An extremely experienced coach contacted me recently about his (female) athlete who had reached top regional level on the track over 1500m and 3000m last summer. His athlete had done a full winter’s aerobic preparation, with some good winter races. Despite a good block of early season hill work and VO2 max work (longer intervals with short or equal recovery), and some promising early-season results, she wasn’t able to tap into her high-output glycolytic anaerobic stores in races.

She described the feeling as “I felt as if I couldn’t get at my energy reserves” and “I felt as if I could’ve done it again, straight away”. The athlete is a hard-working girl who has a good head for racing, so she was quite disheartened to “go off the boil” coming into National Championships.

A possible answer here is that some athletes just don’t have a very big glycolytic/ anaerobic “tank”. So we have to tread carefully when prescribing for these athletes. They can be very fast over 100m, showing a good endowment of IIB fast twitch fibre, and they can be very competitive aerobically, showing a good endowment of Type I slow twitch fibre. They can have a high oxygen uptake, and the heart of a champion racehorse, but they can’t nail those glycolytic reps and come back smiling. There seems to be a deficiency of trainable IIA (glycolytic / oxidative) muscle fibre and so the lactate tolerance system can be overloaded very easily. This DOESN’T mean that an athlete with this challenge can’t compete at the very top level: it just means that she has to control training efforts well and hoard the lactate tolerance “reservoir” till race day. If the reservoir is depleted, it can’t be accessed, can it?

If she’s one of these, then she shouldn’t be doing sets of fast 800m-pace glycolytic/lactate tolerance reps really (ie: 300s/ 400s/500s @ race-pace). Try two or three sets of threshold-pace steady state lapping ( ie: 1200m) before 2-3 reps with good recovery over 150-200m @ 800 pace. Just dipping into the high-power output lactic tank a tiny bit without killing it. That has been shown to solve this particular problem with an international level female 800m athlete who is similarly challenged but can ‘kick’ with the best of them.

One tip for athletes like this is to make sure that each week or training cycle in track season includes scheduled steady efforts of 2-5 km on the track at higher aerobic levels or even at anaerobic threshold, as well as paying attention to VO2 Max. It pays to look back at training diaries to see how athletes respond to their sessions. You may have to fiddle around a little bit to get it right.

One of our good male athletes, Daniel, had run 50s for 400m and 1:52 for 800, and 3:45 for 1500m before Christmas off VO2 type training on Tuesdays, then went off the boil in the new year when he started bringing in glycolytic reps. So despite his speed potential, his system just seemed to rebel with the fast hard reps at 800 and 1500 pace. He went back to his pre-Christmas form when we steadied him off with Tuesday sessions starting with legspeed drills, then adding 4-6 laps of steady running at his threshold pace (about 3:15 per kilometre), then 3-4 x 800 or 1000 at VO2 pace (for him, about 2:50 per km, or 2:20 per 800m). Anything like fast 300s or 400s or 500s killed him!

Keith Russell from Reading in the UK sent me several queries based on the Strength Training section of the book (Part 9). I’ll answer each in turn.

Hi Keith,

As I mentioned my queries were on the weights/strength training section. I have listed them separately for clarity.

1. You mentioned the deadlift as the best ‘bang for buck’ lift. Which other lifts do you recommend in addition to the deadlift? Conversely, are there any lifts that you recommend avoiding completely?

I’d avoid doing lunges- these can be dangerous. They injured Craig Mottram’s hamstrings and derailed his World champs campaign in 2007, after he’d done an early-season 8:03 2 mile. Other exercises to avoid totally are seated leg extensions and prone hamstring curls: these exercises isolate the quads or hamstrings away from the other muscles in their functional units, and they bear no functional resemblance to real-world lifting situations. In the case of the leg extension, tremendous “shearing” forces and compressive forces are applied along the length of the knee joint. These forces are along vectors the joint is simply not designed for; especially the patellar tendon. We are after a dynamic real-world lift that ticks all the boxes, and the dead lift does that very well. Seated military presses and overhead presses are non-real world exercises that can strain the lower back and shoulder for no particular gain that will benefit a runner.

Care should be taken initially to do the deadlift exercise with sub-maximal loads with more reps, and long recoveries, initially, so as to not “shock” the body with too much information and be left walking like John Wayne straight off the horse from the High Sierras .

Once into the groove, then we start on a programme of 3-4 sets of near-maximals, keeping “load time” total in each set at or under 10 seconds so as to keep out of the lactic system and promote quick recovery, repair, and muscle protein genesis at the cellular level. When we’re training the powerful IIB muscle fibres for strength, we’re ALSO TRAINING ALACTICALLY. We’re using the same system described in the previous post, except now the neuromuscular firing pattern for fast relaxed running isn’t being trained- just the maximal tension potential of the very same fibres, and the same biochemical system. Recovery between sets should be up to 5 minutes to make sure that the “phosphate battery” tops itself up to near 100% again. If we get into the lactic system too much and drop below near-maximals, then we are training the IIA oxidative/glycolytic fibres, which will adapt by synthesizing significant numbers of aerobic and glycolytic enzymes and organelles, and the accompanying cytoplasmic fluid mass which will then be a weight burden to the athlete. So for lean and extremely mean, we train only the IIB fast twitch, which are brutally simple, needing only the phosphate system for fuel.

We lift near-maximally to directly recruit IIB fibres  and bypass the size principle of sequential recruitment from (small) slow twitch Type I through (large) Fast Twitch Oxidative/glycolytic (IIA) to massive IIB.

A useful guestimate of maximal when you start off is by seeing how many lifts you can do 10 reps with before tiring. This is, for most people, very close to 75% of your actual maximum.  Use that mark as an initial set point based on 85%+ for a good strength training effect on the alactic non-oxidative fast twitch IIB fibre specifically. If you can do 75kg 10x before tiring, then your maximal is around 100kg, and your effective training session will be several sets of 3-5 repetitions @ 85 kg or more, keeping total lifting or “load time” under 10 seconds. Load time includes the descent (eccentric) phase. More reps can be done in the allotted time if the weight is dropped at the top of the lift, but a Smith machine or weight cage is required to do that safely. The dead lift won’t exercise the fast twitch muscle fibre in an explosive fashion- just slowly, keeping muscle tension very high, as we can’t lift a very heavy weight quickly. Later on, relaxed short sprints under 10 seconds and plyometric exercises such as bounding can translate the increased density and  tension potential of IIB fast twitch fibres into high power output.

2. Where do you stand on the use of machine weights versus free weights? I appreciate that machine weights isolate muscle groups whereas the free weights will work stabilisers as well as the main muscle(s) targeted, but for those new to lifting, such as myself, are they a safer method to use initially?

You’re correct about the shortfall of machine weights: the synergistic muscles and the nervous system don’t get trained effectively. You’re training strength in a limited range that is pre-determined by the machine’s mechanics and not yours. Some people say start with weight machines for a few weeks, but I’d say that could set one up for injury in the untrained or unrecruited synergistic muscles.

Start from the beginning training with free weights or dumbbells at your current untrained levels, and increase your weights naturally as your neuromuscular system adapts.

3. Should a weights programme be periodised to match a periodised running programme, and if so how?

Also if yes, should you still periodise a weights programme if you are following a complex running system?

Interesting question. Year-round, whether training the aerobic systems, or coming into a race preparation phase, we should “keep in contact” with fast movement patterns (sprint efficiency) and strength training. This is totally different from actually training these systems hard, which only comes when we periodize for competition. But we just stay “in contact” while we’re concentrating on other phases, energy systems, and muscle fibre types. We don’t want to lose those hard-won neuromuscular recruitment patterns and accompanying IIB fibre muscle density. Use it or lose it. Once in competition, we should just do maintenance levels of lifting at a reduced total weight output (ie: maybe 2 sets of 3-5 reps as opposed to 4 sets). This is simply to “rest” the organism as a whole prior to expecting huge outputs, mentally and physically, in competition. The concentration required to lift very heavily can deplete the neuromuscular system as much as the muscles themselves. Keep supplemental levels of Omega-3 essential fatty acids ( deep sea fish oils) high , as well as magnesium and calcium supplements, when lifting heavily regularly. The Ca:Mg ratio should generally be 2:1 of elemental metals.

I always used to do weights at night, when warmed up, AFTER all hard or long running was done for the day, the night before a very gentle recovery day which may have involved moderate distances covered slowly. The warm-up for weights should be dynamic: stretching and deep-bending into positions similar to those you’ll be lifting heavy weights in. The idea of warming up aerobically for heavy lifting with 15 minutes on an exercycle should have disappeared with the dinosaurs.

Maybe warm up with light weights, doing the specific lifts, but with low intensity (below 50% maximal) that can’t possibly recruit the IIB fibres. Start the lifting session proper with a few reps (no more than 5) of the heaviest weight you think you can manage in that exercise, and then when recovered from that set, try lifting as heavy as you can again. US Strength training and sprint coach Barry Ross recommends this, and has startled experienced lifters by rapidly taking them to new levels where they smash lifetime bests by training with fewer reps, more recovery, and heavier weights than they’re used to.

With a complex system, where year-round the conditioning involves predominantly steady aerobic work with pivotal “tougher” sessions on several days, I’d do the weights session on the evening of the tougher days. Complex systems usually surround the short, sharp, tougher session days with several sessions of easier steady aerobic efforts. One season, long before I learnt more about the alactic system, I doubled my squat strength to 10 reps at 150kgs, at a racing bodyweight of about 58 kgs, training 20 minutes, three nights a week. Most of that 20 minutes was recovery time. These days I’d do fewer reps, and at 51 I’m sure I could lift more again, training correctly this time around!

DON’T schedule weights on the day before even a moderate speed session or track session or rhythm session; you may regret it, especially if you’re new to lifting or doing a new exercise! ALWAYS make your first weight session/s for a season moderate to gentle, lifting almost pathetically light weights, until the muscles get the idea. Then, go for it! Once you’re used to lifting weights, you’ll be able to lift quite heavily, frequently, with no fear of injury, especially if you use your common sense and lift with proper form! You’ll get to know your own recovery pattern as far as energy levels, recovery from stiffness, etc, etc. Henry Rono once said “I know my own limits” when asked how he trained for his world records in 1980.

Finally, remember that the main thing should always be the running session, and the weights should come second. If fatigued, drop the weights session and jog easily till you feel strong and recovered again. No use flogging a dead horse.

4. One additional question I meant to ask on the weights was; is there a different approach to the weights, or additional lifts required for triathletes as obviously there are extra muscle groups used?

Another good question, Keith. Slightly out of my particular area of sport, which is running. The answer here is YES. Two-time NZ Olympic Triathlon coach Chris Pilone, who coached Hamish Carter to gold in Athens in 2004, confirms that Carter did do quite a bit of weight training, but not specifically for the big upper body muscles required in swimming, as one might expect. He did a routine involving core exercises, some upper-body work, and split squats (a glorified lunge , where the rear leg is positioned with the rear foot elevated to really stress the quadriceps on that particular leg, and the front leg starts from a position with thigh parallel to floor. With the descent phase, the front leg gets to really work the hamstrings and glutes to the max.)

Pilone says that Carter didn’t discuss his weight routine at all while he was competing, as he felt it gave him the edge in coming off the bike. Now that he’s long since retired, we can safely reveal that his main reason for weights was that the extra strength in the core and lower body enabled him to transition much better from ride to run, and seemed to prevent the extremely common neuromuscular fatigue often seen with “rubbery leg syndrome”. Carter had a strong rowing background prior to his triathlon career, and was used to weight training for that sport.

Cyclists like Lance Armstrong use upper body and core workouts so that they sit strongly on the bike without undue fatigue, especially on uphill rides. If the cyclist is stable on his bike, then most of his driving force can be directed into the pedal, rather than in wrenching his torso across a bucking bike.

The swimming portion of triathlon can be addressed by concentrating on the “swimmer’s muscles” - the ‘lats’ or lattissimus dorsi. A great way to do this is with “lat pull-downs” or with wide-grip behind-the-neck pullups: wear a weight belt and strap on a decent weight plate while you see how many reps you can get. Most good athletes can do a number of pull-ups with body weight and then once they get to something decent like 15-20 reps, they get to a strength plateau pretty quickly. To smash that, we are better off doing (obviously!) far fewer reps with something decent like a 50lb plate whacked onto the belt. I saw TV footage prior to the 2008 Olympics where Australian 100m freestyle world record-holder Eamon Sullivan was cranking out reps with what looked like at least a 50 pound weight plate chained to the belt.

The guy who can do a respectable 20 reps with body weight might only crank out 2 or 3 with an extra 50 pounds on the belt, however this will really get the muscle working in the alactic time frame, asking a great deal from the neuromuscular system, and the powerful IIB fast twitch fibres will get their wake-up call. If this overload is applied regularly, the results with reps when one gets back to maxing out with body weight only can be extremely pleasing. A stronger muscle has more endurance at any given level of exertion, and won’t go into lactic acidosis until several more reps have accrued. A strong athlete should be able to lift at least his body-weight in a seated lat pull-down exercise: this will usually entail having to be strapped or held onto the seat. A good yardstick to aim at would be 5 reps at bodyweight plus 100 pounds (about 45 kgs).