Weight Training for Runners

Weight training improves a person's stamina, strength, and speed. Experts recommend it to all athletes to achieve and maintain overall fitness. It protects muscles, tendon, and joints imbalance. This is the secret of all athletes that never fails to bring home the bacon.

Runners should do weight lifting to exercise their quadriceps, hamstrings, upper back, lower back, and abs. This will greatly improve the strength of their upper bodies and legs to run faster. In addition, weight lifting is proven to be one of the most effective ways in decreasing joint injuries and improving performance.

Ideally, weight training should be done every other day. This would allow the muscles to rest for a day and get ready for another set on the following day. Body builders suggest starting with weights that can be carried comfortably for 12 repetitions. An athlete may increase the weight every now and then to increase muscle strength and endurance.

Below are the advantages of weight training for runners:

1. Recent studies show that 7 weeks of weight training can greatly reduce the risk of certain injuries commonly associated with athletes, these are recurring lower back pain, nagging hip, and kneecap pain.
2. Proper weight training is consistently associated with improved performance. It improves breathing techniques that allows runners to run faster and delay exhaustion.
3. Weight training is guaranteed to maintain or improve the health of runners by increasing their muscle strength and endurance needed to win any race.
4. Physical fitness has always been associated with weight training. It helps a person in toning or defining the muscles that is very beneficial in any sport.
5. Weight training helps runners in raising basal metabolism rate or the state in burning calories when resting or after eating. As a result, runners do not gain unwanted body fats that can hinder them for running faster.
6. Runners can also increase their energy through weight training. It burns calories faster and produce more energy.
7. Weight training keeps the runners healthy by decreasing the risks of diabetes, colon cancer, and heart attack.
8. Weight lifting improves posture, which is very important to runners, by strengthening shoulder, neck, hip, and back muscles. This enables runners to run comfortably and improve stability and balance.
9. Runners can also handle stress effectively through weight lifting. Recent studies show that positive body changes promote good sleeping habits and good mood. Experts agree that weight lifting is a good tool in stress management.
10. Lastly, weight training produces stronger bones to withstand extended running and pressure.

While weight training is proven beneficial for runners, it is important to keep in mind that this training should not be done unless a professional trainer is around. Here are some tips in ensuring safety while doing weight trainings:

1. Learn the basics of weight training. Ask a trainer about warming up or cooling down before and after the exercise, and do not forget to ask about proper breathing to get maximum results.
2. To prevent injuries, start with minimum weights; gradually increase the weights as needed. This would slowly build muscle endurance and strength.
3. To avoid muscles from being over worked, make it a habit to observe the heart rate before doing weight training. If it is obviously higher compared to the average daily rate, have another day off or until it normalizes again.
4. To reduce muscle stress, slow down when lifting weights. Allow 2-4 second interval when lifting or lowering the weights.
5. Ask a trainer to design a balanced workout targeting all the muscles in the body. Most beginners concentrate on a specific muscle group (chest or biceps) that results in muscular imbalance. Make sure to exercise all the major muscle groups when doing weight training.
6. Eat a balanced diet. Working out will be useless if runners will not monitor what they eat. Combining weight training, exercise, and balance diet is the most effective way in achieving desired body weight.  More about this later.

Weight training can be very helpful not only for runners but for all kinds of athletes. Knowing how to properly do it can bring anyone one step closer to the finish line.