The 4 Pillars of Strength Training ⎹ Ep 143

In this episode, Dr. Lisa explains the breakdown of everything runners need to be doing outside of running and in their strength workouts in order to run faster, further and prevent injuries.

Here is what you will learn:

• The 4 pillars of strength training and which pillars most runners miss
• How to decrease your risk for injury in your training plans and strength workouts while building endurance, speed and strength
• How building strength will translate into you running
• Complete Runners Club: Includes runners strength, rehab, running plans and direct access to a Physical Therapist

Questions? Email: Drlisadpt@gmail.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome back to the Rehab for a Nurse podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Lisa, and I am almost five months postpartum. And I, you know, maybe I'll regret saying this and I will be jinxing myself, but I feel like Colby and I are somewhat getting the hang of taking care of another human being. It does help that she is out of her first sleep regression. It did not help that we moved during her sleep regression, and it also did not help that she decided to pop two teeth out during her sleep regression. So there was a period where we were just running off coffee, to be honest, and it was a little rough. But we're back. We're back, and I already know there's gonna be another sleep regression in a couple weeks. So that's going to, that's really going to just suck. But for now, we're good. And in terms of like self-care and running, struggling. I'm struggling. I will say, I think the hardest part about running is that initial like one to two months where maybe you took a break or decreased your mileage and you are trying to build your endurance. There is truly nothing harder than building your endurance when it's shot and you just like feel like you don't have any. I think that is very difficult. But to me, it's almost like once you get the hang of it and you've like started some momentum with building your endurance, it's not as bad. Now it obviously doesn't help that it's hot and humid. And you know, if you're exhausted and you're tired and all that, like that doesn't help either. But I'm hoping that this next month will be better in terms of my endurance because it is mentally very hard to be like, all right, running like two to three miles feels hard. When I've run three marathons, like I hate to compare myself to how I used to be and like my mileage, but right now it just feels hard. And that's okay. That's just the season I'm in, and I've just accepted that. But you know what I've been enjoying since we moved. I I like really wanted a garage gym. So I've really been enjoying strength training, and I think all runners need to be strength training. I think there's grown some, you know, strength training has grown some popular, it's it's becoming a lot more popular. I think runners are realizing, like, hey, I can't only run. Social media is definitely playing a big part of that in terms of education for runners, but I also think runners, like once they're doing it and they are strength training, they're realizing, wow, I actually feel a lot stronger. Or, you know, I was able to not get injured as much during this training block because I prioritize my strength training. I did two strength workouts a week. And that's really like if I was training for a race, which I guess I I guess I am because I did sign up for the Richmond half this fall. Not 100% in training right this second, but if I were to be in training right this second, and maybe I need to take that a little more seriously, but if I were to be full on in training for a race this fall, I would prioritize two full body strength routines for the week. And they could literally be 30 minutes long, they do not have to take hours. You could do them at home. You could, if you have set up dumbbells and resistance bands, like you can get a good solid workout done in 30 minutes. I remember when I first started running, I was very intimidated by like what do I do? And I would do a leg day and an arm day and a full body day and a hit workout day, and then I'd try to jam in my half marathon training, and I ended up injured because I was just trying to do all the things. I was trying to get stronger, I was trying to get faster, I was trying to increase my endurance, and it was just such a flop. Like I remember being so exhausted during my runs, and my runs felt so hard. I was also probably running too fast, but they felt so hard because my strength workouts were an all or nothing. Like I was like basically lifting such heavy weight, and then you know, DOMS happen, delayed onset muscle soreness happens, and you're super sore after. And then, you know, if you're super sore during a run, like we've all been there, and it sucks. It sucks. So I learned my lesson. I really learned that, you know, focus on one thing. You can still strength train and you can still have a good workout, even if your priority is to build endurance. I think the whole idea is that you're in tune with how much weight you're lifting, you're in tune with how your body feels, you're making sure the last couple reps don't feel impossible. There's still that moderate challenge. So when I'm creating a strength workout for runners, there's four things I consider. I call these my pillars of strength training because that's just how I organize it in my head. But you could literally just call it like it could just be a checklist for you. And I think these pillars are important because I think of them as like all the things we need to do outside of running. And it's pretty cool that it can be broken down into two different things. One is your, you know, your dynamic warm-up and your post-run mobility. That could literally be five-minute warmup and five-minute post-run mobility. You know, we don't have a ton of time. Running and the things you do outside of running should not be a full-time job. Now, if you're in marathon training, you know, running may feel like a full-time job, but the things you do outside of running should not feel like a full-time job. So you have your dynamic warm-up, you have your post-run mobility, five minutes each. Literally, that's it. That's all you need. If you want longer, go for it, but that's all you need. Now, the other part is your strength workouts. So we have mobility as one pillar, and I'll get into it and what you can do. But the other three pillars can be done with your strength workouts. This is your stability work, your strength work, and your power. Now, if we combine all four of these pillars, it really just makes you a very well-rounded run, well-rounded runner. It makes you have um, it makes you basically develop more force so you can run faster. It allows you to increase your endurance a lot faster, and it also just decreases your risk for injury. So that's why I think these four pillars are really important to include. And a big mistake I see with runners is that they don't include all four of these pillars. And it's like a hodgepodge of exercises into their strength routine without any structure. So, you know, something is better than nothing. But if we're gonna go through the motions and take our time doing something, then I'd rather do it right. So let's dive into these four pillars. Real quick, before we dive into today's episode, I have opened the doors for the Complete Runners Club. You can join hundreds of runners and a membership for runners who want to train smarter with less injuries. Now, majority of running injuries actually come from training errors, which means you're increasing your mileage way too aggressively, your intensity is way too high, and it just increases your risk for injury because your body doesn't have enough time to adjust. And that is why I created this membership because I realize that runners not only need to train smarter, they also need to some guidance on what else to do outside of running. And it doesn't hurt that you have direct access to a physical therapist and a run coach, aka me. This membership includes those running specific strength workouts we're about to get into. They take 30 minutes and you'll see that direct carryover into your running. You'll also have access to all of my rehab programs. Yes, the foot and ankle, the knee, and the hip. So if something does pop up, you can quickly address it. This is over a $400 value, by the way. And you will have a customized running plan. This is going to take into consideration your goals, your experience, your schedule. Each plan is going to base be based on the research to decrease your risk for those training load errors that make up a lot of running injuries. And it's also going to give you the exact paces you need to hit in order to stay on track with your goals. So everything is very easy to access, very easy to use. You have over $600 of resources provided each month, and each month is $99. So you can sign up with the link below. I will put that in the show notes. When I think about the four pillars of strength training, or really like everything we need to do outside of running, I think of it like a house. So you have the foundation of the house, and that is really your mobility and stability. This is also where a lot of like prehab and even rehab is. It's it's allowing you to build a strong foundation where you have good movement patterns, you have good biomechanics. Now think about it. If your house foundation is crap, if it's not good, if it's cracking, there's compensations happening, then everything else is gonna be a little wonky. It's not gonna be as strong, it might have more compensations the more you put onto that foundation. And I really love this analogy because I think it allows runners to understand, hey, I can't just, you know, you could, but I don't recommend just going to the gym and lifting the heaviest weight possible and hoping for the best. Because if you load more weight onto a poor foundation, you're gonna have more compensations. Now, again, something in the gym is better than nothing. I'm not saying like don't strength train at all if you have compensations, but it's just to emphasize like, oh, we also probably should take into consideration like what is happening at our hip and our knee and our foot and ankle when we're going into a single leg movement. And that's where that mobility and that stability can play a really big role. So to break down mobility, I want you to think of this. I already said like dynamic warm-up or post-run mobility, but I really want you to think about mobility as the joint's range of motion. So if I'm going into a hamstring stretch, you know, that traditional like sit and reach test we did in grade school, that is working on the flexibility of my hamstring. That's very different than joint mobility. So joint mobility is how is the joint moving? You think about the hip joint, which is a very similar joint to the shoulder joint. It's a ball and socket joint. So it has a lot of a lot of movement. There's like a ton of movement. It has all these different actions, rotations, it can go in and out and up and down. It has combined movements, which is really cool. So there's a lot of motion that should be coming from the hip joint itself. Now, because there's a lot of movement in a lot of these joints in the lower extremity, we need to back that up with stability exercises. So when I say stability, I really mean how well can you control the joint. So if I have a hip that can go every direction and into all these different movements, you think about a gymnast who has like a ton of range of motion, I need to back that up with being able to control that range of motion. Otherwise, I'm gonna have an unstable joint. And an unstable joint is, you know, you don't want that. Let me just say that. You don't want that. It's really gonna increase your risk for injury. You can't control anything, you're gonna have a ton of compensations. So not only do you need to go into the joint's range of motion, you also need to be able to control that range of motion, which makes sense. You know, we wanna we have to be able to control it. Now, that's the foundation. That is where you know we really want to include that in our strength training. Now, to build on that, we also have strength. So think about strength. You know, what let me back up. When I think about stability, I think about those small muscles. And you know, small is gonna depend on the joint. So, like, you know, the hip joint's pretty big. So the gluteus medius, the piriformis, the gluteus minimus, all these different smaller muscles, the pelvic floor, they're smaller muscles compared to the powerhouse muscles at the hip. So those smaller stability muscles, like if we want to go really small, we can look at the foot intrinsic stability muscles that sit under the planar fascia and really help to stabilize the arch and stabilize the foot. Now, strength training, you know, the strength pillar, I want you to think about as the beefy muscles of the body. You have these are really like your powerhouse muscles. This is where you are holding a heavy weight in order to strengthen this muscle. Think about the calf, think about the hamstrings, think about the quad, the adductors, the glutes, the hip flexors. Like those are the muscles that you should really be addressing when you are strength, you're you're focusing on that strength pillar. This is usually like squats, deadlifts, front squats, split squat, walking lunges, hip hinges. You know, you're focusing on how heavy or not necessarily how heavy, but like I want to lift a heavier dumbbell with these because I'm addressing the powerhouse aspect of these muscles. Now, the fourth pillar is power. I want you thinking of this. I think of power as two different, um, there's two aspects of power, and this is important if you're trying to increase speed. So the first aspect of power is jumping, or also known as plyometrics. This is where you are focusing on the rebound. You're focusing on making your Achilles tendon like a spring. Jump up, jump down, jump up, jump down. Like keeping that beat going. You don't want to jump down, pause, jump up, because we don't want to do that when we're running. We really want to be at quick, quick, quick. We're trying to increase that elastic energy. We're trying to increase that energy as we push off the ground. Really focusing on absorbing shock and then pushing up. That's where the jumping exercises come into play. Now, the other aspect of power, and this can be, you know, these are both included in your strength routine, or they should be, is power exercises. I don't have a fancier word for it, but let me explain. This is where you are lifting heavy weight and moving it fast. Think about, um, trying to think about an exercise you might know. I like the exercise of, I call it a deadlift pool, like P-U-L-L pool. Um, but basically, if you have two heavy weights, two heavy dumbbells on the ground, then you are thinking about how fast can I lift these dumbbells up into a deadlift, you know, a standing deadlift position, and then I put them down slowly. So you're not focusing necessarily on like how slow and controlled can I do this exercise? Like, you know, I talk about slow and controlled movements a lot, but with these power movements, it's quick and it's a heavy weight and it's very low reps. Think about like a hip hinge or a hip thrust. If you have a heavy weight on your pelvis, you thrust up very quickly and then you lower down. You thrust up very quickly. It's not the tempo of one, two, three up, one, two, three down. This is the heavyweight low reps, like think four to six reps and very quick movements. This is important. This is like super important. A couple others, if you're in the runner's complete program or if you're in the complete runners club, you have the triple extension, the single arm snatch. You know, these movements are quick. And the whole idea is you're trying to produce a lot of force and power, and that is going to equate to faster speeds when you're running. Now, the whole idea is that you are combining these four into your strength routine and dynamic warm-up. I think that if you can, you know, like I said before, a lot of runners make the mistake of only lifting heavy weight. They only do those traditional exercises in the gym: the bench press, the chest press, the push-ups, the squats, the deadlifts, and that's fine. But imagine if you added in some stability work. Imagine if you added in some jumping exercises. Imagine if you added in some unilateral exercises. You would, you know, if you're like, oh, I keep getting injured year after year, I highly recommend adding these in. I think it can make a very big difference. And then if you combine that with a good training plan, a good running plan, then it's gonna make all the difference. The whole idea is that you are adding on some load to your running plan, you're seeing how your body reacts, and then you're continuing to build. It's a conservative build. Just like if you went into the gym, you know, I talked to a runner about this the other day. If you went into the gym, you know, running rehab and strength training, if you're trying to, you know, improve in all of these areas, then it's the same idea of let me either run a little bit more distance, let me put on a little bit more weight or resistance, like let me lift a heavier weight, or let me progress the rehab exercises, exercise just slightly. With all of those, see how your body reacts, give it some time to adapt, which means you keep doing that for let's say a week, seven days, and then you continue to build. It should not be like you wouldn't go to the gym if you back squatted, let's say, 70 pounds, and then the next time you go to the gym, you back squat 140 pounds. You wouldn't do that. That's like a zero to a hundred. You would, you know, your body doesn't have enough time to it didn't have enough of a like slow build to get used to that 70 pounds before you jumped up to 140. Realistically, it would be like 70 pounds, and then you go 80 or 90, whatever. It'd be a slow build. And you so why like if you're not gonna do that in the strength training, if you're not gonna do that in the gym, why would you do that when you're running? Why do we go two miles to five miles? Why do we go like eight miles to 11 miles? Like that's a very big jump. So I want you to think about that. And in terms of rehab, it's the same idea. Like, you wouldn't do clamshell sidesteps and bridges, and then all of a sudden go into like a weighted single-legged squat. Like that wouldn't make sense because you just haven't built up. You would do body weight, you would do weight shifts in a squat. Uh you know, you would slowly build to make sure you have that stability, you have that strength, you have the right movement patterns. So I think that's really important. All right, if you have any questions, you can always message me. And I will again link the Complete Runners Club below if you're interested in checking it out. And I'll talk to you next time. Bye.