Benefits of strength for health and endurance training

Read time 5 min

Have you ever thought about the health benefits strength training can bring? Or do you believe it only belongs to hardcore lifters? Should I lift weights, if my goal is on running, dance, or some other sport?

I aim to answer those questions in this post so let’s go.

Strength training is one of the most important things you can do for your health. I’m a powerlifter so I’m biased but hear me out.

This post is going through some evidence of why everyone should reap the health benefits of resistance training, the performance gains for all athletes, and why endurance athletes should train strength.

Definitions

I want to start off again to define a couple of things just so we know what we are talking about.

Just so we’re clear when I talk about lifting weights, strength, or resistance training, I mean the same thing.

By strength training, I mean “training aiming to increase or maintain a muscle or a muscle group’s ability to generate maximum force” (1). This involves training with loads that are between 1 and 15 repetitions maximum (RM).

Health benefits of strength training

Training for strength has more benefits than you might think. For many people, the main reason is to look good naked, which is awesome, but there’s a lot more.

Being stronger increases your chance of being functionally independent, getting psychological and cognitive benefits, increasing bone density, and preventing and managing type 2 diabetes (2).

These are only some of the benefits resistance training can bring but let’s go through these ones.

Mental health

The mental health benefits of resistance training include reductions in anxiety, improvements in cognition among older people, reductions in depression symptoms, and improvements in self-esteem (3).

A systematic review found some positive effects on cognitive and executive function as well as on memory in the elderly. Some of the studies included in the review did have quite low sample sizes and more research is needed on the topic. (4)

Bone density

In the United States, the Department of Health and Human Services estimates that 30 % of women and 15 % of men will experience bone fractures because of osteoporosis (5). Resistance training increases bone strength by 1% to 8% in adolescents and 0.5% to 2.5% in premenopausal women (6).

Diabetes

World Health Organization reported that the number of adults living with diabetes has quadrupled from 1980 to 2016. Type 2 diabetes and its main drivers overweight and obesity are on the rise. (7)

The problem with diabetes is that the body can’t produce insulin. One of insulin’s tasks is to help glucose enter the cells. If glucose can not enter cells, it’s stuck in our circulation. This leads to issues in our circulatory, nervous, and immune systems. (8)

The awesome thing about strength training is that it builds muscle mass. More muscle leads to better glucose and insulin balance.

Strength for performance

There are a lot of things that can contribute to your performance whatever it is you do. In many sports, you want to produce a lot of force to move yourself, someone, or something else to achieve the best possible outcome. (9)

To do one or all of these, a limiting factor might be your strength. Muscle strength is correlated to jumping, sprinting, change of direction, and sport-specific performance. Your risk of injury is also lower if you’re strong. (9)

How strong is enough?

I think it depends but back squatting twice your bodyweight produced more power during a vertical jump, better sprint times, and also higher jumps. (9) Of course, there are other ways to measure strength than only back squats.

If you are not very strong, you should focus on getting stronger. In case you are already very strong, you might want to focus on moving weights really fast. (10)

Depending on your sport, you want to be able to produce a lot of force fast as well. It is an individual thing (surprise, surprise) what is best for you to focus on.

Endurance training and strength

Adding strength training for endurance athletes has been debated for a long time. I feel that the tide is turning. Strength training is more accepted in endurance & field sports as well.

Evidence supports strength training in addition to endurance training. Some of the benefits include improved economy, anaerobic capacity, lactate threshold, and delayed fatigue. So basically you can go faster and longer. All the benefits of endurance can be seen in the table below (11).

Table from a review paper by Rønnestad & Mujika (10)

Strength for cyclists

In a Norwegian study (12), well-trained cyclists were split into an intervention and control group. The intervention group did 4 sets of 4 repetitions of half-squats, three times per week for 8 weeks in addition to their normal training. The control group did only their endurance training.

As a result, the intervention group improved their strength numbers, economy by 4.8%, work efficiency by 4.7%, and time-to-exhaustion at maximal aerobic power by 17.2%. Time-to-exhaustion means that they cycled as long as they could with a set threshold of their personal maximal aerobic power. The control group improved their work efficiency by 1.4% but all the other post values were not apparent.

Strength for runners

The same research group studied the effects of resistance training on endurance runners with a similar training intervention as with cyclists above (13).

As in the previously mentioned study, the strength numbers improved, the running economy improved by 5%, and time-to-exhaustion at maximal aerobic speed improved by 21.3%.

Summary

All in all, I believe everyone should do strength training. It doesn’t have to be 5 times per week. Even 1 is plenty. I’ve had a lot of clients who make great progress by only two times per week. I highly recommend you pick up some form of strength training whoever you are.

Hope you enjoyed this one cause this lifting stuff is very close to my heart as a powerlifter! Did you learn something?

If you need some help with this stuff, let’s talk. You’ll find me on Instagram or Linkedin or below on the button.

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References:

1. Knuttgen HG, Kraemer WJ. Terminology and Measurement in Exercise Performance. The Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research. 1987 Feb;1(1):1–10. 

2. Westcott WL. Resistance Training is Medicine: Effects of Strength Training on Health. 2012;11(4):8.

3. Mental Health Benefits of Strength Training in Adults - Patrick J. O’Connor, Matthew P. Herring, Amanda Caravalho, 2010 [Internet]. [cited 2022 May 16]. Available from: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1559827610368771

4. Li Z, Peng X, Xiang W, Han J, Li K. The effect of resistance training on cognitive function in the older adults: a systematic review of randomized clinical trials. Aging Clin Exp Res. 2018 Nov;30(11):1259–73.

5. Office of the Surgeon General (US). Bone Health and Osteoporosis: A Report of the Surgeon General [Internet]. Rockville (MD): Office of the Surgeon General (US); 2004 [cited 2022 May 16]. (Reports of the Surgeon General). Available from: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK45513/

6. Nikander R, Sievänen H, Heinonen A, Daly RM, Uusi-Rasi K, Kannus P. Targeted exercise against osteoporosis: A systematic review and meta-analysis for optimising bone strength throughout life. BMC Medicine. 2010 Jul 21;8(1):47. 

7. Global report on diabetes [Internet]. [cited 2022 May 16]. Available from: https://www.who.int/publications-detail-redirect/9789241565257

8. Goyal R, Jialal I. Diabetes Mellitus Type 2. In: StatPearls [Internet]. Treasure Island (FL): StatPearls Publishing; 2022 [cited 2022 May 16]. Available from: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK513253/

9. Suchomel TJ, Nimphius S, Stone MH. The Importance of Muscular Strength in Athletic Performance. Sports Med. 2016 Oct;46(10):1419–49.

10. Suchomel TJ, Nimphius S, Bellon CR, Stone MH. The Importance of Muscular Strength: Training Considerations. Sports Med. 2018 Apr;48(4):765–85. 

11. Rønnestad BR, Mujika I. Optimizing strength training for running and cycling endurance performance: A review: Strength training and endurance performance. Scand J Med Sci Sports. 2014 Aug;24(4):603–12. 

12. Sunde A, Støren Ø, Bjerkaas M, Larsen MH, Hoff J, Helgerud J. Maximal Strength Training Improves Cycling Economy in Competitive Cyclists. The Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research. 2010 Aug;24(8):2157–65.

13. Støren O, Helgerud J, Støa EM, Hoff J. Maximal strength training improves running economy in distance runners. Med Sci Sports Exerc. 2008 Jun;40(6):1087–92.

Stress and performance Part II

Read time 5 min

Have you thought about how stress affects your training? Do you neglect it in your own training? What strategies do you use to manage it?

In part I (check it!) we discussed the basics of stress. In this part, we’ll cover how to increase your ability to bend with stress without breaking. We also talk about how it affects recovery from training, different training adaptations, and how to put all this into practice.

Resilience & Coping

Coping is our thoughts and behaviors to handle and manage hard situations. Resilience is the adaptive capacity we have to recover from stressful situations (1). One might say it’s our ability to bend and not break.

We want to increase our resilience to have a bigger buffer against the negative effects of stress.

How to increase resilience?

There are ways you can increase your resilience to adversity. A meta-analysis found that cognitive-behavioral therapy and mindfulness practice increase resilience. Have to mention that the studies included in the meta-analysis were highly heterogeneous and the quality of studies varied. (2)

Interventions used to reverse changes caused by stress are physical activity, programs that promote social support, and finding meaning & purpose in life (3). Based on these findings, I recommend focusing on these as preventative measures as well.

Stress and performance

Now that we covered the basics of stress, we’ll get to the part that’s very close to my heart: How stress influences your performance, recovery, and adaptation.

If you want to progress, you should take stress into consideration since it might be holding you back.

Recovery & adaptation

Since chronic stress has been shown to significantly slow wound healing it makes sense to take a look at what it does to the short and long-term recovery from training (4). It also seems to play a part in how big adaptations you can get from training.

training recovery

A study by Stults-Kolehmainen et al analyzed the muscular recovery of 31 university students during a 96-hour period. They found that chronic mental stress has an impact on functional recovery from strenuous resistance training.

The exercise was done using a leg press, first finding 1 repetition maximum. After this, participants continued with 6 sets to volitional failure. The researchers assessed aerobic capacity, maximal isometric force, vertical jump with a squat jump, and maximal cycling power. All of the parameters recovered slower in the high-stress group. The authors also controlled other factors like recent exams, fitness level, fat-free mass, training experience, workload, and reduction in force and this did not change the results. (5)

The same group analyzed short-term recovery (during 4 hours) after the first exercise bout and found similar results that the low-stress group recovered faster (6).

training adaptation

A Finnish research group had 44 healthy sedentary subjects do a 2-week aerobic training period for 5 days/week. They measured the participants’ self-rated mental stress and found high stress, in the beginning, to be correlated with reduced gains in cardiorespiratory fitness and maximal power. (7) 

Something similar was found in this study looking at strength gains over 12 week period in university students. The low-stress group increased their strength more in the bench press, squat, arm, and leg size compared to the high-stress group. (8)

Even though the studies mentioned have somewhat heterogeneous groups and not very trained populations, I’d still confidently say that there is a trend to be acknowledged.

Practical takeaway

So how should I account for this? Now that we understand the stress a little bit better and what it does to our body, we should translate this into practice.

Don’t push it

My first takeaway is that we have to change our training based on stressors. If you just started a new job, had a baby 3 months ago, and signed up for a triathlon, please start slow with your training. Based on the evidence, your recovery is limited and you don’t adapt as fast as you would in a low-stress situation.

Increase your resilience

The second key point would be to focus on the things that increase your resilience to stress. If you are taking part in a triathlon, focus on finding purpose in training, finding a training partner to have social support, and paying attention to a healthy lifestyle.

Previously mentioned mindfulness exercises can also enhance resilience. Targeted interventions can also be done to different populations. For example, young female athletes face different challenges than adult men. (9)

Personalized coaching

This stuff is easy to understand but harder to account for in practice. It’s easy to be blinded by your earlier training plans or stuff that worked 10 years ago. I highly recommend getting outside help from someone who understands this stuff and monitors it during the coaching process.

Did you learn something?

This stuff about stress is my current favorite topic. I hope you enjoy it as well. Did you learn something new? Is there still something you’re curious about? I’d love to hear your thoughts so leave me a comment below!

This ends my two-part series on stress. Thank you for reading. If any of this resonates with you, send me a message on Instagram or Linkedin or leave a comment below.

For coaching requests click below:

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REFERENCES:

1. Wu Y, Yu W, Wu X, Wan H, Wang Y, Lu G. Psychological resilience and positive coping styles among Chinese undergraduate students: a cross-sectional study. BMC Psychology. 2020 Aug 6;8(1):79. 

2. Joyce S, Shand F, Tighe J, Laurent SJ, Bryant RA, Harvey SB. Road to resilience: a systematic review and meta-analysis of resilience training programmes and interventions. BMJ Open. 2018 Jun 14;8(6):e017858. 

3. McEwen BS, Gray JD, Nasca C. Recognizing resilience: Learning from the effects of stress on the brain. Neurobiology of Stress. 2015 Jan;1:1–11. 

4. Christian LM, Graham JE, Padgett DA, Glaser R, Kiecolt-Glaser JK. Stress and wound healing. Neuroimmunomodulation. 2006;13(5–6):337–46. 

5. Stults-Kolehmainen MA, Bartholomew JB, Sinha R. Chronic Psychological Stress Impairs Recovery of Muscular Function and Somatic Sensations Over a 96-Hour Period. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research. 2014 Jul;28(7):2007–17. 

6. Stults-Kolehmainen MA, Bartholomew JB. Psychological Stress Impairs Short-Term Muscular Recovery from Resistance Exercise. Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise. 2012 Nov;44(11):2220–7. 

7. Ruuska PS, Hautala AJ, Kiviniemi AM, Mäkikallio TimoH, Tulppo MP. Self-Rated Mental Stress and Exercise Training Response in Healthy Subjects. Front Physio [Internet]. 2012 [cited 2021 Oct 8];3. Available from: http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fphys.2012.00051/abstract

8. Bartholomew JB, Stults-Kolehmainen MA, Elrod CC, Todd JS. Strength Gains after Resistance Training: The Effect of Stressful, Negative Life Events. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research. 2008 Jul;22(4):1215–21. 

9. McManama O’Brien KH, Rowan M, Willoughby K, Griffith K, Christino MA. Psychological Resilience in Young Female Athletes. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2021 Aug 17;18(16):8668.