Just Because You're An Endurance Athlete Doesn't Mean You Need To Look Like You Have AIDS

Last year, Triathlete magazine carried an article I found hilarious, due to the irony of having a hot, ripped chick on the cover, about whether or not triathletes were body image obsessed. Expecting the thing to be jammed with hot chicks, and to at least be marginally impressed by the Pavel-esque physiques of the guys, I opened the thing up to be confronted with a pack of walking skeletons unseen in the western world since the POW camps of the last world wars. Amusingly, the article went on to describe how the guys seemed to be more obsessed with being skinny than the women, as they believed that a low BMI would lead to greater victories, provided they didn't die of starvation in the meantime.  I was under the impression that everyone on Earth was aware of the exploits of Dean Karnazes, which should have laid all that bullshit to rest long ago.  The guy's not super jacked, by any stretch of the imagination, but he's not 10 calories from the threshold of death by starvation, either.  For those of you who are unaware, he's won all sorts of ultramarathons, completed 50 marathons in 50 days, ran 135 mi across Death Valley in 120 degree heat (the Badwater 135), and is an avowed paleo guy, laying all of the nonsense about high carbs for endurance athletes to rest.  

Just about every guy in your gym has smaller legs than Karnazes.

Clearly, Karnazes isn't going to be winning any bodybuilding competitions anytime soon, but he is a fan of resistance training, mostly in the form of bodyweight exercises.  This is why he carries more muscle than the average runner, which he claims is key in injury preventions.  "Too many runners only run" says Karnazes, "hence their overall muscular development isn't very good.  I carry a little more bulk than your typical runner, which may slow me down a bit, but ultimately helps with injury prevention and being able to go those super-long distances."

Lance Armstrong is also a big proponent of lifting weights, which he presumably does so as not to look like Matthew McConaughey's little brother when out picking up chicks at the bar.  He's recommended weightlifting to his legions of adoring fans, as well, and reportedly lifts three times a week.  For reasons I cannot fathom, his workouts consist of hang cleans (with form that truly makes mine look impeccable), step ups, dumbbell rows, and side lunges, all for sets of a commendable 5 reps.  Given Armstrong's credibility in endurance sports, perhaps his half-starved companions in lengthy, boring, and painful endurance athletics might take a page out of his book.

The people at the clinic told him no antiretrovirals unless he hit a sub 5 min mile.

Certainly, by now, a great many of you a silently screaming "Who fucking cares?" and considering throwing your laptop against the wall due to my acknowledgement of a seemingly irrelevant topic.  You'd be surprised, however, at the number of goofballs out there who actually train in both endurance sports and Olympic weightlifting, and who read this blog because they're quite obviously insane- birds of a feather, and all that.  Personally, I would rather trip and fall facefirst into Lil Kim's vagina during her period after she'd contracted ebola than run 10 miles, but to each their own.

Am I the only one singing "Cherry Pie" in my head right now?

Not surprisingly, science falls on the side of common sense, Karnazes, Armstrong, and anyone who doesn't want to look like they just wandered out of Auschwitz in this debate.  Clearly unbeknownst to triathletes and other endurance athletes, strength training has a wide array of positive effects for endurance athletes, not the least of which is improving their physical appearance.  Studies have shown fairly definitively that the faster a runner is anaerobically, the faster they are in endurance runs.  Although you would think that those two times would contraindicate, if you look at the times of Olympic milers, at this point, they run competitive 400s, which would put them competitive Division I 100m sprinters, as well.  Looked at that way, it makes sense that plyometric leap distance and the 50m sprint correlate very strongly with 10k times, and that the 5k and the 20m dash correlate strongly. (Paavolainen et al) Another well-respected study showed that those with the highest peak running speeds on a treadmill had the fastest distance times, and attributed that fact to greater "muscle contractility".  (Noakes)  


As such, it seems that at the very least, endurance athletes should be less worried about simply having the aerobic capacity to finish these races, and far more worried about increasing the contractile power of their muscles, which will in turn make them faster in sprints, and thus carry over into distance running.  In particular, endurance athletes should consider taking up Olympic lifting in particular, as it seems that explosive lifting correlates more strongly with improving times on endurance events.  Low repetitions with relatively high weights in the Olympic lifts should, according to these studies, produce far better distance times.  Thus, exercises like the high pull, clean and jerk, and snatch could prove extremely beneficial to distance athletes.  Additionally, quick lifts conducted with kettlebells could prove useful, as will plyometrics (and in particular depth jumps).  I would also caution distance athletes that they should absolutely not ignore their upper bodies in the belief that their lower bodies are the primary muscles involved.  A quick glance at nearly any sprinter will reveal pretty fucking good upper body development as well, particularly in the shoulders.  

Jon Drummond of the US 4x100 team.

Champion trainer of sprinters, Charlie Francis, believes that upper body strength is essential for powerful arms and fast hands, and that this will translate to faster foot strike time.  As multiple studies have shown that foot strike time contributes to faster distance times as well, you might as well make sure you've got ample upper body work in there.  Lastly, Prof. Michael Yessis asserted at one point that he had read in some uncited Soviet literature that Olympic weightlifters had, by virtue of their muscle contractility, the ability to beat Olympic sprinters over the first 10 meters of a sprint.(Yessis)  If that's true, it would suggest that the lot of you should get your asses in the gym and start moving heavy weight.  Even if it's bullshit, however, there exists enough evidence that heavy strength training will help that you might want to consider dropping some road work in favor of some good old-fashioned weightlifting, in the form of singles, doubles, and triples.  Lifts should be done as explosively as possible to enhance your contractility (which I'm not 100% sure is actually a word, but I pulled it directly from the Noakes study), so leave aside the traditional powerlifts in favor of the more explosive quick lifts and plyometrics, unless you're doing Westside-esque speed work.

I googled "Westside speed day" and got this.  Awesome pic though.

... and for the love of all that's fucking holy- start eating.  If Karnazes can 135 miles through the fucking desert without eating a bagel, you can too.  Bring on the motherfucking steaks and heavy barbells!  Be more like Lee priest and less like the half starved douche in the middle of this article and you might find yourselves winning- at least with the opposite sex.


Sources:

BISHOP D, JENKINS D, MACKINNON L, McENIERY M, CAREY M.  The effects of strength training on endurance performance and muscle characteristics.  Med Sci Sports Exerc 31(6) 886-891, 1999.
  --The present data suggest that increased leg strength does not improve cycle endurance performance in endurance-trained, female cyclists.

HICKSON, R. C.; ROSENKOETTER, M. A.; BROWN, M. M. Strength training effects on aerobic power and short-term endurance.
  --These findings provide evidence that HRT is capable of dramatically increasing short-term endurance, when the muscles involved in the training are used almost exclusively during the testing without an accompanying increase in Vo2max.  Med Sci Sports Exerc 12(5):336-339, 1980

Hickson RC,Dvorak BA, Gorostiaga EM, Kurowski TT, Foster C.  Potential for strength and endurance training to amplify endurance performance.  J Appl Physiol 65: 2285-2290, 1988
-- These data do not demonstrate any negative performance effects of adding heavy-resistance training to ongoing endurance-training regimens. They indicate that certain types of endurance performance, particularly those requiring fast-twitch fiber recruitment, can be improved by strength-training supplementation.

NOAKES, T. D.  Implications of exercise testing for prediction of athletic performance: a contemporary perspective.  Meet. Sci. Sports Exerc, Vol. 20, No. 4, pp. 319-330, 1988.
  --This review proposes that the factors limiting maximal exercise performance might be better explained in terms of a failure of muscle contractility ("muscle power"), which may be independent of tissue oxygen deficiency.

Paavolainen L, Häkkinen K, Hämäläinen I, Nummela A, and Rusko H.  Explosive-strength training improves 5-km running time by improving running economy and muscle power. J Appl Physiol 86: 1527-1533, 1999
  --In conclusion, the present simultaneous explosive-strength and endurance training improved the 5K time in well-trained endurance athletes without changes in their O2 max. This improvement was due to improved neuromuscular characteristics that were transferred into improved VMART and running economy.

Yessis, Michael.  Letter.  http://www.elitetrack.com/forums/viewthread/7841/