The strange reason I strength train

Before I get too deep into this, let me say that I was shocked and surprised by the numerous and mostly helpful responses I got to my shoe woes blog and will follow up with another one as soon as I have had a chance to test a few more shoe types out. Now onward to today’s blog.

I have a pretty long history of strength training, one that predates my ultra running “career” by decades.

The best shape I was ever in my life was when I combined intervals with an occasional 5 or 6 mile run, lots of plyo and regular weight lifting and body weight training.

I had it all--speed, reasonable endurance, explosive and absolute strength all in a good proportion.

The demands of an ultra race at altitude are far different than the “general training” I was doing and of course when you specialize you always lose some generalization.

I do almost no traditional lower body strength training at this juncture although I will most probably start doing some one legged stuff soon for the weeks that I am not putting in the bigger mileage.

I have a steady repetitive upper body program that mixes in abs and core along with some specific functional hip flexors stuff, again one legged, and kettle bell.

My upper body program is pretty old fashioned. Some would recognize the term “classic 5’s” which refers to the near maximum lifting toned down just a bit in to a 5-3-2 rep patter with brief rests in between for 3 to 4 sets of 10.

This program will make you bigger but it is primarily designed to add steady strength to your program and for me personally it works like a charm. Just today I hit the very interesting phase of the training that adds significant weight (12 lbs. to my overhead pressing and 22 to my bench) literally from just a few sessions, sometimes several pounds per session.

Of course when your run long or run fast your weights go down but this program will make you much stronger in a relatively short period of time and as I said put on some nice lean mass.

I would not advise it to someone who is new to strength training, however. In that case just pick up one of those awful “strength training for runners” books that shows a very broad based general strength training program and use it for 2 months before you try any of the above.

OK, so why do I care about mass? I am in a happy stable relationship, not in prison or a street gang so I don’t need to be “intimidating”, don’t need to impress anyone and have long since passed the 18-25 year old testosterone driven male syndrome (I can hardly stand to look at “ Men’s Health”! LOL).

Well in spite of the fact that I rail against the “muscle burns fat” articles as misleading because it take months to put on natural muscle and it adds at best 100 calories per day per 10 pounds of muscle mass gained. The average no drugger person will take a year to put on 10 pounds of lean muscle and of course runners will take far longer!

But there is a point where having extra muscle actually helps you lean out and if you work to maintain it while you are increasing your mileage you will lose more fat and even a few more pounds. You’ll look a lot better too.

But that still is not the strange reason I work to add muscle before a big race. The real reason is that I noticed that most of the “everyday” runners that did well were stockier and beefier than your typical marathon runners.

Again, people, understand we are talking average athletes here--not world class winners!

I started to realize that the starvation reflex does indeed happen in races where you are out there for hours on end and thus muscle becomes your fuel and fat stores are (relatively) conserved. So I train to build muscle so I have some to feed to my heart, lungs and legs while I am out there long after the glycogen is gone and the fat has gone underground to try to save itself from impending doom! Now I am not saying you don’t burn fat in these races. YOU DO and lots of it. The actual physiologic full blown starvation reflex does not take that long to start working though as we see signs of it with a simple overnight fast, which we then break (breakfast!).

So for those of you who are just trying to survive these long runs like me, take my advice--put on some size in your upper body at least. Most of us can leave the lower body to Mother Nature and the trail as long as we stretch!

'Til next time train hard!

Doc

P.S. some of you have asked about my book on ultra running. It’s taken a back seat to “The Immortality Edge”, a book I am co-writing with Mike Fossel MD PhD and Greta Blackburn that shows you how to lengthen your telomeres to live longer and healthier. NO, ultra running is not part of the routines!!!