Strength Training for Runners: Improve Performance, Prevent Injury & Train Smarter with Dr. Richard Blagrove

In this episode, I sit down with Dr. Richard Blagrove, an applied exercise physiologist, strength and conditioning coach, and author of Strength and Conditioning for Endurance Runners.

We break down how runners can use strength training to improve running economy, reduce injury risk, and build long-term durability. Dr. Blagrove shares practical, evidence-based guidance on how to structure strength work alongside running, including when to schedule sessions, how to individualize your approach, and what actually matters for performance.

You’ll also hear how strength training differs for middle-distance versus marathon runners, why calf strength is so important for endurance athletes, and how to think about long-term progression in your training.

In this episode, I cover:

•  How strength training improves running performance and efficiency 
•  Best practices for integrating strength into your weekly schedule 
•  Key differences in programming for middle-distance vs. long-distance runners 
•  Building resilience and reducing injury risk 
•  The importance of consistency and individualized training 

Learn more from Dr. Richard Blagrove:
Email: r.c.blagrove@lboro.ac.uk

Book: Strength and Conditioning for Endurance Runners

Dr. Blagrove continues to contribute to the field through ongoing research, so I encourage you to follow his work and keep an eye out for his latest and upcoming publications.

Right, that's us done. If that was useful… share it. Stick it in your club WhatsApp, send it to that mate who's always getting injured three weeks before race day. You know the one ;)

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See you on the next one.

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Matt's IG - https://www.instagram.com/ultracoachmatt/

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey, welcome to the Maximum Mileage Podcast. I'm Coach Hannah Witt, and this is where we talk about building strong, resilient runners without the constant cycle of injury, burnout, or guesswork. Each episode, I sit down with runners, coaches, and experts to break down training, recovery, fueling, and mindset so you can train with more confidence and actually see progress that lasts. And if you prefer to watch these conversations, you can find the full video versions on my YouTube channel, Coach Hannah Witt, under the Performance Collective series. Let's dive in. In this episode, I'm joined by Dr. Richard Blagrove, an applied exercise physiologist and strength and conditioning coach specializing in endurance runners. We dive into how strength training actually supports running performance from improving running economy to reducing injury risk and how to integrate it into your training without overcomplicating things.

SPEAKER_01 1:00

Today we're very fortunate to have Dr. Richard Blai Grove with us talking about all things exercise physiology as it relates to runners and a little bit more about Dr. Blade Grove. He's a senior lecturer in physiology at Lothboro University, strength conditioning coach, and one of the leading voices in endurance running performance. His work focuses on how strength training can improve running efficiency, reduce injury risk, and support long-term athlete health. He's coached athletes from everyday runners all the way to Olympic and Paralympic finalists. And he's also the author of Strength and Conditioning for Endurance Runners, a book that's become a go-to resource in the field. Thanks so much for being with us today, Dr. Blagrove. How are you?

SPEAKER_02 1:48

Yeah, I'm really good. Thanks, Hannah. And thanks very much for the invitation to join you on the podcast today.

SPEAKER_01 1:54

Yes, thank you for agreeing. So just a little bit more about your background. How did you get into exercise physiology?

SPEAKER_02 2:04

Yeah, sure. I'll uh try not to bore all your listeners here with a full biography of my entire life. But yeah, I've been working in universities and academia now for getting on for about 18 years. So as you mentioned, I'm currently based at Loughbury University where I'm uh an applied exercise physiologist and heavily involved with our masters in strength and conditioning. And prior to that, I worked in a university in Birmingham, which is in the central part of the UK, delivering sports science-related subjects undergraduate level. And prior to that, I was at a university in London called St. Mary's University. And I was based there for about eight years, predominantly delivering strength and conditioning. But alongside all of these academic roles, as you mentioned as part of your introduction, I've I've very much always been a strength and conditioning coach as well. So in the early part of my career, I worked very uh across a multitude of different sports, including some game sports and some Paralympic sports. But I kind of unintentionally specialized a little bit and worked with middle and long distance runners. And that was largely because that's my own background as an athlete. So when I was in my teens and my twenties, and ever since really, I've always aspired to be a better runner. And so I've kind of naturally gravitated towards providing strength and conditioning support to middle and long distance runners. And as you said, that's kind of where I've made my name.

SPEAKER_01 3:37

Great. Well, thank you for that background. That's very informative and I appreciate it. I have a degree in human biology with heavy emphasis on kinesiology and exercise physiology. And I it's such an interesting science to get into, of course. And I'll be frank, my journey to obtaining that degree wasn't smooth because I wasn't sure what I wanted to do when I started university. Did you feel like for your the trajectory of your your career, you were pretty much sure that that's what you wanted to pursue, or did you kind of explore a little bit?

SPEAKER_02 4:14

Yeah, a lot of a lot of your background and in and your career very much resonates with with me because yeah, I studied a kind of traditional undergraduate degree in sport and exercise science. That was at Loughbury University as well, actually. It's not like I've never never left the place. But yeah, I I then went on from that and did a master's in exercise physiology. And at the time, sort of showing my age a little bit, at the time, there were there weren't very many kind of master's programmes that specialized in different disciplines. They were still quite broad and generic in sort of sport science. So the study of exercise physiology was one of the only kind of disciplines and subjects you could study at that sort of level. But I'd been really interested in exercise physiology through my undergraduate studies. And because of my running and endurance sport background, sort of naturally gravitated towards that area. And I really enjoyed that year that I spent doing my master's. But very similar to you, I kind of went through that four-year higher education process and didn't really know what I wanted to do after. And I explored a number of different careers and different avenues, including joining the military as one option. I thought about getting into sort of coach and kind of athlete development a little bit. Even studying a PhD at the time was was an option to me. But the role I ended up getting was actually in teaching and lecturing at a college. And so I was I was working with sort of 15 to 18-year-olds for a period of about four years. And it was during that time that the college that I worked at had quite a high-performing football or kind of soccer team, as well as a basketball team, both men's teams. And they were they were training fairly regularly and fairly hard. But the students and the kids, they were they were quite interested in doing some extra kind of conditioning work alongside their football and their basketball. So I kind of started taking them to the gym, not really knowing what I was doing and without any qualification, and sort of started to learn the skills and the techniques and the training activities related to strength and conditioning. And it was over a period of probably on and off for about three years that I was doing that. And at the end of that process, I was kind of like, well, I'm really enjoying this sort of strength and conditioning coaching and working with young athletes here. So I started to look around for what professional qualifications that I could do in strength and conditioning. So it's yeah, it's quite a long answer to your question, but I sort of started very much in sort of pure physiology and then sort of naturally shifted to strength and conditioning over the next few years.

SPEAKER_01 7:00

Great. Yeah, you know, in university, when you're studying for an exercise physiology degree, it's not something that's pretty straightforward like accounting, where you know that you're going to be an accountant once you graduate. It's a field that doesn't necessarily have this direct path to whatever career that you're studying for. You know, you can go in so many different directions, and you can become a coach, you can become a professor, you can do all sorts of different things. And it's interesting that you pursued your masters for your masters. Did you have to do like a dissertation in a specific area? Or like what did that look like? Did you study something specifically and present on it?

SPEAKER_02 7:46

Yeah, I mean, it's it's going going back quite a long time ago now. And yeah, a lot of my exercise physiology masters, it was it was quite heavily orientated towards kind of health and and public health settings. There was bits and pieces that were related to sort of sport and sports performance, but it it certainly wasn't a kind of majority of the course. And I did do a research project in dissertation and trying to remember back what I uh studied now. I think we were looking at the sort of acute effects of performing high-intensity interval training on kind of blood lipid markers and other blood and hematological related markers that were sort of linked to things like type 2 diabetes and so on, as well as some more basic measures like resting heart rate and blood pressure and and body fat percentage and and so on. But yeah, that was a long time ago now, so I'm trying to trawl the memory to uh to think exactly what we did for that. But it was it was a little bit more of a health slant than it was related to to sports performance and endurance athletes at the time. Just because yeah, the the masters were so heavily orientated around kind of yeah, physical activity and public health.

SPEAKER_01 9:04

Yeah, that makes sense. For for that dissertation, it if you remember it. It's fine if you don't, for high interval training. Were you working with runners? Were you working more so with the footballers and basketball players that you mentioned before? Was it just average people? Since, like you said, it was more kind of community health and public health oriented.

SPEAKER_02 9:26

Yeah, I I can I can certainly remember recruiting some participants from the gym that I worked at at the time. And so I was I was doing a little bit of part-time work as a sort of gym instructor and even a little bit of kind of personal training. And I remember trying to persuade a few gym members and and uh clients that I was working with to participate in my research. Well, we weren't talking high numbers at all, it was probably like half a dozen or so, but yeah, it wasn't sort of clinical and sort of disease populations, it was sort of fairly healthy students aged between about 18 and 30 years old.

SPEAKER_01 10:04

Okay, so from after that, after you got your master's, did you start working at Loff Rower University or was there kind of an interim where you were doing other things?

SPEAKER_02 10:13

Yeah, so at that point I I um I got the teaching role and the college that I worked at was actually down in London again. So I moved down there for a period of about four years and and and was teaching out of that out of that college. And at the time, like I know in in the United States, the the strength and conditioning industry or or profession has been quite well established since the sort of late 1980s when the NSCA was was first established. But within the UK, we didn't have a kind of professional accrediting body until I think it was 2006 that the UK Strength and Conditioning Association was formed. And so, yeah, while I was working at this this college, the strength and conditioning industry, or or even the term strength and conditioning, it didn't really exist properly within the UK. And it wasn't a sort of vocational career path that graduates could could go down. And so, yeah, working with these young athletes in a gym-based setting through that period, I didn't really have anything to aim for until the UK Strength and Conditioning Association was established. And at that point, I was kind of like, oh, there's a qualification here that I can get, and potentially then jobs and roles that I can apply for off the back of that. So it was really that that sort of made allowed me to bridge across to a slightly different career path, I guess.

SPEAKER_01 11:35

Okay, so the UK Strength and Conditioning, when that was established, that kind of opened up some avenues for you. Do you feel like prior to that, prior to having that governing body, was there more misinformation in the UK a little bit? Do you feel like perhaps people who weren't qualified were training people? Or what did that kind of that environment look like before there was that uh governing body in the UK?

SPEAKER_02 12:02

Yeah, I'm not um I'm not too sure to be honest. I mean, we had there there was a big injection of funding from the UK government into high performance sport after the 2000 Olympic Games, and so between sort of 2000 and about 2004, in the run-up to the Athens Olympics, there was this kind of rapid professionalization of elite sport and and Paralympic sport in this country. And so I think that created a lot of jobs. And there were people that had been working in sort of physical preparation with athletes, maybe in in football or in rugby settings that are a little bit more well-funded in this country, that then started to work with Olympic athletes. And so I think those those types of individuals that ended up sort of being the founders of the UK Strength and Conditioning Association, they they were putting out a lot of good information, but it was quite kind of minimal compared to what we're used to nowadays with with social media and and so on. And so there was some good information out there, but I think, yeah, a lot of the time if people wanted to get some advice about broader physical preparation for their sport and strength and conditioning, they might go to like a personal trainer, for example. And as personal training qualifications, it's it's probably the same in the United States. You might only do like one module that specializes in sort of work with athletes. And so it's it's fairly minimal education compared to what we're used to nowadays with strength and conditioning.

SPEAKER_01 13:34

Yeah, a lot of people don't understand that when you are working with somebody who markets themselves as a personal trainer. Yes, they do have a certification, but it is vastly different from working with somebody who has a degree and has four plus years, you know, really getting every kind of avenue of education. So I'm glad that you promote education for yourself in your background. You're obviously very degreed and for mean maximum mileage. I really try to promote, you know, I have a human biology degree, got the United Endurance Sports Coaching Academy certification. So definitely just for listeners, shop around and make sure that the person that you're working with is is qualified to help you so that you can absolutely progress in the best way possible and stay healthy. So for you personally, did you start what when did you write your book? What kind of precipitated that?

SPEAKER_02 14:37

Yeah, it's a great question, and maybe it should have mentioned that before. But yeah, when when I started working in higher education, so that was af after I worked in in colleges with with younger learners, as I mentioned before, I was I was still heavily involved with strength and conditioning coaching and was doing more and more work with runners. But the university that I was based at in London, St Mary's, it was previously the kind of national endurance running hub. And so I don't know if you sort of know that area of South West London, but it's it's the same area where Richmond Park is and Bushy Park, which are incredible venues for running. Like you can kind of run on this kind of park and woodland trails for miles and miles without repeating the same loops. And so you get kind of like thousands of recreational runners that are training in that environment. And it meant that quite a few groups from different parts of the world were coming to train there. So there was regular group that came over from Australia that trained in that part of London. There was lots of groups that came over from East Africa and there was some world record holders from Kenya that had based themselves around that part of London as well. And so the university off the back of that created this sort of national endurance performance centre. And so all of the best runners from the UK kind of gravitated towards St. Mary's for quite a long period of time, actually. And there was even runners like Mo Farrow was based there before he moved over to the United States. And so, yeah, like naturally, as an ex-runner and somebody that's really passionate about running and strength and conditioning, I started working with a lot of those runners. And you only need like one or two of them to start performing at a very high level, so kind of reach international championships. And I had one or two that competed in Olympic finals, as well as a couple that won medals at international championships, and you start to develop a bit of a name for yourself because they start to mention that uh, oh, this is my running coach, and this is my strength and conditioning coach, and this is my physio. And so you get mentioned in sort of magazine articles and newspaper articles, which is obviously quite nice. But as a result, I was getting a lot of a lot of inquiries from runners and coaches just asking about strength and conditioning for runners, like what's the what's the right combination of exercises and activities to do? And so it kind of sounds quite odd, but my my solution to answering all of their questions was well, maybe if I'll write a book about it and put all my ideas down on paper and sort of try to put across my philosophy of coaching, maybe I've got then a resource that I can start directing people to. And so that that's where the book really came from. And it yeah, it just kind of started from that. And I think in that regard, it's very much sort of served its purpose because it seems to have sold very well, and I've had lots of great feedback on it over the years from from runners and coaches, and so I think it's kind of done its job in in that respect, which is uh which is obviously great.

SPEAKER_01 17:44

Amazing. So, how is your philosophy different, I guess, than other strength and conditioning experts?

SPEAKER_02 17:53

Wow, there's uh there's a there's a question.

SPEAKER_01 17:56

I know, it's pretty broad, so take that in any direction that you want.

SPEAKER_02 18:02

Yeah, I think I mean I've I've always sort of found with my coaching philosophy that it's it does evolve over the years, and it sort of evolves depending upon the the sort of new athletes that you that you kind of start to work with and the different the different other professionals and practitioners that that you engage with as part of sort of just multidisciplinary support teams. But I think, yeah, like my my philosophy is very much rooted with kind of the athlete or the individual at the kind of center. And so when I when I dish out recommendations around strength and conditioning, like I I always kind of put the caveat on it that these are very broad, they're probably suitable for sort of 80% of most runners. But if you want like a really professional, proper job done, you're better to work closely with somebody that's qualified, somebody that's ideally worked with endurance runners before, that can really sort of personalize and individualise the program for you. And I I think about the athletes that I'm working with, the runners that I'm working with at the moment, and three or four of them are on very, very different programmes because they've all got very different backgrounds, very different needs, different injury histories. And so there's not very much commonality with the type of prescription that I'm that I'm kind of uh that I'm kind of setting setting them. Yeah, and I'm trying to think what else has sort of stayed consistent over the years. Like I've I've I've always very much valued the input from other colleagues and professionals that I've worked alongside. And I have gone through periods of time where I've learnt a great deal from working really closely, like kind of on the ground at the gym floor sometimes with physiotherapists, for example. I've learned a lot from technical running coaches over the years as well, not just about their kind of approach to programming for their athletes, but also about the way they sort of communicate and and correspond with their athletes. And so, yeah, I think just sort of being flexible and making sure you're absorbing and learning from everybody that you're interacting with is is quite a valuable part of a coaching philosophy.

SPEAKER_01 20:21

So for your profession, being a strength and conditioning coach, do you actually prescribe like running specific workouts, or would that be a separate coach, a separate person? Have you done both where you're doing run workouts in addition to the strength and conditioning, like the duality of both?

SPEAKER_02 20:41

Yeah, I haven't really done a lot. I mean, I haven't got any qualifications as a sort of technical endurance running coach. So I I wouldn't ever call myself a running coach. I have programmed for a couple of runners over the years at kind of a recreational level, but that's been quite informal. I've never sort of charged anybody for those sorts of services. But yeah, I I guess as somebody that comes from a running background myself, with my exercise physiology background and the research that I've done around sort of just pure physiology of endurance running as well as the strength and conditioning. Like I'd I'd feel obviously fairly confident with prescribing endurance running training. But I just, yeah, as I mentioned before, I don't do it because I don't, I'm not qualified or insured to uh to coach athletes in that way, but I I am for the strength and conditioning aspect. So that's kind of where of what I've stuck to over the years and and probably what I'll stick to moving forward as well.

SPEAKER_01 21:41

I ask just because, you know, when you're helping somebody, obviously you need to understand what their run programming looks like so that you can complement, you know, the proper strength and conditioning protocol uh for that. So do you do you work closely with running coaches? And to try and figure out like a balance because typically, you know, most athletes, recreational athletes, you know, for the most part, they'll have their long runs, they'll have one to two quality faster sessions during the week, and then maybe some recovery runs sprinkled in there. Do you work with running coaches to kind of complement that, or do you find that athletes seek you out and you just give them whatever prescription and they fit it around their schedule in their running, their different running sessions?

SPEAKER_02 22:40

Yeah, so in an ideal world, and what I try to do normally is I work very, very closely with technical running coaches, and it's usually them that are sort of driving the overall training program and the positioning of where strength and conditioning would go. And so if if if they want my advice or if they want me to make the decision about where the strength and conditioning is placed in the training week, I'm always more than happy to do that. But it's usually them that says, well, on this day of the week we do a hard session. We don't want to do any strength and conditioning on that day. So therefore, we do it on usually on Monday and Friday or Monday and Wednesday. And so this athlete needs two sessions prescribed that fit in with our overall programme. And then that's that's completely fine. And as I say, if they want kind of advice around, well, can we split it across more sessions, or would you do it on the same day as a hard session versus on an easy day? I'm always more than happy to offer my opinion and sort of share what the the evidence or the research indicates about that. But usually it's it's it's kind of their decision. So we just sort of try to work as closely as possible to arrive at the best solution for the athlete.

SPEAKER_01 23:59

Do you is it individualized? You stack hard lifts, I guess, on the same days as hard sessions versus keeping those hard days hard for running and then doing a hard lift on a separate day, or is it basically, yeah, we do that pretty frequently, or would you say it's more individualized?

SPEAKER_02 24:18

Yeah, so I guess we're getting into the real important detail now, and it is a great question that. So I mean, I I guess the sort of easy answer and the sort of more evidence-based answer is you're usually best to do any sort of harder type of strength training, particularly at anything that's explosive or plymetric based, so kind of jumping type skills. It's best to do those types of sessions on days where you don't have to do much hard running, so on an easier day. And so if if your key kind of interval training sessions or maybe tempo type running is on, let's say a Tuesday and a Friday, it would probably make sense to put strength training on like a Monday and a Wednesday or a Monday and a Thursday. So it's kind of like it's separated apart from the hard running sessions by at least 24 hours, ideally. All of that said, that's the kind of standard model, and that's typically what they use in research. All of that said, there is an approach which you kind of alluded to where you can place the hard strength training on the same day as a hard running session, which sounds a little bit controversial because it's a lot of sort of hard physical work on the same day. And the format of it would usually look like you do the hard interval training session in the morning, maybe at about 10 a.m. or something. You usually have about six hours off, and then you come back later in the day and you do your hard sort of heavy resistance training session at maybe four or five o'clock in the in the late afternoon. The rationale for that is that you you do put all of the hard physical work on one day. And so the following day or the following two days, you can properly recover, and you've got no sort of really vigorous, high-intensity exercise on those days that's going to fatigue you anymore. What where I found it works best, that approach, is with more well-trained individuals because essentially they can recover relatively quick. And over that the six-hour period between the hard running session and the hard strength session, they've they've almost fully recovered. So they kind of arrive at the session like feeling like they've they've they've got quite a lot of energy and they can deliver some quite some quite meaningful intensity within the resistance training session. Whereas I think with a recreational runner, it would be it would be quite a quite a big risk to do that. And the the final important kind of nuance linked to this discussion is that if you combine hard running and hard strength training on the same day, you can usually get away with it if you just stick to sort of heavy resistance training. The reason being that if you do like a heavy deadlift or a heavy squat or a heavy step-up, you're not kind of constrained by time within each of the repetitions to sort of get the work done. You you load up the bar, and as long as you're lifting it and getting through the set, it doesn't matter how quick that you you get through that set, if that kind of makes sense, you just kind of grind through the repetitions and you might feel a bit tired and a bit achy, but you kind of get through the reps. Whereas if you do if you try to do something very explosive, so you try to jump on a big box or throw a medicine ball or do a hang clean or jump over some hurdles, do some hopping and bounding, there's there's no real kind of like explosive explosiveness and power development there because you're so tired from the running earlier in the day. And so most of the research would suggest that rate of force development and power-related adaptations, they tend to be a little bit blunted by that type of scenario. So hopefully that's it was quite a long answer, but it's it is an important area to discuss for sure.

SPEAKER_01 28:14

No, I appreciate that. I was thinking as you're explaining that, if you were to do kind of a harder run workout in the morning, and then you were going to have a strength training later in the day and trying to stack those workouts on the same day, it would obviously be better to have a heavy lift instead of something that had, like you said, the timeslash speed component as in planiometrics, just because the speed work from the run workout is so neuromuscularly taxing that if you try and tap into that again, even if it is six hours removed, trying to get that quickness would be pretty challenging, I can imagine. But like you said, if you're just working on root strength, lifting something, closed chain exercises where you're not really endangering anything, you're just literally gutting it out and trying to lift heavy. I think that that would definitely be conducive to putting those two sessions on the same day. For me personally, I feel like if I do a hard workout in the morning and then lift in the afternoon, it's almost like my body's primed because I've already put so much force through the ground that I can, I can usually get it much more out of myself than if I've had just like an easy day and then I go and I lift. But that being said, if I have an easy run and do some kind of neuromuscular thrill, planetrics, what have you, that usually coincides much better with an easier run day because that is less neuromuscularly taxing. It's almost like a trade-off on what sessions that you want to do. You have to think about all these different body systems. And also to the athlete, something else that I was thinking about when you were explaining is just being cognizant of hormonal fluctuations throughout the day. So I've always heard, followed it myself. Doing longer sessions in the morning in terms of running is better because your cortisol levels are higher, other hormones too. That's I I can't remember and I don't want to misspeak on that. But I know for lifting in particular, working out lifting heavy in the afternoon is almost better because that's when testosterone takes, if I'm correct. Can you kind of explain maybe the hormonal side of it if you feel comfortable with that, and just kind of trying to time things based on just what's going on within the rhythm of our bodies?

SPEAKER_02 30:36

Yeah, I could talk a little bit around that. It's not the the kind of endocrinology and and and hormone.

SPEAKER_01 30:43

You're not an endocrinologist, so I'm not trying to put you on the spot, but I was just thinking about it when you were explaining, and I thought that would be interesting.

SPEAKER_02 30:49

Yeah, I've I've had what I've had one or two master students over the years that have looked at this. So we've not we've never published the work, so I'm certainly not an expert. But uh, I mean, I think I think most of the research and literature on circadian rhythms would suggest that like most types of kind of maximal physical performance are better to do sort of late afternoon or a little bit later in the day. I think with endurance performance, yeah, when body temperature is a little bit lower, cortisol is a little bit lower. So if we're running a marathon, for example, it makes a bit more sense to do that earlier in the morning. But if we're doing like a middle distance performance or a maximal lift or some sort of maximal power output, doing that later in the day seems to make sense. I think the other thing is there's quite a lot of individuality around it. So I know there's a couple of questionnaires that sometimes coaches get athletes to fill out, which will tell you if you're a lark, as they as they call it. So you're kind of like a more of a morning person versus an owl, which is more of a kind of late afternoon evening person, and there is quite a lot of sort of individual variability there. So I think those runners that sort of like getting up at 5 a.m. and they'll go out for a long run or they'll do their interval training at kind of first thing in the morning, they're happy to do some weight training or whatever. They're probably the classic sort of early morning larks, and then you get those that like laying in bed, they'll save their run until lunchtime or later in the day. They feel really physically alert, sort of this this time of day in the UK, so in the evening, they're probably the classic owls, and so there is quite a lot of variation there, and it's kind of speaking to your athlete about what that what they prefer as well, rather rather than forcing them to train at 5 a.m.

SPEAKER_01 32:35

Yeah, I'm thinking back to college when I ran for my college. We didn't have a choice, we had to be larks and get up and run early in the morning. But yeah, I appreciate you explaining that a little bit more. Just to talk about what strength conditioning looks like for different, I guess, ends of the spectrum in terms of distances. So for you, you don't work with sprinters so much. I don't think you said middle distance to long distance, is that correct?

SPEAKER_02 33:06

Yeah, so I think the shortest distance any of my runners have competed at is kind of 800. There's maybe been a couple of 400, 800 types, but typically 800 being the the shortest, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:20

Okay, what would I know that it is individualized, obviously, but just a general kind of programming protocol, what would that look like for kind of that middle distance versus like somebody who's doing a marathon or even an ultra marathon?

SPEAKER_02 33:36

Yeah, I mean you might be quite surprised to hear. I I don't think the general programming or principles differs massively between middle and long distance, part partly because the the kind of main mediator which enhances performance as a result of performing strength training is is running economy. And so running economy is essentially how much energy or oxygen that we're using to run, and it's usually measured at a sub-maximal intensity. We know that running economy has got quite a tight correlation between between it, but running economy and performance. And that's true for both middle distance runners and long distance runners. I guess I guess where the difference is, is certainly for an 800-meter runner, we know that round the first bend, and particularly down the back straight, then they're not actually that far off their maximal sprinting speed. Like some of the time they get they get to about 97-98% of their maximal all-out sprinting speed. And that the pass for male runners, they're passing through the first 200 in about 23 seconds, and for female runners, or Keely Hodgkin's going through in sort of 25, 26 sometimes. And so it's really, really quick. And so that they obviously need to be fast sprinters, they need that kind of top-end sprint speed, whereas obviously the marathon runners and the ultra-marathon runners, they don't they don't really need to be sort of really training that high-end sprint speed. And so the reason I was mentioning that is again, we we know fairly well through the research that above about 24 kilometres an hour, so that's four-minute miling, which is pretty quick. We know that the posterior chains, so the gluteals, the hamstrings, as well as the hip flexors, are the main muscle groups that start working much, much harder at those very fast speeds. And so, with middle distance runners, particularly those where we're trying to improve their sprint speeds, there'll be a little bit more bias and predominance towards training glutes, towards training hamstrings and hip flexors compared to the marathon runner who doesn't get close to four-minute miling at any point in their race. And so they've got a little bit more bias towards the calf complex, the Achilles, maybe a little bit more foot conditioning, because it's it's those muscles that are using most energy as part of that kind of submaximal, submaximal running. So there's definitely similarities, but there's some kind of more, I guess, subtle differences. And that's just in terms of performance. And we've also we can also think about injury and the sort of the main areas that a middle distance runner would get injured versus versus a long distance runner.

SPEAKER_01 36:18

No, I think that's really interesting. So I'm thinking about if you had a marathoner versus a not a sprinter, but middle distance runner, and they had I forget what it's called, but maybe electrodes connected to whatever muscles to show what's lighting up when they're firing.

SPEAKER_02 36:37

Oh like A EMG, like electromyography.

SPEAKER_01 36:39

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And how a marathon runner you would see a lot of calves, and then in somebody who's running four-minute miles or faster, glutes, hamstrings, hip flexors, things like that firing, and it's just it's interesting because you know, I've always prescribe, you know, let's work on your posterior chain development, but maybe that's not always the right answer because my athletes they're not necessarily doing four-minute miles, a lot of them, but it is interesting to think about what muscles are used more predominantly at different speeds. So for you know, the general public, people who are doing marathons, you're saying these muscles like calves that you know your calves you use all the time walking, you know, anything that you're doing. So they tend to not fatigue as quickly. So I guess my question would be why would you want to work on calves more so for the marathons since you're already walking a lot? Wouldn't they be fairly strong?

SPEAKER_02 37:45

Yes, it's it's a really good question. I guess one thing to just to say first off is yeah, so certainly with the types of exercise that we're picking, and if we're thinking about what muscle groups that we're we're trying to train and sort of buy us with our strength training exercises, I'm certainly not suggesting that longer distance runners and marathon runners don't need to train glutes and hammerstrings. Like they're still really important, maybe for slightly different reasons, but you would you would still have exercises that that train those muscles in. And the same for the middle distance runner, like we we still know that the calf, particularly the Achilles, and it's going to be storing and returning large amounts of energy, it's still going to be really important. But to yeah, to answer your question, so yeah, we're we're certainly using the calf muscles a lot, like when we're standing, they're very active just to sort of hold posture and hold us in a standing position. We're certainly using them a lot at submaximal speeds, including including walking, like you you mentioned before. But obviously, none of those, none of those sorts of activities because they're so low intensity and they're not kind of really firing up and activating the muscle to a large extent, they're not really making it stronger. And so we obviously need to do something that's a little bit higher intensity, usually with some sort of load, to try to just train those muscles to kind of make them a little bit stronger and particularly more resilient. And that that will usually make them a little bit more economical and efficient at the way in which they use energy as part of the running gate. And is it's that aspect of it that's really important, particularly for the longer distance runner when we're trying to improve running economy and and therefore performance.

SPEAKER_01 39:28

So I recently did some research on anterior pelvic tilts in distance runners, and whether or not that was a bad thing necessarily. And because you see a lot of elite runners as they as they run, they tend to the hips almost tend to tilt. Yeah, and you see that kind of that sway back kind of posture. And in your experience, you you know, just to help me clarify, if I if I hit the target right with my research, would you say that that posture that tends to develop in people who are going faster speeds is necessarily a bad thing, or is that just the body's way of trying to go faster? Or I'll just tell you what I found was it was sometimes indicative of lack of mobility in the hips. So the low back was having to compensate by you know having to curve a little bit more in order to get a longer stride length. So I'm just what's what are your thoughts on kind of that anterior pelvic tilt that we see in astral running?

SPEAKER_02 40:37

Yeah, I'm not again, this isn't really my area of of specialism. I think as a as a general point and one area that we we have looked into a little bit with kind of running technique and biomechanics, is that if you've if you start trying to change it, it is possible. And usually the way that you need to change it is with kind of gate retraining strategies. So the runners either thinking about the way that they're they're holding their posture or their body positions using some internal or external cues. If they practice that a lot, like we've got evidence that it it can be changed. The the problem with kind of changing things, so if something doesn't look quite right or we think it might be causing an injury, we usually can change it with a gateway training strategy. But what we've always got to be a little bit aware of is that we usually shift the stress somewhere else. And so, particularly if um if they don't change their running training, so they've got the same kind of magnitudes of force going through them, the same volumes of foot contacts going through their body, that kind of force and all of that load sort of needs to kind of move somewhere somewhere else. And so if if the tissue that it sort of shifts onto isn't particularly well conditioned, or it's a kind of it's a slight change in movement pattern that exposes a different part of the body to a high amount of stress, it can sometimes cause an injury that you might not have envisaged. So I'm not necessarily saying that's the case for this this anterior pelvic tilt, but it's kind of as a general principle, it's always something that I'm aware of as a strength and conditioning coach. Because if we do go after a change in biomechanics and running technique, I always think my role is well, how can I think about the biomechanics in terms of whether the stress and the forces and the loading is going to move to? And if it's going to move there, can I bias my strength and conditioning programme to make those tissues that are going to be exposed to to higher loads a little bit more resilient and robust so they don't get injured? And so when the runner makes the change over a long period of time, they've got less risk of getting injured. But sorry, yeah. I think it can be influenced by a number of things. As you mentioned before, I I think there's some fairly clear evidence that like tight hip flexors can sometimes cause an anterior pelvic tilt, particularly just in sort of normal standing positions. And so, yeah, some sort of a mixture of both mobility and strengthening work for the hip flexors might solve that, as well as some just the actual mobility work for the for the pelvis itself. I think sometimes kind of overactive back extensor muscles can also cause it because that will swing the pelvis forward slightly. And if you've got a sort of slightly disengaged or weak anterior trunk musculature, so I'm I'm mostly thinking about kind of rectus abdominis, you kind of six-pack muscle, it's not able to hold the pelvis in the right position. So a combination. Of those two things, particularly when you add fatigue into it, might start causing the pelvis to sort of tilt over. And the other factor as well is hamstring flexibility and strength. So usually if if people have got strong and sort of appropriately flexible hamstrings, they're able to hold the pelvis in a in a good position even under fatigue. But if people have got fairly weak hamstrings, and particularly if they're very, very tight, it can it can pull the pelvis out of position as well. So I think the sort of general message is like have a decent level of strength across this area and sort of know what sort of neutral feels like and then maybe try to monitor it as fatigue progresses. And if it is if there are injuries cropping up, that might be one of the root causes that um that that's that's responsible for it.

SPEAKER_01 44:53

That's really helpful. What you said about you know, not not necessarily correcting something, because like you said, you're shifting the stress somewhere else in the body, and you have to anticipate you know another weakness being exposed. And I think that goes a long way in saying that there really isn't an ideal running form, I guess if you will, because everybody is different. And if people try to change the running form and they try to manipulate it through strength work, mobility, external cues, whatever, that stress is going to go somewhere else, and there will be you know it'll take time for you to adapt. So that is really helpful to hear. Just talking about strength and conditioning a little bit more as it applies to running, and how would you how would you tackle the periodization that you see in running typically for an athlete who's doing a base training phase, then they start to specialize a little bit more as they get closer to their race, then they you know their peak phase, taper, recovery. How does strength and conditioning kind of coincide with that process?

SPEAKER_02 46:06

Yeah, so it it's a good question. I think if you've got a runner that's fairly new to strength and conditioning, and they've that they've not done much resistance training before, you might be quite surprised to hear that periodization and structuring the year in a really sort of thoughtful and kind of scientific way. Like it doesn't actually matter that much. The main thing is that they engage with strength training, they do it consistently, like two or three times a week, and they do that for a long period of time, so i.e. at least three months, and ideally year on year. That's gonna get that's that's that's gonna get the most benefits. Like that that gets the runner most of the way there to improving economy and performance and reducing the risk of of getting any injuries. I think that said, it is important that runners kind of progress and vary the type of strength training that they're doing, just because we know as of a sort of basic principle of physiology and training, that like tissues will adapt and they'll reach a kind of stage where they they kind of accommodate the new load that's being put through them. And then at that point, they're gonna stop stop adapting or just kind of maintain unless she's put some sort of novel stress and stimulus through them over time. So that doesn't need to be kind of like big changes in the program because consistency is always gonna be the most important thing. But if we can change maybe just one or two exercises in the program, shift the emphasis from maybe doing heavy resistance training to something more explosive, maybe add a plymetric training exercise here and there, like it creates sort of enough novel stimulus to keep driving adaptation sort of month on month and then and then year on year. I think with more well-trained athletes, so some of them that I'm some of the runners that I'm lucky enough to work with, they've been engaged with strength training for like four, five plus years. And so I tend with them to be just a little bit more kind of thoughtful and systematic about the way that I approach strength training. So typically, typically in the off-season, we'll sit down, I'll sit down with their technical running coach and we'll kind of map out what the sort of off-season winter training is going to look like. And so for some of the runners, they'll do a cross-country season. For other runners, they go on training camps like three or four times dotted through the winter. For others, they'll do an indoor running season. And so it comes back to the original point that I was making that all of the programs end up looking quite different. And so, for the runner that's doing cross-country, like we'll make a point to make to make sure that their ankles are as strong as possible. We'll probably do quite a lot of heavier strength work and maybe some eccentric dominant work towards the start of the winter, just to adequately prepare the joints and muscles for when they start doing the big cross-country races. Whereas for the runner that's going indoors, going back to what we were discussing about the middle distance runner before, their program will have a little bit more glute, a little bit more hamstring work. We'll make sure we've done some plyometric work to sort of get the most out of the Achilles tendon and make that as strong as possible in the months leading up to that, to that indoor season. So it always looks different for each runner, but typically it's characterized by sort of higher volume initially, working towards lower volume, higher intensity work as the sort of main competitions and races approach.

SPEAKER_01 49:42

Great. Thank you so much. That's such great information. And you've been very thoughtful in all your responses for this podcast, and I truly appreciate it. Are you currently taking on any athletes or how does that look like if people can people get in touch with you to get more information about perhaps working together?

SPEAKER_02 50:03

Yeah, I don't, I'm probably doing less coaching now than I've than I've ever done in my uh in my coaching career, but that's really a reflection of the demands of my my current job at Lovebury University. So yeah, most of my time is spent sort of teaching and doing research and supervising PhD students and so on. And so if anybody's interested in research or or even or even pursuing some some sort of research project, then by all means get in touch. I still do a little bit of coaching and consultancy work with small groups of athletes, but typically don't take on like large, large numbers of athletes, just because I I don't don't have the time at the moment, unfortunately. But more than happy to answer questions if anybody's got any, and yeah, and find me through an email if if that's the case.

SPEAKER_01 50:54

If people want to check out more of your research, would they look at like PubMed or where where's a good resource where people can learn a little bit more about what you've been researching?

SPEAKER_02 51:05

Yeah, the the university website's not too bad at staying up to date, actually, with recent studies that have uh that have just come out. Yeah, if people kind of know their way around academic literature searching, there's somewhere like PubMed is obviously great to search for authors' names and so on. And the same with kind of Google Scholar and a few other of the uh the databases that allow you to search academic literature. And yeah, I try to post as much as I can on social media as well. So I'm I'm sort of less on X, as it's called now, or twist Twitter these days, but try to post studies via LinkedIn and via Instagram as as often as as I can and as and when we publish work.

SPEAKER_01 51:48

Great. Well, listeners, definitely check out those resources to get more information. I I really appreciate your time and thank you for appearing on the podcast today.

SPEAKER_02 51:59

No worries at all, Hannah. Thanks again for the invitation to join.