervous system will be able to recruit fibers muscle fibers more efficiently and effectively, and then in turn you're going to be more efficient, so the fatigue will set in later and it'll be less, and you'll also be more powerful and have better endurance, so you're more resilient. You've developed your type two fibers, so our muscles have a couple different fiber types. Our type two are more of our powerhouse fibers, so those stronger muscles are going to generate force more effectively, and so when your running economy improves, you're generating less waste.

Speaker 1: 21:44

So it's like everything becomes more efficient and more effective say, the type of clients you deal with, because obviously people who are collegiate level, then they've got time, they can really have a really structured thing. So, with someone who's online, who has either a family, work or whatever, do you get them to do the strength that's included? As for the safe, for instance, three times a week they're doing so you do. Do you get them to do the strength with their running or do you say, well, look, you're going to be doing. I'm sort of taking, uh, someone who is a runner looking to improve their performance and as a kind of you know person, for argument's sake, so, um, and then sort of do sort of twice, twice a week, strength training on top of that, or can they do it with the running as well?

Speaker 2: 22:56

I better explain that so yeah, I mean, you know, I, I it depends, okay. So I mean that's like everyone's answer, right, but um, it depends on what their goal is and what they're training for and where they are in that training period.

Speaker 2: 23:13

If I have somebody who's just like a recreational, who is like yeah, just kind of do it for fun, I might sign up for a race like on a whim here and there. Then we're gonna go more toward like a three times a week strength training. Um, if, especially if they're, like you know, on the lower mileage side, if I have somebody who's in marathon training, I'm probably going two times a week and even maybe half marathon training two times a week, 30 minute sessions, 30 to 45 minutes, and that's earlier on in their, in their training period, once they get a little bit closer and that mileage starts to bump up because, remember, we're dealing with real people here, Like, again, we're not dealing with athletes who have all the time in the world.

Speaker 2: 24:01

I'm thinking of a client right now who's training for the New York Marathon and she has a business, she has two children, she's in her 40s, full plate. We're not doing 60, 70 miles per week. It's just not realistic. So it's we're taking the most conservative approach that we can, while still, you know, getting her to her goal of doing this marathon. And so for her, you know, we've done around 25, 30 miles a week, which to some people might be like, oh my gosh, that's nothing.

Speaker 2: 24:34

But it's like, again, you have to, you have to factor in these people's lives. And in the beginning, you know, for months and months, we did two times a week strength training. Now we're approaching the race, our volume, our running volume, has gone up a little bit, so we're pulling back on the strength volume and that can start off as being like we're doing two sets instead of three for our two workouts and then it'll eventually go into hey, your day two is optional. And then when we get closer to race, like we're just doing one session a week because we're not trying to achieve any strength adaptations at that point, we're really just trying to keep the tissue healthy and happy, so so I don't know if that answered your question.

Speaker 1: 25:15

Yeah, no it does um, because it was kind of something I haven't talked about is and with you know, anyone who does this before is kind of that periodization. I was going to ask you about that periodization and you kind of encapsulated that very well with your client Because it is a in that instance, in that particular example. There you're looking at someone who's training for, or has a goal to do, the New York Marathon, but over that time there are periods where the strength training is going to either be more intense and then less intense come nearer the race itself.

Speaker 1: 26:04

But I was just interested there that I know you use a particular coaching athlete app, don't you? So you can see what she's doing, what she's doing, um, and and then you know. From that, do you? You do you get a sense of where she's at in terms of achieving, you know, or not achieving the goals, but where she has within, within the training?

Speaker 2: 26:33

yeah, absolutely so. I use um. Well, I have two apps because I'm sort of in the process of transitioning, but the one I use for they're all pretty similar. I use TrueCoach and I use EverFit, but essentially, you know, it's not like live training, we're not on like a video together.

Speaker 1: 26:52

Push one more yeah.

Speaker 2: 26:56

Well, a lot of people think that's what online coaching is they're like okay, so you're just on like Zoom all the time. I'm like absolutely not, that sounds terrible.

Speaker 1: 27:04

Yeah, she's holding the phone. Someone's holding the phone for her? Yeah.

Speaker 2: 27:09

So you know if it's strength training, she has her exercises. There's video to show her. You know what?

Speaker 1: 27:16

to do.

Speaker 2: 27:17

There's instructions, there's places for her to write feedback and for the running. Obviously she doesn't need a video. She knows what running is yeah but yeah. So she's great. She's like my perfect client because she's such a over communicator um right where she'll write in you know paragraphs and she'll even be like I'm so sorry, I wrote so much and I'm like no, this is fantastic, like I need, I want all of this context, and she'll send me screenshots from her garmin data okay because that's something that's important for me to be able to look at.

Speaker 2: 27:55

You know her heart rate. Are we trending kind of in the right direction? I'm not too big on like really specific heart rate training, but I want to see like a trend over time, like if on all of your quote-unquote easy runs you're at like 180, like we probably need to like have a conversation about your perceived exertion.

Speaker 1: 28:20

But also sorry to cut in, but also time trials. So you know she's done a particular 5K or I don't know, 10k run at X date and then she does it at another one, y date, same route. Then you can tell you know if the heart rate's down, then you can see that she's got fitter. Yeah, and the right, and then it's.

Speaker 2: 28:46

it's taking into account, like all the environmental factors too, though I mean, as you know, I mean training in the summer there's a lot more stressors, especially if you're hotter parts of the world, so it's seeing like, okay, our heart rate might be the same at the same pace and workout, but the last time you did it was March, when it was cool.

Speaker 1: 29:08

And then you did it again in August, when it's hot.

Speaker 2: 29:11

So you really have made an improvement, even if it doesn't look like it on paper. And just being you know, I mean mean training for a marathon is a grind like it is, it can be. It's really grueling, especially when you're, you know, working full-time, parenting, all of that, and so just keeping keeping them motivated and like I love having that data to like find the wins, even when it was maybe not a great workout. Um, like the things we can, we can look at and kind of improve on I mean you.

Speaker 1: 29:44

You raised there a really good point that I just thought about is that that that person is she. She, like you said, she runs a business, she has her own kids and she's obviously very analytical type of person and that's the type of person that she is. So you kind of knew, you knew, you knew what you were going to get. Um, when you, you know, you knew that she was going to be quite detailed in terms of the feedback. So, um, and I suppose with other clients, um, you're, you're having to adapt yourself, know how to adapt their, you know their training goals and whatever and sort of your expectations I think that's probably the better word as to what they're going to be feeding back. Is that correct?

Speaker 2: 30:35

Yeah, absolutely, yeah, absolutely. Um, and you know it's like a double-edged sword, because usually the ones that are over communicated, over communicative, are a bit more like type a, so they're also going to be the ones that analyze their performance more and kind of work themselves up a little bit more. So it's like, yeah, it's, it's, I mean, it's a good thing, I love it, but it's also, yeah, important for me to recognize, hey, this person is giving me this information, not just so I can have it and help them training wise, but also so that I can give them, you know, I can reassure them, if I need to, that they're trending in the right direction. I, I can give them places, you know, to make little tweaks. Like for her, fueling has been like a really big challenge for us over the last few months. So, like, just trying to like nail that in and, you know, being like, hey, it's okay that you felt kind of bad on this 13, 15 mile run because you ran out of water at mile nine, like what did you think was going to happen?

Speaker 1: 31:42

What's an episode? In summary, alicia has shared practical approaches to balancing strength work with running training for busy people, juggling careers, families and training goals. She has also told us about the benefits of strength training and is something we have covered many times on this podcast. As is normal on Brian's RunPod, I split her interview into two episodes, so don't forget to look out for part two next week or, if you're listening to this in the future, look out for both episodes in the catalogue. Anyway, till next week. Bye for now.