Strength Training For Endurance Athletes of All Abilities

Welcome to the New Levels Coaching Podcast. As coaches we want to share our knowledge and expertise with the running, triathlon and endurance sports community.

Each week, our host Lewis Moses, former Team GB International Athlete turned Coach, will be joined by a special guest and together they will aim to educate and inspire our audience to help them find their own potential. We want people to listen, engage, take the best bits and LITERALLY RUN WITH THEM!

Episode 22: STRENGTH TRAINING FOR ENDURANCE ATHLETES OF ALL ABILITIES

In episode 22 Lewis is joined by Dr Rich Blagrove, who is fast becoming the ‘go to’ practitioner for strength and conditioning for endurance athletes here in the UK. Rich is a senior lecturer in Physiology at Loughborough University and he is also Programme Leader for the MSc Strength and Conditioning and contributes to teaching on several undergraduate and other postgraduate programmes in the School.

Both Rich and Lewis explore the term ‘strength & conditioning’ and look at what falls into this domain when it comes to training. They address the do’s and don’ts, they look at the literature supporting S&C and how endurance athletes can implement it into their training.

Rich has also written and published his own book: Strength and Conditioning for Endurance Running and this is a great tool for runners and running coaches which we strongly recommend. You can find the book on Amazon here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Strength-Conditioning-Endurance-Running-Blagrove/dp/1847979874

We hope you enjoy the episode, be sure to leave us any feedback as we would love to hear from our amazing community and don’t forget to like, share and subscribe to the New Levels Coaching Podcast.

Website: www.newlevelscoaching.co.uk

1 2 3 4 welcome back to the new levels coaching podcast remember we are the coaching podcast that brings you lots of coaching inspiration education so you can literally literally go away and run with it this week is all about strength and conditioning uh the wats the house how regularly should you be doing it in

Your plan should you be doing it in your training plan and I wanted to bring a guest on firstly who I know I can trust and somebody I know who has one of the best reputations worldwide for strength and conditioner and certainly is regarded as one of the best

Practitioners in this field not just here in the UK but around the world too a lot of you may be familiar with the name Dr Rich Blair grve or Rich Blair grve as I Know Rich by uh Rich has his own book which I’ve strategically placed

To the left hand side of him so I haven’t used it just as a prop but it is there we won’t be using it but I’m sure we we will be referring to it as we go so you may have read Rich’s book before and you may have seen him on workshops

On certain webinars or you may have met him at certain conferences in the past but rich is a very very knowledgeable person who I still rely on to this day and I thought is normally better to bring on to the podcast to talk all things strength and conditioning where

I’m going to kick off though Rich well firstly welcome yeah thanks really generous introduction buddy and invitations to come on today’s podcast well thank you for coming on I really appreciate you taking the time to to be here with us um I’m going to start by

Asking Rich I’ve given a little bit of a brief introduction there but can you give a bit of an insight into uh your background maybe starting from your running days uh and then building up all the way to where you are now which is now back at L University yeah sure I’ll

Uh try not to bore you too long with a an autobiography so yeah like like you say I originally came from a middle distance running background so I was a student in this town lofra um coached by the late great George Gandy for for quite a few

Years and yeah I I was an all right standard at running not not quite as good as you buddy I think when you say all right what what do you define by all right cuz a little bit better than I was always kind of ranked in and around the

Top 20 through like under 15 under 17 age groups around 152 when I was 19 here as a student yeah I certainly wasn’t ever good enough to get a Great Britain International vestors and uh yeah I had quite a lot of injury problems and so just before I I left lury University I

Actually switched Sports to rowing um and yeah just kind of found out by accident that I was a little bit more talented at rowing than I was at running and because of the endurance base that I developed as a runner um I seem to excel quite quickly at

Rowing and I did that for four years and trained with the national squad and yeah I mean looking back on that experience it was it was incredibly useful because they’ve got an incredibly professional setup at Great Britain rowing it’s a really well funded and supported program

And yeah a lot of the rowers as you know are incredibly successful at Olympic level so kind of watching how they operate and being part of that for two or three years was was really valuable um but yeah alongside that I was actually starting to become more interested in strength and conditioning

So I started off doing a little bit of work with the football and basketball Academy about 15 or so years ago now and um I was doing a bit of teaching as well then managed to secure a job at St Mary’s University down in Southwest London as a leer in strength and

Conditioning um I’m sure most of your listeners kind of know about the sort of culture and tradition of St Marys and that that part of the UK that there’s a lot of Runners there and it’s been a center of excellence in the past so I kind of naturally started to do some

Strength and conditioning support with the runners that were based down there both because I enjoyed it and yeah it sort of came natur naturally to me that that I could work with that uh that group and yeah I’ve worked with quite a few successful Runners down at St Mar’s

And I seem to be getting more and more inquiries from other Runners around the UK and coaches asking about what they should do in terms of strength and conditioning for their Runners um so I guess as you sort of naturally do you you write a book on it you do as you do

Yeah you’ve got a bit of a resource to point people to so I think the book’s kind of served its purpose in that respect and um yeah sold quite nicely um and then yeah I left stent Marys in 2017 and I was just starting to get involved

With more research and move a little bit away from snc coaching with Runners um I spent a couple of years at Birmingham City University working and then when I finished my PhD which was was looking at the use of strength training with adolescent distance Runners I managed to

Secure a job back here and kind of Go full circle and um yeah start at lury University as a Lector in physiology um and I’m now yeah I’m now a senior lecturer and yeah still at lb BR still going up the the chain and it’s interesting how you’ve come full circle

And now you’re in that physiology domain I was chatting to to Steve about it this morning when I was in the physiology lab and we were chatting about how not many people combine physiology with um biomechanics and I said Rich will be one of the closest to that now with the snc

Background and and the physiology background but I I always see them as being very closely linked particularly strength and conditioning physiology and the bi biomechanics and how they all work together to help improve or how they affect performance yeah absolutely and and if if as an snc coach you sort

Of choose intentionally or unintentionally to specialize in work with an endurance sport like I have you you have to know about the like the physi ological limiting factors behind performance in the sport to know where the the strength and conditioning activities fit in and if you kind of

Make assumptions or you don’t really understand what limits performance in Endurance Sports then you’re not really going to be able to apply strength and conditioning principles to the athletes that you’re working with it’s a really interesting way of looking at it yeah yeah sure and we we’ll go into a little

Bit of the science as we go um but where I want to start is I want to strip It Right Back to Basics and and we’ve mentioned your book a couple of times I’ll put that in the show for people who maybe aren’t familiar with it because it

Is a really good we still use it as coaches as a tool like it’s really helpful for us as coaches uh and at St Mary’s I worked with you as an athlete which is why I know I can trust that one of the successful ones yeah I mentioned

One of the many successful ones Rich one of the many successful ones and um well in fact when you’re writing the book you’re saying oh I’m going to be writing a book I’m going to use some of the images that we’ve been doing then I moved away from St Mary’s so I couldn’t

Be in the book but at the time we were working together and I think that’s why I have such a close association with the book and yourself um because I could really relate to it and and the journey I was going on yeah know thanks so I’ll

Pop that in the show notes so people can can check that out um but I want to go right back to basics and for people to understand well what is strength and conditioning because people hear the term snc a lot we see a lot of influencers out there uh you know

Promoting themselves as snc coaches and we’ll certainly debunk some myths as we go today but I wanted to get from a professional from somebody who who is in that field all the time to give a simple definition of well what is strength what is conditioning are they different and

What do people need to know about the two yeah so strength in conditioning is essentially about the complete physical preparation of the athlete um mostly in terms of any sort of physical training activities that take place outside of the their own kind of Technical and tactical aspects of their sport so as a

Kind of really simple example and I guess taking it away from from running briefly like a footballer will obviously play a lot of football they do a lot of setpiece practice they’ll do some small-sided games but then they’ll do a bunch of other physical training activities which might be lifting of

Weights it might be doing some plyometric training it might be foam rolling it might be stretching um it might be kind of some core stability type work it might be some additional kind of cardiovascular type conditioning and all of those extra training activities that sit away from football

Would be part of a strength and conditioning coaches remit um I think there there’s two kind of global aims of strength and conditioning firstly to try and improve performance which is the most obvious one so kind of goes back to what we referring to before that a key

Part of a strength and condition coach’s role is just understanding the sport the physiology the biomechanics to know what how and where strength and conditioning is going to fit in and then secondly trying to reduce the risk of injury and so with Runners that’s mostly overuse type injuries but we know there’s

There’s some quite good evidence that strength and conditioning will reduce the risk of certain types of injuries in quite a few different sports um and I I guess another big excuse me another big part of the role is just it sounds quite simple but just relationship building because same when

I was working with you like you never as an snc coach just work with the athlete in kind of like a silo by yourself you’re always going to be working alongside a technical coach or a manager if you’re working at quite a high level there’s usually going to be a

Physiotherapist some times a physiologist a nutritionist a psychologist so you kind of formed as part of the interdisciplinary team and you feed into I guess more sort of global decisions around the physical preparation of the athlete which aren’t just about the activities that you’re responsible for I think that’s a really

Good point to make about relationship building with the people that you’re working with as well not just the the team around the athlete but the athlete and the coach themselves that’s for me is is super important we see it a lot with the athletes who we work with where

It’s run as a track athletes is that coach athlete relationship is so so important to success um one thing I would want to go back to rich is around we like we tend to call it you know understanding the demands of of the event so I’m going to use running as an

Example here uh I’m I’m going to go back to my background as a middle distance Runner because I use a lot of examples with Marathon naturally on this podcast but as a middle distance Runner somebody who’s focusing on around 1500 M maybe up to 5K if we’re starting to go longer

Distances on the track um but it was really important uh for me to to understand the demands of of my event and as you said it’s really important for you as the practitioner to understand the demands of the event and I guess I don’t want to throw every

Personal trainer under the bus here but I think one of the problems we see with people who are getting support from personal trainers is there’s maybe a little bit of G of a gap between what they set as a gym program and understanding the demands of the event

For for for the runner so for me as a middle distance Runner a lot of that would have been you know speed strength um that that that ability to be able to generate power as well particularly in a Sprint finish and there’s a lot of other

Factors to also come into play if we go to longer distances for say the marathon I think in all in all times people used to get a little bit confused oh well marathon runners don’t need strength and conditioning because they don’t need speed and power but recent reseearch has

Start to point more towards how important strength and conditioning is for for marathon runners hasn’t it yeah absolutely and yeah I mean the the sort of physiological demands of the different events do do overlap quite considerably and they’re mainly limited by physiological factors yeah so you

Compare it to to other sports and skills in other sports they might mostly be limited by technique or biomechanics whereas we know middle distance running longdistance running and then ultra distance they’re all predominantly limited by sort of cardiorespiratory and met metabolic factors so we can’t get away from that you’re exactly right like

There’s in the 800 MERS in particular but also 1500 um we know there’s anerobic factors so that’s production of energy without the presence of oxygen are incredibly important so the ability to run a fast 400 the ability to just be just have good maximal speed is absolutely key and we know that strength

Training especially can play a major role in try in trying to improve those things um and then for the longer distances we know that running economy becomes more important and so that’s how much energy that you’re using at a submaximal intensity and we know from a physiological perspective that’s the

Main physiological determinant that strength training can influence and so if we can improve the amount of force we’re producing and the way that muscles are behaving when our foot’s on the ground then we can improve running economy and therefore longer distance running performance and and with the marathon in particular that running

Economy is said to be the the biggest determinant of marathon performance is yes yeah and I know that from some of the research that I’ve read in the past again it’s not just you you um you mention a lot of things that fall into that strength and conditioning remit but

Plyometric training is another thing that’s been shown to potentially improve in an economy again it’s one of the one of the very much one of the few things in the big umbrella but it has it’s got solid evidence around that yeah it has yeah and I guess when we talk about

Strength training overall we’re talking about three main training activities ities so we’ve got sort of traditional heavy resistance training so lifting dumbbells and barbells um that most people will associate with a strength and conditioning coach like you’re the kind of weight weight room coach then you’ve got more explosive resistance

Training which is picking up like fairly light loads but trying to move them really quickly and that can be right down to just your body weight as well and then the third category that you just mentioned is is plyometric training which is yeah trying to drive adaptations to the stretch shortening

Cycle and the ability of particularly the ailles tendon for runners to be able to store and return elastic energy and we know that if we can improve stretch shortening cycle and achilles tendon properties then we get better use of this kind of free energy that we get from tendons which yeah enhances our

Running economy and and petrics they’re not they’re not easy to implement I I I’ve been doing them for years and I still had them in now because I think they’re super important but they’ve got to be implemented gradually in fact I’m working with an athlete right now who

We’ve uh we’ve put them in there and we’re starting off very basic double leg Plyometrics and then we’re looking to progress to single leg and we’re going to progress the demands of those plyometric exercises as well they’re very demanding we were just having a chat outside the podcast Studio they put

A lot of demand and people just think oh I’ll just throw these petrics in my plan but there’s a lot of things to consider when we do put things that that that explosive in our plan yeah certainly with Plyometrics because like the the impact forces that we see with moderate to high intensity

Patric are really high and so so with Runners that are doing High volumes of training that have got like micro damage to connective tissues and muscles already if you if you suddenly try to do some high-intensity Plyometrics like there probably is a little bit of a risk

There um but there’s also a bit of a misconception with Plyometrics that you will hear like quite reputable strength and condition coaches and it’s said in a lot of textbooks as well that like you need to do heavy strength training for years and years before you have kind of

That strength Foundation before you should even start doing Plyometrics but it’s it’s not really the case cuz we you need to think of any training activity including Plyometrics along a bit of a Continuum yeah and so like the just the act of jogging and running is plyometric

By itself and so if somebody Sprints and hasn’t yeah if you’re a marathon runner and you don’t Sprint very often like that would be considered a sort of moderate intensity plyometric for most Runners and so as you say you put somebody back on two feet and you do an

Exercise like some Pogo jumps where you trying to bounce as high as possible and spend a short time on the ground like that’s a sufficient intensity plyometric to drive adaptations with most so you don’t necessarily need to have done resistance training for years to build up the tolerance to that type of work

And then it’s just a case of like any training activity just gradually nudging it forward using the principles of progressive overload over a long period of time and yeah not necessarily doing anything too in high high intensity too quickly and I think that’s what I see a

Lot on particular on social media now you see somebody demonstrating like a real high level petric saying you know the best P metric for marathon runners and you think to yourself God Almighty don’t start there you know you show show them the progression but people want to

See the fancy stuff they want to see people jumping high that’s what gets people attracted to it sometimes the basic stuff isn’t the sexy stuff as we say so people don’t look at it as much abely yeah I mean it originally comes from the old kind of former Eastern

Europe block approach to doing Plyometrics that they used to call it shock training and so the the very first exercise would be put an athlete on a 60 cm box or sometimes higher and they have to step off and land and rebound off the surface which is incredibly intense and

If that’s the very first exercise like well for most Runners that’s completely inappropriate and is going to be risky but there’s obviously lower intensity versions of Plyometrics that aren’t kind of this this shock type training yeah absolutely and we maybe go to like where people can start with this in a second

But I want to go back to your point you made about um you know one of the the main purposes of strength and conditioning of all the elements that we’re talking about here whether it’s lifting heavy weights whether it’s plyometric whether it’s moving lighter weights at faster speeds is to help

Reduce our risk of injury because injuries is a massive problem no matter what standard of Runner you are um everybody will suffer from some kind of injury I think there was this I read something somewhere that there was a study done and 75% of people had said

They had suffered or had had timeout in that calendar year due to an injury and the the publisher of the study said the other 25% were lying so then you think oh why do we do this mad spot if we get injured but it is common that we we get injured but

There are certain practices that we can put in place that minimize that risk strength and conditioning being one now I’m going to go back to the weekend Josh Kerr won the yeah it’s great result the 3,000 meters in doors for those of you aren’t familiar Josh ker W the indoor

3,000 MERS at the world indoor championships up in Glasgow Josh is also world champion Outdoors over 1500 meters and he said something in his interview that really stood out to me as a as a coach and he said consistency is everything for me you know I’ll beat

Anybody at cons on consistency because I I don’t do the most amazing sessions I I don’t overdo it but I keep consistent and I know that strength condition is a big part of his his plan as well and I think if you manage things well you are more likely to be consistent but

By adding strength and condition into your plan you give yourself that chance of being more consistent which in turn will also lead to Improvement so it’s not just the improvement from the strength and conditioning we’re looking for it’s the Improvement of being able to run more or being more consistent

With the running which is also a benefit from sharing the conditioning absolutely yeah yeah there’s there’s always a lot to unpack with injury prevention but yeah I guess starting with just purely strengthening conditioning we we actually quite recently had a paper published in Journal called Sports Medicine which is um really reputable

Journal which directly reviewed all of the studies that have used strength and conditioning as a as a way to try and prevent injury with Runners um actually the the overall conclusion or message that came out of it wasn’t it sounds a little bit contradictory but it was that strength and condition probably doesn’t

Reduce the risk of injury but we we actually did what’s called a post talk or kind of like sub analysis of a collection of studies that had Ed supervision or there had been a coach present in some way shape or form at the sessions and what they found in those

Three studies was that the adherence was higher probably the technique of the uh of the participants actually doing the exercises was a little bit better and they all found positive effects interesting so there yeah there’s both a little bit of a kind of as you say engagement and consistency message there

As well as it might be valuable to have a coach that’s qualified that can kind of watch what you’re doing as part of the exercises and if you engage with that over long term there was a significant reduction in injury in those that that had engaged with it um the the

Evidence in other sports for the use of strength and conditioning and the injuries obviously overlap it is is much much stronger so in in military populations in Game Sports particularly in Youth Sports settings there there’s quite strong evidence that lifting weights and doing more General strength and conditioning activities will reduce

Risk of injury it’s just I don’t think the sort of more General evidence is quite there yet with with Runners it’s really interesting though because in those settings you talk about particularly those like team settings youth settings military settings my understanding of that is it’s more likely that they would be

Observed as well in those settings so they’re probably doing it more as a team more regularly and it’s more observed as opposed to these individuals going and doing what they want when they want and not really knowing what they’re doing yeah yeah you’re AB absolutely right and certainly in military settings they’ve

Usually got some sort of physical training instructor and the studies were a little bit more carefully controlled in that respect in a lot of the youth and Game Sports settings it’s in football or soccer and so they they’re working with Academy kids who have got strength and conditioning coaches

Present and they’re running some sort of training um training intervention whereas yeah in a lot of the studies we looked at in our our review it was it was often recreational Runners preparing for a marathon and they’ just be sent an snc program and then it was kind of

Would let us know how much of it you do and at the end of the study not many had done it and the injury rates were about the same in in the two different groups so yeah certainly the quality of of the research isn’t as good so there’s three

Things I want to unpick from this because the the first thing is we talk about a lot purposeful practice I think is so important and when somebody’s there you’re more likely to do it with purpose and you’ve got eyes on as well so it just makes it more purposeful

Whereas what we’re talking about here is when people are sometimes left to their own devices you can become lazy with with it and sometimes neglect it or sometimes not even do it and and we see that a lot with with people who we coach they think Ah that’s not the important

Thing the running is the important thing so I’ll do that first yeah yeah and it goes back to what we were saying right at the start about the kind of relationship building it’s about guess understanding the expectations of of the runner and the technical coach and initially just trying to kind of gauge

What the motivation levels are like for strength and conditioning and if it’s pretty low which sometimes it is it’s about trying to find exercises or an activity that they engage with a little bit and they sort of get a bit of a hook and they see okay there might be some

Value here they do it consistently and then it’s layering on different approaches after that and yeah sometimes that works best and that that was leading on to my second Point quite nicely around um finding what works for you I think is really important um when it works for you uh what activities work

For you but also if you don’t have the ability to you know be with a strength and conditioning coach every week you know could you have an accountability partner a training partner there who just has eyes on you and or is videoing you and you have that little bit more

Feedback which can then in turn help you now I know it’s not having a professional there all the time but it is that accountability partner that maybe helps you to be more purposeful as well with your training and then the final point which um good old hany Alex

Haynes a good friend of both of ours Alex who’s been on the podcast before go back and listen to that episode uh if if what I’d encourage you to cuz is a brilliant episode we didn’t talk about strength and condition as such but we did talk a lot about injuries on that

Episode and Alex and I have always had that good relationship where uh when he was coaching me we we kept snc in there but he left it to my own devices now he will be first to say and I will be first to say that if I ever drop snc my injury

Rate goes up you know and and that’s still True to this day by the way the the the better I apply myself to my snc in general the the more consistent I am and with the research Alex used to be very good with this he just said I don’t

I I do like the research and I’m going to listen to it but I also like things that are black and white if you’re telling me that that works for you and you’re good with that then that’s good for me and absolutely sometimes think that’s important isn’t it for athletes

To understand what works for them yeah yeah 100% it’s both what works for them and yeah what they’re going to kind of buy into and yeah if if they’re buying into snc they see some sort of value and they’re going to do it religiously then it’s yeah I guess it’s much more likely

To have have a positive benefit I mean I guess the other thing that I would say just about injury prevention generally and you’d have spoken about this with with hayy and with other guests is the essency is just one aspect of it and what the research does tend to do is it

Will look at just one one aspect and we know that the reason that most athletes in general but definitely Runners get injured is is multifactoral and so part of an C coach’s role and remit and this this comes back to the sort of complete physical preparation of the athlete is

To go in with a much more kind of holistic interdisciplinary approach where you’re potentially looking at things like are they eating enough are they eating enough of the right sorts of foods have they got good energy availability do they get enough sleep like what’s going on in their rest and

Recovery periods are they going shopping or they lying down on a sofa um what previous injuries have they had because we know that that’s the main risk factor for future injuries and then as you mentioned kind of feeding into the overall workload that if you ramp up the

Snc at the same time the technical coach is ramping up the snc that’s a kind of training error inappropriate training behaviors which are potentially going to cause some sort of injury um and then there’s other kind of quite small things which have been shown to be risk factors

For injury that potentially the snc coach can influence as well and so it’s it’s trying to come with a much more holistic approach rather than thinking weights is going to stop you getting injured because it might not just that that by itself let’s look at that um kind of

Multifactoral approach then Rich because I think rest and Recovery is is so important and we see with a lot of athletes who we coach online that they’re so reluctant to take time off like even on a day off they find it really hard to put their feet up to lie

On the ser and I get that because people want to be active and you know we’re in a definitely in a society now where it’s almost promoter to be more active so they feel lazy by taking a day off but what’s the importance of that and and

You mentioned it there about okay well injury risk isn’t just one factor how do we tie all that together to say well rest and Recovery is also a big factor in that picture yeah I think it’s a lot of it’s about trusting the coach and the

Process and and having a coach that can is willing to kind of make that call and say you’ve had a stressful week you’ve got stuff going on in your personal life or you’re feeling a little bit running down for whatever reason and to say is it’s going to be sensible just to skip

Tomorrow morning’s run or just take take the whole day off and try to relax and try to put your feet up a little bit and then yeah the the athlete trusting that and actually following the instructions and again that that thing goes back to what you say it’s like in the short term

It feels like you’re being lazy and yeah maybe if you have a few of those days like in the short term your performance might drop a little bit but longer term you don’t get injured ill or overtrained and so it fulfills this principle of consistency that you’re just able to run

Regularly and um and that way performance will will definitely improve long term yeah take a couple of days off now to prevent taking weeks off down the line that are going to impact it or be in this cycle of constantly feeling tired or managing this niggle that just

Won’t go away what is actually if you just listen to the body and and taking that time in the first place and and link to that as well what we we see a lot of people with is I go back the word periodization so as as coaches we’re

Very big on this at new levels coaching we’re looking to periodize people’s training particularly towards their big GS now what we find with most recreational athletes is particularly with Runners and triathletes is they’ll enter like a big Iron Man or a big Marathon for example and automatically

They’ve got their big Target goal and they they they are quite good at them mapping out their season for that but if people don’t have those big goals they tend to get caught in this kind of ever evolving season where they’re just racing all the time and they don’t

Really have a periodized plan and I think this is really important when we talk about strength and conditioning because when I look at my plans for strength and conditioning particularly for people who are on these long-term plans I’m very conscious of what that strength and conditioning looks like at

Different times of the year yeah and I think it’s really important to have that understanding as a coach but also for the athlete to have that understanding of this is why my coach is doing this because they might see it as the example I’m going to give here is the snc for

Some of my athletes right now is quite High because we’re in like that big conditioning phase want them to get strong and as we go towards Peak specificity phase that snc might drop a little bit it won’t go out completely but it certainly might start to tailor

Off because we can’t have too much in the plan but the mindset of some runners or some athletes will be well why are you dropping that down yeah and it’s really hard for them to to grasp that but what what’s the importance of that getting the periodization correct yeah it is really

Important and as you’ve kind of alluded to there it’s about identifying what the long-term goal is which I guess for most oners is going to be 6 to 12 months and then trying to work backwards from that um as part of that process you I guess you’re doing more thorough kind of neat

Analysis of the individual just to sort of find out okay how much background have you had in strength and conditioning before what sort of injuries have you had through the last cycle because it’s those things that you’re going to want to try to address like quite early on but the way that I

Would I tend to sort of periodize strength and conditioning is work quite closely with the runner and the technical coach and the strength and conditioning almost comes it almost kind of like preempts what’s going to happen in the next block of work so to use your

Example there if you’re going to do 3 months of quite high volume training building up to a marathon where where the long run of the week’s prioritized as maybe like a second longish run in the week and it’s just for that individual like relatively high volume you can’t kind of have really high

Volume strength and conditioning work alongside that as well because it just risks injury or overtraining or illness and so that that snc work kind of has to preempt it and come before it so it might be the two months before that high volume block of running that you’re

Doing a little bit more snc to prepare you for that higher higher block of running and there’s other examples as well where um I guess at the slightly higher performing level we we get a lot of Runners going away on training camps and the environment and the running

Terrain changes quite a lot on the training camp and sometimes if they’re a middle distance Runner um they might be doing more track work in spikes and so my snc workers almost got to prepare the runner for that training camp yeah that if they’re going into spikes there’s

Going to be more stress going through the Achilles the higher intensity where it puts more stress on the hamstrings that if you try and fix those or yeah try and prevent injury in those areas while they’re on the training camp it’s too late so you’ve got to have already

Done that work before they then go on the camp and sometimes it’s a training camp but the snc volume actually drops down a little bit to account and accommodate for the the uh the intensity of the running work so yeah it’s just about kind of getting the balance and

Working with the coach well I’m so glad you’re saying it because I’m mapping out training camps later on in the year we’ve got a you level coaching training camp coming up in Portugal which I’m really looking forward to but I’m mapping out training camps for particularly for James and Gemma because

They’re going to shamany twice twice this year and with their snc we’re doing exactly that so I’m glad you’ve said it because I’m like right okay I’m on the right lines um because the specificity of those trails and that terrain will come when we’re out there it’s quite

Hard to find it here especially moment um and I’m looking saying okay well what do we need to prepare the body for that we’re going to see out there so how do we condition ourselves as as best as we possibly can so that you’re condition to deal with that environmental stress and

What’s going on um but also muscularly how are you uh adapting now so then you can definitely adapt out there when volume’s going to go quite High out there and the speed at which they’re descending is hopefully improved as well particularly for Gemma who’s improving her descending yeah in my mind I’m using

That preempting like you’re saying of okay what stress is that going to put on her long term how can we start to create that change now from from rest and SE because the other thing is she doesn’t really get that stress right now from the running downhill because she’s not

Quite there yet so I’m really glad you’ve used that analogy because it works well on my head around the track yeah but you can apply it to a lot of different disciplines absolutely yeah yeah it depends on the the distance and the the terrain and the challenges of

That event and you’ve essentially you trying to physically prepare the body and the athlet for um for those challenges and stresses and I we’re not talking about kind of switching stuff on and off here it’s not kind of binary that I’m either lifting weights or I’m

Not it’s kind of dialing stuff up and dialing it down so like at very most a runner might be lifting weights three times a week at some periods of the Year whereas at other times it might just be once a week or you can adopt an approach

That we term sort of micro doing so instead of going to the gym for an hour to lift weights it’s maybe like 20 or 30 minutes where you just trying to maintain the adaptations and the qualities that you’ve developed in previous phases and making sure they don’t disappear just by kind of dialing

It down and increasing in other areas I think this it’s a really good point the micro do element because I think a lot of people who we coach and a lot of our listeners will kind of be familiar with not with the term but certainly with

That idea of okay well going L and often is probably a little bit better for me because they they live very busy Lifestyles it’s very hard for them to commit like an hour to 90 minutes to the gym although what I would say here is

Runners will find time to do a an hour or 90 minute run so sometimes it’s um it’s sometimes one of those do you want to do it and do you want to find time but there are people who are saying well I can’t commit an hour three times a

Week for for strength so I think that is is a really interesting point and I think it’s an important point to address that you can go and do some shorter sessions more regularly and still elicit that same benefit that you looking for yeah absolutely and the the organization

Just in the general sense for essence see like for me anyway like it is quite individual and I get this question a lot like where’s best to put the strength and conditioning in the week and like my answer’s kind of become well it’s just best to do it just make sure you’re

Doing it like where it kind of comes in the week is kind of a little bit secondary um and it might sort of give you the extra I don’t know 5 10% in terms of just optimizing it but the most important thing is it’s it’s in there

Somewhere and then once it’s in there somewhere it’s I guess it’s kind of working with the individual because if you’ve got a young athlete that’s at school and they’re there for six seven hours a day and they’ve got other stuff going on in the evenings then you’re

Going to be limited with the way you can put it and the same with somebody that’s working like 9 till 5 every day they maybe got two or three kids they’ve got a social life but there’s only going to be certain places in the week that you

Can actually go and so for me as the snc coach I come along and say well the research suggests that it’s optimal to put it this many hours after a run and it can’t it can’t be on this sort of day that you kind of look at you and go

That’s just impossible for me to put in and then they disengage they say well I can’t do it then and it’s like well where can it go in the week let’s put it there and then like maybe longer term we can try to shuffle it around to to kind

Of optimize it it’s why we always start with the athletes who coach online one of the first questions we ask is okay where can you fit things in you know we’re looking at your programming here what’s the best days for the long run what’s the best days for your snc and

And often people come back to me or come back to us as coaches and say oh yeah but shouldn’t not be doing my snc on this day because that’s what I’ve read or you know the classic is oh well I’ve seen this athlete who does their snc on

The same day as they do their high intensity session and is that not the right way to do it and yeah it’s the right way to do it for them but they’re a full-time athlete they’re fulltime athlete they’re not doing anything else other than just training and Recovery

That’s it and and they they have a time on their hands they’re also observed they can adapt the session if they need to they’re going to go home and recover they don’t have to go to work so again it’s easy for us to sit here look on

Instagram or wherever Twitter and go oh well that’s what you know so and so is doing so that’s the best way to do it there’s certain things we can take from the elites which I think is the thing that you’ve just said there rich is they

Do do it yeah exactly that’s the biggest thing for me to take is don’t neglect this stuff um but don’t think that you have to do it as religiously as as they do and certainly don’t think that it has to be as structured and set in stone as

I’ve got to do it on this day I won’t get the same benefit doesn’t work like that no absolutely and there’s obviously a risk in in any sports of kind of copying what an elite athlete’s doing but they they’ve obviously built up to that over a long period of time it’s

It’s it’s relevant and appropriate for their their context and their life style and their kind of background and so if you see somebody yeah throw up a training program on on social media or a video of what they’re doing is not necessarily going to be appropriate for what probably isn’t appropriate for

Everybody and so yeah you’ve got to work with a coach that’s kind of skilled enough to tailor your program for for you as an individual and if someone’s not working with a coach because a lot of people who do tune into this they are self coach you know sure they um they do

Refer to whether it’s plans offline even even running plans or snc plans or they might read your book hopefully now they will and and there’s a lot of good guidance in your book as to how to structure your snc which is great which is why I’d recommend people go and read

That um if they’re not working with somebody and they’re think thinking I want to start to add strength and conditioning into my plan or some form of that the the general question we get is where do I start what do I do what what sort of things can they even be thinking

About at that stage yeah and it’s like I never like to say well it depends because it doesn’t really help listeners very much it yeah yeah there’s three things to consider I guess the the first thing is is whether they’ve got any experience and strength and condition

Before if if they haven’t the priority initially is just to build up some competence and skill in basic movement patterns that you’re going to want to load further down the line um and so in that regard you can get away with initially just doing things in a homebased environment and probably for

At least a few months you don’t necessarily have to get a gym membership or yeah go to a go to your Argos or whatever and buy some dumbbells or or a barbell um and the second thing is yeah are people kind of willing to invest in a gym membership and yeah maybe work

With a personal trainer or a strength conditioning coach and if they’re not that then kind of constrains the type of activity that that they do and it might be better for those people to go the route of maybe a little bit more Plyometrics rather than resistance training because they’re going to

Plateau in terms of their strength quite quickly um the third consideration and we mentioned this before is the the biggest risk factor for getting an injury is previous injury yeah and so if if if you’re dealing with a runner that’s not done strength and condition before but has had a lot of Achilles

Niggles or IT band syndrome um or shin splints plop fasciitis whatever they’ve got to address either the reasons for the reasons have got they had been getting that injury um or do some specific conditioning for the tissues around that area um because the likelihood that’s going to come back is

Pretty high yeah um so those would be the first few things I don’t know you want me to kind of go on to I don’t know maybe like an example program is that helpful yeah that would be good but one thing I was going to say there similar

To like a running program and we get people who come in and we we do that needs analysis and we say you know what what problems have you had in the past and similarly there might have had injury problems or you know problems of things that they struggling to improve

And we look at that and we almost go and say well that’s the first thing we need to address and but also similar with the movement patterns and um how you’re moving how you’re lifting it comes back to that point you said earlier Rich around um if you’re going to progress

Something you’ve almost got to preempt it so if we want people to run faster then we’ve got to look at it early on in the program and say okay well we know we want you to run faster in the long term how do we address start to address that

Now and it’s similar with lifting isn’t it if I want you to squat heavy we’ve got to get the movement right or else you’re not going to be able to squat heavy so you again preempting that so there’s a lot of similarities there that cross over but yeah I’d love to hear a

Few examples if if you can and and I guess yeah I mean my sort of standard snc program for a runner that I haven’t got that kind of individual level information on is is pretty boring unfortunately it’s just it’s just doing the basics pretty well and so with with

Lower limb resistance training I generally go for some sort of hip hinge pattern so what I mean by that is it’s it’s flexing at the hip keeping your back nice and straight and trying to load the gluteals and the hamstrings primarily so exercis is like a glute

Bridge to start off with they completely fine then go for some sort of squatting pattern so yeah kind of like handsfree squat or some people call it like a zombie squat with your hands out in front of you we we’re trying to get thighs to a roundabout parallel to the

Ground or maybe slightly under um is a really useful exercise and then on one leg i’ do some form of stepping exercise and some form of lunging exercise so a stepping exercise in a homebased environment could be something simple like a kind of dead leg step up where

You’re you’re trying to keep your your non-working leg as straight as possible and an example of an easy lunge exercise is like a a split squat where you just take an exaggerated step forward you drop your hips down to the ground and you can kind of really feel your yeah

Your Glu bum muscles being loaded quite nicely um so if people cover off those four bases they’re not going to go too far wrong to be honest I would definitely do something for Cara Killy specifically um and that’s kind of I guess my philosophy as an snc coach so

Something simple like car phrases people can do at home and then I guess you you kind of token upper body exercise yeah yeah throw it in there a press up would be a Simple Start Point um um and there’s obviously overhead pressing exercises and pulling exercises that

Runners can do as well but yeah that would be a kind of nice sort of Fairly well-rounded starting resistance training program what I love about what you’ve just described is well firstly there’s a a really good article that you did with Runners World which I think is

Like the seven best exercises for for runners and yeah I think most of those are in there most of those in there and we refer people to to that because I think it’s really simple really effective but what I really like about it is my gym program which IED usually

Do on a Thursday morning which would have been this morning I haven’t done it this week the reason being is I’m racing on Saturday and I just want to freshen up a little bit so I’m quite happy to move my training around to to suit that

So I’ll put it in next week um but my snc program still is I’ve still got we’ve been doing it for about 10 or so years at least and and it hasn’t changed much at all but but it’s the hinge so I’ve got an RDL in there um I’ve got

Squat we’ve got a back squat I’ve still got dead leg step up in there um I’ve still still got push-ups and pull-ups in there I actually do a lap pull down as well yeah great I’ve still got uh cus loaded seated cus loading I’ve still got

Box step which is the the step up that you talked about as well so all those principles are exactly the same I’ve just Advanced them over time yeah yeah exactly yeah what you’ve just described is is really similar to yeah my kind of starting program the the only difference

Is you’re working at a higher like absolute intensity so you’ve got load on the bar there’s a little bit of added complexity the exercises you’re doing compared to my basic example but as you say the the kind of key ingredients and principles are identical like they

Haven’t really changed and I think if we go all the way back to the start of when I started working with you yes I did have a bit of an snc background but you stripped it right back where we did our needs analysis right at the start you

Know we did an assessment to see where was strong where potentially needed some some improvement but you are looking at how I actually moved and we corrected that first and that was in 2013 so wow some 11 years ago it crazy it so 2013 in in Teddington when we

Moved down to to London and I still embed those same principles but it was really important to get the movement patterns right then to allow me to progress to where I got to eventually so I think it’s just a really important point to say to people that don’t be

Afraid to start basic and get them right first but also what I will say is don’t feel like need to change a whole heap all the time just because you think oh I need to vary these exercises because they’re not going to work for me yes you

Need to vary the stimulus sometimes you need to lift heavier or lighter and depends what you’re looking for from the session but so many people come to us and say oh are there any different types of exercises I’m getting a little bit bored of these now and I’m like but

These are the best ones yeah and there’s there’s different ways you can kind of progressively overload and and Vary programs and I try to utilize like all of the variables youve got available so you got basic things like exercise selection so yeah changing up the exercises is a little bit less boring

You’ve obviously got number of sets you do number of reps you do and then that’s reflective of the load that you’re lifting and so on like even to some extent you can sort of like shift round order of exercises so you could throw in like a little plyer metrix exercise or

An explosive strength exercise and kind of go well I want you to start off with your squats I know we’ve been doing those all year but they’re really important then go over and do some box jumps or do some counter movement jumps on the spot or whatever and they’re like

Oh that’s yeah that’s a little bit more interesting and challenging and so yeah it’s just kind of I guess throwing in extra challenges particularly for the type of Runner that gets a little bit bored and Stell quite easily what makes me laugh about inurance athletes is with the gym they always want

Variation but with running swimming and cycling they’re happy to just do the same movement every single day and go out and do the same route same route um so yeah it is interes time of day yeah we’re creatures of habit in some senses yeah definitely when when we’re not as

Keen to do something else we always want variation to kind of round this all all off Rich we’ve spoken a lot about being in the gym and uh some plyometric stuff some explosive stuff as well as well as some movement stuff but I’m also conscious that um a lot of people have

Other activities in their plan that do fall into that strength and conditioning remit as you said even things like rolling which could be categorize as being in there um so people sat at home that they’re thinking well what how is that you know how is that a a strength

And conditioning element when we’re talking about lifting weights one minute and now we’re talking about potentially stretching at home or maybe doing some yoga or some Pilates how do they all fit into that same bracket um yeah and I mean I guess the all those different activities you

Mentioned I mean with my kind of research academic hat on like the evidence is a little bit mixed for all of them but it again it comes back to the discussion we were having before that if if people want to do them and they engage with them and they perceive

That it helps them like even if it is a sort of bit of a psychological stimulus in the background like it probably does yeah and so if I come waiting in as the snc coach and go that’s coming out straight away like immediately the athlete kind of disengages with me and

Then their perception of what I give them working um is probably reduced a little bit and so yeah some of those activities probably are appropriate and again it kind of depends on a little bit the background of the athlete like if you’ve got a particular area that’s kind of biomechanically is being excessively

Loaded as part of your running stride and it’s something that’s either difficult to change or you’re kind of working on in the background so you’ve got like a I don’t know a muscle or a kind of tendon that’s just it’s just getting really really tight and it’s

Niggling all the time and by doing the yoga or the stretching or the foam rolling it kind of releases it like there probably is something physiological going on in terms of like a dampening down of the kind of neural pain signals a little bit and and then

You kind of wake wake up the next morning you’re like oh that tightness yeah it’s eased a little bit like I can go out for my run like it is sort of preventing injury but it’s probably only for that individual yeah um whereas if you just give the same prescription to

Everybody like it’s probably not going to help and it it eats into it eats into recovery time yeah so if you’re doing your phone rolling in front of the TV in the evening like your heart rate’s a little bit elevated like it’s not sort of proper high quality recovery compared

To lying on the sofa and so it’s yeah it’s not kind of a blanket recommendation that all athletes should be doing all essenc training activities it’s it’s going to depend a little bit on on their issues I think it’s it’s a really important point to make that uh

And I I think again it comes to to purpose so I’m going to throw Gemma under the bus a little bit here she might she might listen to this back and be like you you get um but she has a habit of sometimes being on the couch

And picking up like the the pulse machine the pulse drill thing or she’s then on the roller and and I say like okay well we need din yeah yes just just chill just chill and I’m I’m complete opposite I’m like oh I’ll be sat on the couch and you know not doing anything

But but my theory on it and from the science behind it and also just from the psychology behind it is when you’re resting you should be resting so do your best to rest and if you’re going to do something do it purposefully so what

I’ve said to her now as a coach is I’m I’m going to start to put this in your plan as to when you can do it and when you you should should be resting and I think it’s a really important point for people to know is if you are on a rest

Day and it is a full rest day then give yourself the time to actually rest because these things like rolling and um even yoga could fall into the conditioning element so you are training you’re still training yeah definitely it’s just a it’s a it’s a kind of a lowlevel physiological stress but it’s

Still a bit of a stress still a stress absolutely and if people really if people do really go at it on the phone roller like you pouring with sweat it’s a tough task yeah exactly you sort of getting underlying hormonal and immunal responses that yeah probably your body

Probably won’t like very much even though it might be doing something to the the kind of connective tissue and I always find as distance Runners we’re not the strongest upper body wise see this you come off and you’re like Jesus body workout there roller you got veins

Popping out that’s it again get your conditioning in there yeah yeah true but I think it’s just really important to emphasize that when we when we’re doing all these activities we’re looking for some form of stress to get that change to elicit that change and then we need

The rest to go with it in order to then get the adaptations and so many people are always looking to do do do yeah and they sometimes forget about well I need to rest as well in order for this to actually yeah for these adaptations to

Take place to get the real benefit from them yeah and it kind of comes it’s a nice kind of segue back full circle into something I mentioned right at the start that when I was when I was training at the GB rowing Center they used to have this phrase world class training and

Performance world class recovery and it was like the training was world class it was like the best coaches in the world the best sports science in the world and it was it was it was a well funded program but in in between the sessions I mean they had the the rowers have the

Advantage that they’re all fulltime but in between the sessions they literally do nothing but lie down to the point that at the rowing Center they used to have a bedroom with about a dozen beds that they could actually go and have as sleep in in between training sessions w

And so they didn’t have to worry about anything like food’s kind of on the table on the plates they don’t even have to make that but it was kind of like world class recovery and if they would kind of get winds that you’d had yeah like a busy day out shopping or you

Taken your dog for a five mile walk or whatever there were they were like that isn’t worldclass recovery it’s suboptimal recovery and that’s yeah like again in the short term it probably doesn’t make a difference but medium to long term it’s going to start to niggle

Away all adds up all adds up exactly so good point and and to kind of wrap it all together I think um the stuff that we’ve spoken about particularly when you’re getting into strength and conditioning snc about doing things from home first and movement based things and rolling and and then recovering

Optimally as well so all these things are relatively cheap or or even free the the things that you can take care of before you even have to start thinking about a gym membership or personal training and I think that’s sometimes what puts people off to think oh I’ve

Going to invest a lot of my my money into this well at first you don’t really it’s just a lot of time and energy and doing it correctly but but there is a really good starting point there for people and it is about just that time investment and committing to it and I

Feel like if you take that first step that’s when you really will see the change but um one of the big things we always say to people is is give it time don’t just expect to fall in love with it overnight you just commit to it give

It time to to see that change because it does take a lot of time doesn’t it yeah absolutely and again it goes back to what we were discussing before that you like occasionally I will get some Runners that will approach me for help and they they almost kind of expect snc

To be like the golden bullet for the injuries that they’ve had in the past and when you kind of look at their overall profile and yeah maybe like their energy availability and like menstrual cycles with females and then what’s going on in their lifestyle like all of the factors we spoke about before

You realize well essc is probably actually going to play quite a minor role in trying to kind of fix you and improve you as an athlete and so it’ll be part of it but it’s definitely not going to be a kind of golden bullet so as an overall conclusion it’s important

But it’s only one of many factors yeah absolutely yeah a lot of the factors we cover on on different podcasts we’ve spoken a lot about in the past periodization of training which is important rest and Recovery which is important lifestyle strength and conditioning Jemma’s spoken about psychology and and actually her approach

To injuries which is also important um you know but it just shows how much can can go into it and and that multifactorial aort apprach is important I think all Runners will be first to say that a happy Runner is somebody or a happy athlete is somebody who is

Exercising and they’re not injured so we all want to do our best to stay injuryf free and I will attest for this that I believe strength and conditioning helps me to to do that so if it’s something you’ve not added into your plan before then you certainly might like to think

About it I want to say big thanks to Rich for coming on thanks Rich yeah know thanks again for the invite Louis it’s been great no it’s been really good I’ve really enjoyed it I always learn a lot from these which is which is great I’m

Going to pop Rich’s book in the in the show notes and anything that rich feels might be appropriate as well if there’s any links to studies as well as the seven I think it’s the seven I’m pretty certain it’s the seven best yeah rings a bell yeah seven best exercises for

Runners and that was featured in Runners world so yeah thanks again Rich much appreciated for those of you at home if you’re not trying snc then maybe give it a try for those of you are then keep enjoying it hopefully you are staying injuryf free as always we’ll see you out

There training and hopefully see you at into races in the very near future thanks again for joining us and we’ll see you soon