Strength and Endurance

[Maties Hofstede]

If you think strength is lost as fast as conditioning, you need to stop typing right now, because this is a Facebook-level comment.



You don't know what you're talking about, and you don't understand the argument. Do you people think I haven't trained any cyclists?



You think that nobody who has won the TdF has trained for strength? You think that the idea that perhaps the naturally strongest endurance athletes are the ones that win is absurd? The guys born with the bigger motor don't win???? The other guys can't benefit from a bigger motor? You win the TdF with your VO2max?



There is no point in discussing this with you, because you don't know what the fuck you're talking about. Remember what business I have been in for 40 years, and compare that to your professional history.

Let me ask you a question: why do you find pleasure in trolling this board? Why would you type this half-thought-out bullshit for everybody else to see? Why is it necessary to challenge my experience with "numerous storys"? Please find someone else to irritate.



Is there evidence of her coach ever recommending this approach? Is there evidence that it's ever been tried? You, like most people, seem to be having trouble with phenomenology.

Whoaa there, why the offensive language.

Im not trolling. I even gave you the 'benefit' of the doubt. just asked for a better explanation.
And whats the point of you sir writing this article if all you want me to do is nod yess? It's you who said 99% of the jnfo in this business is bullshit. You said to even question you. Thats what i'm doin. Even if I dont know what the fuck im talking about. But last time I checked nobody around here made a TdF winner so....

And if there's no point in discussing then explain. God knows how many cyclists you trained With you they all got better healthier, faster no doubt. Every freakin amateur should squat n lift. , but lets specify the cohort, elite long distance cyclists in this exame. Or not, its the only matter I have 'story's' about.

Ill report back when I figure out how much Lance squatted. No pun intended.

[Mark Rippetoe]

Then the answer to this:

Is yeah.

Sure. Elite endurance runners have no business getting strong enough to squat 155. What was I thinking?

[Jay Mund]

This is exactly the problem Rip. And exactly what I said on Sunday - it's much more fun for people to do the straw man thing. "Mark Rippetoe says that squatting 500 for 5 will help elite distance runners. He's so out of his mind." That's not what he's saying. He said getting stronger will make you a better runner. You guys decided that he meant he wants you to be like him and squat 620. That's not we he said.

I was a runner. Nothing special. 17:20 5k when I was 17. I was faster at 17 then I was at 15. I was also stronger and about 10 lbs heavier. The extra 10 lbs did not slow me down. This is not uncommon. It happened without lifting weights because I was still a growing boy. But training with barbells is the best way to get stronger. And it does the same thing that going from 15 to 17 did for me - makes you stronger. Why do men continue to beat women in elite endurance sports, including running. Are they not all heavier than the women? Does their strength help them? But no, don't lift weights. That's just stupid.

Also, check out the video of Chris Solinsky setting the (then) American record for the 10k on YouTube. He outweighed his competitors by 30 lbs and he won by like a full 400 meters. 30 lbs. All Rip is saying is get stronger and stop insisting on competing at an emaciated weight.

[The Berserker]

If you think strength is lost as fast as conditioning, you need to stop typing right now, because this is a Facebook-level comment.

Would a YouTube comment be better?

Actually, I think both strength and conditioning are gained and lost at a similar rate.

At the bottom of the Barbell Medicine Podcast Homepage, a guy asked for further comment on how aerobic fitness is relatively quick to lose and quick to gain.

On February 3, 2017, Dr. Feigenbaum, responded: "I don't think that it is quick to gain or lose, really. I think that it has a similar development curve as strength."

I agree with Dr. Feigenbaum that both strength and aerobic capacity have a fairly similar curve. If I have misunderstood Dr. Feigenbaum, or he has changed his mind, please set me right.

So, I disagree with the idea that aerobic capacity can be obtained in short period of time. Yes, there are novice aerobic gains, but they are only "novice" level gains.

As such, my comment to Mr. Been's less than positive statements about aerobic endurance compared to strength, was that this cuts both ways.

[Mark Rippetoe]

Actually, I think both strength and conditioning are gained and lost at a similar rate.

Actually, you are wrong. Strength is a far more persistent adaptation, as noted by essentially everybody.

[David Kirkham]

For all you endurance doubters I'll give you guys an example of N=1. Me.

I'm not world class. Never said I was. But I did run several ultrathons for fun. If you run the numbers that put me in the top I don't know how many zeros of stupid endurance athletes. I say "put" because I'm not that dumb any more.

To give you an idea, my last ultrathon was 26.2 miles--in the snow--8 degrees outside--with over 5,000 feet of elevation gain on mountain trails--in snowshoes. Yea. It was fun

I ran the snowshoe marathon for a few years. The last time I ran it I had begun SS some months earlier. I posted my fastest time and was no where near as sore for the next week. Nothing helped my endurance more than squatting. Nothing. Period.

[Jordan Feigenbaum]

The argument is very plausible. There are some things I wonder about. For example, why do sprinters and marathon runners try such different approaches? Sprinters look relatively strong and have been known to take steroids. Marathon runners look scrawny and the weight of world record setters has been dropping. Intermediate distance runners have intermediate body types.

I think when familiarizing oneself with the type of training systems that are in place for the different distances and how the top performers are selected will tend to shed some light on why their morphology is different.

Have you or other SS coaches trained any elite runners or cyclists?

If we define Elite as international level, then no I have not. I can't speak for everyone else.

I think there might be differences other than strength, that make makes better at running than females.

Perhaps, though at ~14 the female is closing in her lifetime max sprint speed whereas as a male, they are at the beginning of their rapid improvement. Couple that with world age group records in sprinting being nearly the same for both genders at age 9 (before puberty), then we could make a strong case that strength improvement from muscle mass in addition to other things being a big difference maker.

At what point does strength cease to be a significant factor?

This is something I often ponder. I'll talk about that below.

Does a 185 vs 225 squat make a greater improvement than other skill work?

I think that may be the wrong question- rather, does adding strength while continuing to do the necessary skill and conditioning work requisite to the sport in question improve outcomes? If no, why and if so, where is the point of diminishing returns? I suspect this is quite sticky.

What if the 185 squatting guy develops a better aero position?

If you could connect a lower squat for a particular individual causing a better aero position, then you could make that argument. The next layer of complexity would be, is it possible to increase his strength while maintaining or improving his aero position?

If you go on slowtwitch, you can find plenty of nerds with power meters and all the measuring gadgets available, constantly working to improve their numbers.

I'm sure people would volunteer to test their performance with getting stronger.[/QUOTE]

Nah, they just know that your analogy is incomplete.

The "bigger motor" theory is fine and all, but when comparing people to cars you need to include the fact that we have a hybrid fuel system. Human-cars have 30 seconds of gasoline, and the rest of the time we're electric cars.

I think the one liner is kind of cool in that it's quotable and can be correct if enough details are fleshed out, which isn't unusual for a soundbyte, right?

The tiny motors of elite distance runners are extremely fuel efficient. No top end, but can maintain 60 mph indefinitely on electric (aka aerobic) power. The big damn motors of sprinters are not efficient at all. They have a phenomenal top end, but can only maintain 30 mph in electric mode.

Eh, I think we have to be careful when we're using terms here. "Efficient" can mean a whole lot of things and I don't think we can say that sprinters are inefficient- they're just different.

Now, over the course of 25 minutes to 2 hours, which vehicle wins the race? It's not about horsepower in an endurance race if that horsepower comes at the expense of worse mpg.

This also supposes that both vehicles are otherwise equivalent, right? But we know that this is not the case when discussing endurance athletes for different length events. I'll expound below.

[Jordan Feigenbaum]

I thought I would chime in on this thread, as I have some interest in human performance and why things are the way they are.

First, a few disclaimers:

1) This topic probably deserves a few articles each comprised of a few thousand words and dozens of citations, but I don't have time to write that at this time (not that any one was asking).

2) I think a lot of this stuff is not well studied given the limitations of Exercise Fizz. We see a lot of stuff looked at over the short term and in strange contexts, which subsequently can lead us (including me, for sure) astray. Is HIIT better than LISS? Well, in the short term for some things, it can be. For endurance performance, not really, unless we're comparing it to not doing any conditioning.

3) I have never trained any really elite pure endurance athletes. I have never been an elite endurance athlete. I have never even worn out a pair of running shoes, despite buying lots of them.

Now, the tl;dr:

Strength training can contribute to improved performance in endurance sports and it's unlikely that it will hurt endurance performance unless it causes injury directly, is programmed in such a way that the adaptations selected for override the sports specific programming are also selecting for, significantly compromises sport specific training for a significant period of time, or increases fatigue to a level that compromises all recovery and adaptation for a significant period of time.

Strength training adaptations likely persist for a longer period of time than a similar level of endurance adaptations given the heavy reliance on structural changes and less reliance on enzymatic changes, though this is individual too and a variety of different decay rates are seen for a specific characteristic.

Strength training and endurance training to attain a certain performance level are likely similar overall, though it should not be surprising that some folks have a higher untrained level of strength or endurance and/or respond more robustly to strength or endurance, thereby making it appear that one is "easier to gain" than another or, conversely, that one decays faster than the other- though I do think there is some support for strength training adaptations to persist a bit longer overall than similar levels of endurance training.

Now, more nuanced discussion:

Question: Does strength training improve endurance?

Answer: It can- namely by increasing the amount of force production. Endurance performance is, at its core, all about force production. Fatigue is staved off by the cycling of motor units within a set of muscle groups required for the specific endurance event being discussed- we'll just use the term locomotion here to refer to "movement" during an endurance event, running or otherwise. At the level of the muscle- say the quads- the brain subconsciously cycles through motor units such that no one set of motor units approaches a fatigue level that would be considered dangerous, e.g. where resources needed for contraction/relaxation are depleted AND fatigue build up products accumulate to such an extent that the unit would no longer be able to contribute to producing force unless a period of rest was taken.

By increasing the amount of force that can be produced maximally each motor unit can fire more submaximally in order to produce the amount of force necessary for locomotion at a given pace OR it could produce more force to increase the pace. Here is the caveat however, the muscles still need to be able to deal with resource demands and fatigue product removal from contraction/relaxation AND it is feasible (if not likely in some cases) that the increase in muscular force production when not combined with appropriate endurance training can actually increase the rate of motor unit fatigue during an endurance challenge.

A simple example willfully ignoring many details:

Jim runs a 6 min mile at baseline and would like to improve. He does X amount of conditioning work per week and no strength training at baseline. Jim starts strength training and his force production improves. The specific adaptations selected for by pure strength training increase Jim's ability to create force and, subsequently, create lactate, H+, and use glycogen, atp, etc. If this is not met with enough conditioning work to maintain his ability to clear lactate, buffer H+, replenish glycogen, ATP, etc. then his endurance performance may suffer.

It should not be surprising that the amount of conditioning work needed to maintain his ability to do those things may be different than others, just as the amount of strength training needed to increase his force production to a level that X amount of conditioning can keep up with is also individualized.

I don't think many people have qualms with this line of thinking and in general, we can think about each endurance event as the tip of a funnel. For Jim, the mile is at the tip of the funnel whereas a 1RM Squat is at one end of mouth (on the strength side) and a marathon is at the other end of the mouth (on the endurance side). Does doing some longer, slower than race pace conditioning bits improve Jim's mile? It sure can, especially if his issue is that he is capable of a faster pace given his baseline force production ability, though it would be less likely to help if his endurance is very well trained, but he lacks significantly greater force production to go faster. In the latter, increasing force production through strength training would likely help him, as would sprints, anaerobic work where the pace is much faster than his mile pace, or aerobic intervals where the pace is faster than his current mile pace.

Question: Does more mass compromise endurance?

It can, especially if it is gained at the distal extremities. Some data suggests that 4lbs at the ankles increases the amount of energy used up for a given distance covered at a given pace by ~25%. That same weight addition in the trunk is closer to 2% however and it should be stated that in that experiment the extra mass was not increasing force production or requiring increased blood supply for fatigue product accumulation and energy product depletion.

The real nitty gritty of this question is, in my opinion, at what level does increased force production stop superseding the increased demands additional tissue requires? My view is that each endurance sport likely has its own point where any additional force production acquired through additional mass compromises performance in the context of available training and recovery resources that the athlete has. By that I mean , the athlete may not be able to tolerate even more conditioning to keep up with the increased fatigue production potential.

If I had to lay it out, sprint endurance sports tolerate the most amount of mass and ultra distance sports tolerate the least. Both benefit from improved force production, sure (see above), but the sprint sports will tolerate more mass since the amount of fatigue dissipation is less critical to performance compared to absolute force production. The 400 or 800m "sprint" may be the median here, though I would argue more for the 400 than the 800 given the time domains and stark training differences. The body morphology differences between sprinters, 400 specialists, and milers bear this out as well.

An additional caveat should be thrown in where gravity and ground reactive forces are modified, e.g. cycling and swimming. I do think this answer still applies, but the actual "levels" where mass negatively affects endurance performance despite appropriate conditioning programming is likely unique to each sport and distance.

I think that's all I want to write for now. Thanks for reading.

[Crom]

There are a lot of people in the cycling world studying this stuff; especially since the advent of power meters.
Cycling and Strength training are at opposite ends of the strength-endurance spectrum, but I think are the only two sports where the physics of the performance is readily quantifiable: either direct weight lifted or power over a defined length of time.

Here is a smapling of some studies, all of which seem to indicate a benefit from strength training on endurance cycling:Optimizing strength training for running and cycling endurance performance: A review.
Optimizing strength training for running and cycling endurance performance: A review. - PubMed - NCBI

Cyclists' improvement of pedaling efficacy and performance after heavy strength training.
Cyclists' improvement of pedaling efficacy and performance after heavy strength training. - PubMed - NCBI
"E+S enhanced cycling performance by 7%, which was more than in E (P = .02). Performance was determined as average power output in a 5-min all-out trial performed subsequent to 185 min of submaximal cycling"

Isometric strength training lowers the O2 cost of cycling during moderate-intensity exercise.
Isometric strength training lowers the O2 cost of cycling during moderate-intensity exercise. - PubMed - NCBI
"Isometric strength training rapidly (i.e., after 1 week) decreases the O(2) cost of cycling during moderate-intensity exercise, whereas it does not affect the amplitude of the slow component of the V'O(2) on-kinetics during heavy-intensity exercise."

Strength training improves cycling efficiency in master endurance athletes.
Strength training improves cycling efficiency in master endurance athletes. - PubMed - NCBI

Effects of resistance training on endurance capacity and muscle fiber composition in young top-level cyclists.
Effects of resistance training on endurance capacity and muscle fiber composition in young top-level cyclists. - PubMed - NCBI
"Short-term (5-min) endurance performance increased (3-4%) after SE and E (P<0.05), whereas 45-min endurance capacity increased (8%) with SE only (P<0.05). Type IIA fiber proportions increased and type IIX proportions decreased after SE training (P<0.05) with no change in E. Muscle fiber area and capillarization remained unchanged. In conclusion, concurrent strength/endurance training in young elite competitive cyclists led to an improved 45-min time-trial endurance capacity that was accompanied by an increased proportion of type IIA muscle fibers and gains in MVC and RFD, while capillarization remained unaffected."

Now, in spite of all this, I would have to admit that weight training has never really worked for me in improving my cycling. Only weight-loss and massive amounts of mileage does. But I am just one, very mediocre, data point. One prominent cycling coach said something like "Everyone already has enough leg strength to win the Tour de France, so the limiter is always aerobic power." That' the way it seems to me.

I know...conflicting studies and information.

[Jay Mund]

I just reread this thread and did not see anyone mention the 500lb+ squat numbers.

You mentioned a 500 squatter.

I'm not sure what your self reported improvement shows, especially given all the variables involved, like puberty and refined skill.

Puberty = strength improvement.
At the time I had no idea that skill was involved with running so I didn't practice skills. I just ran. I might have had terrible technique. I certainly wasn't POSE running or anything. Of course it's self-reported. I've got newspaper clippings somewhere though.

I think there might be differences other than strength, that make makes better at running than females.

There are more differences between males and females then strength. Yes. The males who beat the females in running are all stronger than their female counterparts. Do you disagree? Might there be a correlation? I know it's not the end of the argument, but it can't be dismissed.

I'm just looking for evidence in support of claims, that would not be eviscerated if Sully used it in a "Year in Review" article.

I think Conan's god just provided some. Will they satisfy Sully? I don't know. They probably aren't that great, though. How many elite athletes are going to try something other than the program they've used to get where they are? So, not a lot of data there.

If you go on slowtwitch, you can find plenty of nerds with power meters and all the measuring gadgets available, constantly working to improve their numbers.

I'm sure people would volunteer to test their performance with getting stronger.

I don't think they would. Besides it would all be self-reported, right?

Consider that competitive cyclists often must race throughout the year, in order to qualify for CAT rankings to bump up.

At what point does strength cease to be a significant factor?

There is obviously a point of diminishing returns. The last time I ran a 5k (at 35), I was 165lbs and I ran it in 19:39. I hadn't run consistently since high school. When I ran the 17:20 at 17 yrs old, I was 105 lbs ( I couldn't squat 135). When I was running in the 18's at 15 I was 95 lbs (god only knows how weak I was (and yes I have always been a male (5'5", 5'3" in High School)). I'm guessing that 125-135 would have been the sweet spot. Who knows?

Does a 185 vs 225 squat make a greater improvement than other skill work?

What if the 185 squatting guy develops a better aero position?

Great questions. Seriously. I don't know. I don't think that going from 185 to 225 would be really significant but going from 115 to 225 would be. But you're right, we need the data.

Jordan responded to most of your points much better than me. He's stronger too. And like way smarter, you know?

By the way, KOTJ, I think you are a genius and hilarious. And you're probably stronger than me too. And definitely a better cyclist.