Did You Know I Ran Cross-Country For One Year in High-School?

It’s true!

It was awful and I never did it again, but in terms of some unique “Tony trivia” you may have never known about before…

…there you go.[footnote]Oh, and I also won a poetry contest once, when I was in 7th grade. As you can imagine, I was w hit with the ladies.[/footnote]

Endurance athletes tend to be grandfathered into this train of thought that strength training should be avoided like an invite to a Squid Game and that it will slow them down.

This couldn’t be further from the truth.[footnote]Except for the Squid Game invite. Granted I don’t know your situation, but damn…that wouldn’t be my first choice.[/footnote]

Weightlifting is critical for runners who want to get the most out of their training. While it’s easy to skimp on weights in favor of running more miles, weight training for runners has so many benefits:

• Increased speed and power
• Greater running economy that helps improve endurance
• The ability to handle a greater workload (i.e., you can run more!)
• Improved injury resistance

I was recently re-invited onto the Strength Running Podcast hosted by Jason Fitzgerald and he was kind enough to parse out a 40-minute snippet from our close to two-hour conversation that we recorded for his private High Performance Lifting Program group on his site.

We covered myriad of topics:

• How do runners find a great strength coach or gym? What are the top 1-3 things to look for?
• Should weightlifting routines be modified for older runners?
• If an athlete wants to avoid any Olympic lifts but still wants to develop power and explosivity, are there alternative exercises that would be helpful?
• How can runners tell if they are over or under training with regard to strength?

Give it a listen:

HERE – Spotify

HERE – iTunes

HERE – Stitcher