Running Science Expanded

Explosive Strength Training For Distance Runners

Strength training for distance runners has gained ground in the recent years as more runners of varying ability and type are entering the mix. As people increase their training volume, they are finding it more and more important to keep their joints healthy, prevent imbalance, and maintain some aesthetics through incorporating both general and running specific strength moves to keep them healthy so they can run more. However, if peak performance is the goal, the strength training one does as they approach a race should be explosive.

A study published in 1999 in the Journal of Applied Physiology investigated the effects of incorporating explosive plyometric training into runner’s present volume, and found that while there were no significant changes in their vo2 max, their stride power and running economy improved to the point that the experimental runners were able to run a significantly faster 5k compared to no change in the 5k time of the runners not performing the explosive strength work.

How should runners go forward with this information? incorporating a plyometric strength training workout as well as something more running specific like short hill sprints 1-2 times a week would stand to help a runner improve their race performance. No significant gains will be made in your ability to process oxygen, but your muscles and tendons will be more adept to producing force quickly and efficiently to propel you through the finish line.

Sport Specific Agility and Down Hill Running

The benefits of incorporating hills into an athlete’s training schedule are already rather well established. Whether it be through short 10 second sprints up a steep incline, or long climbs to build mental toughness, running hills is a well established staple in training, used to build an athlete’s explosive stride, power, and stamina should running be specific to their sport. However, running up a hill is only half the story.

A study published in November of 2017 in the Applied Physiology, Nutrition, and Metabolism section of the Canadian Science Publishing site sought to investigate the effects of downhill running on aerobic and muscular performance in trained individuals. Male subjects were divided into two groups to perform training sessions on treadmills, either adjusted to be flat or on a constant down hill (-10% grade) with sessions lasting 20 minutes and occasionally approaching a subject’s lactate threshold within a safe margin to not risk injury from the machine.

What the researchers found is that while there were no significant differences between the changes in aerobic capacity among the two groups, the group that performed the downhill training displayed significantly better improvements in the torque they were able to produce at varying angular velocities during knee extension, and their ability to quickly change direction while running.

What does this mean for athletes? While uphill running has its benefits in power development, downhill running presents a non-traditional opportunity to work on agility and develop critical strength in the quadriceps through eccentric loading. Examples include downhill sprints lasting 30 seconds to a minute to focus on the muscular component, being followed by a flat finish to hone the speed achieved on the downhill and work on the speed endurance component.

Sustainable Running in the Time of Coronavirus

It was only a matter of time before the greatest threats to society’s integrity took the form of a biological pandemic. While war and famine are structural issues, disease management and prevention is a direct intervention into the mechanics of evolution and how various organisms and viruses interact with the predominantly human environment that has emerged with the flourishing of civilization. Today, the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) is the latest indiscriminate biological threat, originating in the city of Wuhan in China, and quickly spreading across the world over the course of the past few months.

In an article written in Podium Runner, Amby Burfoot cites the research of exercise physiologist David Nieman in justifying the benefit of consistent moderate exercise, in this case running, as a form of disease prevention. Nieman’s research indicated that a sedentary lifestyle put one at an average infection risk, and going too hard increased infection risk. However, consistent moderate exercise brought disease risk for an individual below average. This further fed the established notion that exercise strengthens the body in ways beyond physical attributes and appearance.

What does this mean for the recreational and competitive runner? Easy to moderate mileage with minimal amounts of hard sustained intensity. Fitness can still be built through slowly and progressively increasing one’s volume of running, but running too fast for too long presents the risk of temporarily compromising the immune system making way for a potential infection. Consistent easy-moderate running presents the optimization necessary to prevent sacrificing physical fitness while meeting the social obligation of managing disease at the personal level to avoid community spread.

The Key to Speed is – Through Your Gut?

Adaptations to running and aerobic exercise in general take a variety of forms, ranging from large scale changes like increases in bone mineral density, to smaller scale shits such as enzyme development and muscle capillarization.

Lactate is a byproduct of fuel (carbohydrate) metabolism during exercise, and certain adaptations to aerobic exercise improve our body’s ability to recycle and utilize lactate during exercise. While it is accepted that different organs and muscles themselves can either recycle lactate into glucose or oxidize it for ATP production, new research shows that our gut bacteria play a significant role in lactate recycling.

A study published back in June 2019 analyzed stool samples from runners that had just completed a marathon, and found that the samples contained elevated levels of the bacteria Veillonella atypica. Furthermore, when they inoculated mice with this strain of bacteria, their times to exhaustion on a treadmill significantly improved.

The presence of this bacteria among others is upregulated through aerobic exercise, and the researchers went on to investigate the exact mechanism through which the presence of this bacteria and others like it improve performance.

What they found is that these bacteria are responsible for the production of short chain fatty acids from their consumption of lactate, which in turn provide fuel for the muscle to oxidize for ATP.

As stated before, lactate can travel from working muscles to the liver to be recycled into glucose that can again be used as fuel, or to other working organs that oxidize the lactate directly. In this new case however, the researchers found that due to the ability of lactate to permeate the lumen of the gut, the bacteria were able to metabolize the lactate and provide fuel for the muscles to use during exercise, in turn improving performance.

Surely this isn’t the final discovery of the gut’s influence on athletic performance, but it provides further insight as to the bodily circumstances that yield high performance.

Why You Need Steady State Cardio and HIIT

Steady state cardio and high intensity interval training (HIIT) have both received their fair share of criticism and praise for their benefits and alleged downfalls. From the days of heavy low-intensity endurance work of marathoners in the 70s, to the refurbishment of HIIT through modalities like Crossfit, the view of the endurance component in the mainstream fitness industry has polarized itself into those advocating for one type of cardiovascular activity completely over the other. However, the elite distance running community has been rejecting this dogma of over polarization for decades, and brings to light training principles rooted in science that are more than applicable to the recreational athlete.

A study conducted in 2009 by Stephen Seiler and Espen Tønnessen sought to understand the influences of volume and intensity on improving endurance performance, and found that of the total work volume one does of cardiovascular exercise, in this case running, was best split with 80% of their total volume of work being performed at an easy-moderate intensity, with roughly only 20% of their volume being performed at a high intensity (above lactate threshold)

Through training analysis of various athletes, they found that this split improved endurance performance the most, rather than a focus on one aspect or the other. This is because low intensity endurance work improved the overall work capacity and base aerobic conditioning, while the high intensity work provided the specific stimulus necessary to condition the athlete for the event they were training for. The researchers further went on to say that the motor/neurological adaptations derived from the low intensity endurance work were crucial for developing the efficiency to sustain and execute the high intensity efforts within that modality, whether it was running, cycling, rowing, or anything else.

What this study ends up emphasizing is that an all-or-nothing approach to aerobic conditioning does not yield optimal training results, and an approach involving the proper distribution of intensities within a given work volume is the way forward.

Counteracting Parkinson’s Through a Medicinal Lifestyle

Exercise is touted as multifaceted tonic for the body, given not only the disease-preventing physical health benefits, but the management of mental health maladies as well. Covering everything from obesity and heart disease to depression and anxiety, aerobic exercise functions to mitigate various conditions by addressing all or some of the complications associated with them.

However, recent research has now shown that aerobic exercise has a much wider range as to the medical conditions it’s able to treat.

Parkinson’s disease can be regarded as a meeting of variety of mental and physical conditions, in that the decline in normal function is not only seen in the slowing of physical abilities such as locomotion or posture, but also in brain function, evidenced through amnesia and/or dementia. It is with this particular disease that researchers found that aerobic exercise was able to actually improve cognition better than goal-based training, which involved specific exercises involving bodyweight resistance and general motor programming.

The researchers elaborated through citing other previously conducted studies on endurance work that their findings were likely attributed to the fact that aerobic exercise activated and increased functionality of parts of the brain essential to basic cognition, along with upregulating neural growth factors.

Why is this important? This simply reinforces the concept that aerobic exercise should be considered as part of a medicinal prescription for those who are able. There is widespread evidence to suggest that general movement, and specifically extended durations of aerobic activity is a naturally derived tool for the treatment and prevention of the various diseases that threaten the normal functions of the body.

The integration of effective aerobic exercise in the treatment of medical ailments is a branch of the industry that shifts the focus from traditional methods (pharmaceuticals only), and can expand towards a near non-invasive approach of treating and preventing certain diseases, which in a world plagued with a rising cost of existence, is something we desperately need.

https://doi-org.proxy.libraries.rutgers.edu/10.1016/j.bandc.2018.01.002