There’s a strange moment in every runner’s life. It usually comes two or three days after the last race of the year. The medal is on its hook, your legs are halfway usable again, and suddenly there’s this emptiness in the calendar. No more training plan, no intervals on Tuesday, no long run on Sunday to look forward to.
Many people fill that emptiness with a break. For the first week or two, that’s exactly right. After that, though, this empty calendar is the most valuable thing a runner has all year. Because it has room for the training that always gets cut first during race season.
For many, the season ends in late September with the Berlin Marathon. This article is for the time after.
The misunderstanding: “runners need muscular endurance”
Runners who start strength training usually end up with one of two versions. Version one is the mat circuit: side plank, bridge, clamshells, three rounds. Version two is the dumbbell circuit: lunges, squats, calf raises, twenty reps each with light weights so you “don’t get too heavy”.
Both follow a logic that feels right: runners need endurance, so they train endurance in the weight room too. The problem is that they already have that endurance. Every run is a muscular endurance workout with a few thousand reps.
What the studies actually show
Strength training doesn’t make the engine bigger
Two large 2024 meta-analyses by Llanos-Lagos and colleagues summarised the research on strength training in middle- and long-distance runners, one with 31 studies and 652 runners, the other with 38 studies and 894 participants. Both reach the same basic finding: VO₂max, your maximal oxygen uptake, practically doesn’t change with strength training.
That sounds disappointing, but it’s good news with the wrong headline. Because what improves is running economy: the energy cost at a given speed. And time-trial performance improved too. Same engine, lower consumption.
It depends on the load
Now it gets interesting. The meta-analysis evaluated the types of training separately:
Heavy training (from about 80 % of maximum load): small, significant effect on running economy, moderate certainty of evidence.
Jump training (plyometrics): small effect, especially at slower speeds up to 12 km/h.
A combination of both: the clearest effect on running economy and, in the second analysis, a large effect on time-trial performance.
Light (submaximal) loads and isometric training: no significant effect.
In other words: the kind of strength training runners do most often shows the smallest benefit in the research.
The tendon as a spring
A second reason for heavy loads lies not in the muscle but in the tendon. A meta-analysis by Bohm and colleagues of 27 studies showed: tendon stiffness rose clearly under high loads (over 70 %) and barely under low loads. The type of movement hardly mattered. Load was the key.
A stiffer Achilles tendon returns more energy at push-off. Think of a trampoline: a slack sheet swallows energy, a taut one gives it back.
How big is the effect?
A study by Beattie and colleagues followed competitive runners for 40 weeks, 20 weeks of preparation and 20 weeks of season. Relative maximal strength rose by around 19 %, running economy by 3.5 %, speed at VO₂max by 4 %. That’s no quantum leap. But it’s an efficiency gain that applies to every single step, and you get it without one extra kilometre.
An honest caveat belongs here: most studies were done with well-trained, younger runners. For recreational runners between 30 and 45, the effects haven’t been measured separately.
“Won’t I get heavier?”
In short: in the available data, probably not. In the 40-week study, body composition didn’t change significantly. In an older study with elite cross-country runners who replaced a third of their training with explosive training for nine weeks, weight went up by 0.4 kilos, and their 5 km time still improved.
On top of that, running slows muscle growth somewhat anyway. A meta-analysis on combined training found smaller muscle gains with strength plus endurance than with strength training alone, and running slowed it more than cycling. For runners worried about bulk, that’s reassuring news. And for everyone else over their mid-thirties, half a kilo of muscle is more of a health reserve than dead weight anyway.
And does it protect against injury?
This is where many articles promise too much. In sport in general, the picture is good: a meta-analysis by Lauersen and colleagues found that strength training reduced injury risk to around a third. However, the six studies came mostly from football and the military. No running study was included.
For runners specifically, there’s a large randomised study from New York: 720 first-time marathoners, some of whom did a ten-minute home programme three times a week for twelve weeks. Overuse injuries that prevented finishing the marathon: 7.1 % with the programme, 7.3 % without.
The honest summary: that strength training protects runners from injury is plausible, but not proven. A short activation circuit is clearly not enough for that. The performance effect is proven. The most important lever against overuse remains increasing your running volume slowly.
What strength training for runners looks like in practice
The exercises: four groups
There’s no study that found the one best exercise for runners. The new ACSM position stand from March 2026, based on 137 systematic reviews, even stresses that load, sets and consistency matter more than the type of exercise. That’s why I work with a simple framework, one exercise from each group per session:
Knee-dominant: split squat, squat or leg press
Hip-dominant: Romanian deadlift (also single-leg), hip thrust
Single-leg/stabilising: step-up, side plank, abductor work
Lower leg: standing calf raises with a straight knee and seated calf raises with a bent knee
The calf deserves a sentence of its own. In biomechanical analyses, the calf muscles provide most of the support force in running, right up to sprinting speeds. Yet for many runners it’s the muscle with the most kilometres and the least weight.
The dose
Two sessions a week. The ACSM position stand names at least twice a week as the baseline. Study programmes for runners mostly ran for eight to twelve weeks with two to three sessions.
Heavy, but clean. For the main exercises, three to six reps, two to three sets, with one to three reps in reserve. According to the ACSM, training to failure isn’t necessary for healthy adults.
Learn first. The first two weeks with eight to ten reps and plenty in reserve.
Add jumps. A study with amateur runners showed: five minutes of two-legged hopping daily for six weeks improved running economy at 12 and 14 km/h, with no injuries caused by the intervention. Start with four sets of ten seconds, then build up. If you have acute tendon or shin problems, leave out the jumps.
Placement in the week
This is where most starts fail. The problem is almost never the strength training itself, it’s where it sits. A meta-analysis of 43 studies found no meaningful downside to combined strength and endurance training. You just have to distribute it sensibly:
Hard days hard, easy days easy. Put strength on your interval day, a few hours apart, or on an easy running day.
Never train heavy the day before your most important run.
On the same day: whatever has priority comes first.
With three runs a week, it could look like this: Monday strength, Tuesday intervals, Thursday easy run plus strength, Saturday long run.
The timing: now
Back in 1999, Paavolainen and colleagues deliberately placed their explosive training in the period after the race season. And in the 40-week study, most of the improvement happened in the first 20 weeks. That suggests a simple yearly pattern: build in autumn and winter, maintain during race preparation, cut back sharply in the last seven to ten days before a race. That’s an inference from studies and practice, not a specifically tested model. But it’s more logical than the usual approach of starting eight weeks before the race, when running volume is at its highest.
Bottom line
Strength training for runners isn’t endurance training with dumbbells. It’s efficiency training. The research is now surprisingly clear: heavy loads and jumps improve running economy and race performance, light circuits barely do, and in the available data you don’t get heavier. On injury prevention, the big runner study is still missing.
Two sessions a week, four exercise groups, eight weeks. And the best time to start is the moment your calendar empties.
The complete 8-week plan with session A and B, jump progression and sample weeks is free via Instagram (in German): comment LAUFKRAFT under one of the reels. And if you want to match your strength plan to your race calendar or an old injury, request your Start Plan.
Medical note: this article doesn’t replace medical or physiotherapy advice. If you have acute pain, tendon problems, are coming back from injury or have pre-existing conditions, please get checked before you start. alethics does not make diagnoses.
Sources
American College of Sports Medicine: Position Stand Resistance Training, Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, 17 March 2026 (announcement: acsm.org).
Llanos-Lagos C. et al. (2024). Sports Medicine 54(4):895–932. DOI 10.1007/s40279-023-01978-y
Llanos-Lagos C. et al. (2024). Sports Medicine 54(7):1801–1833. DOI 10.1007/s40279-024-02018-z
Beattie K. et al. (2017). Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research 31(1):9–23.
Bohm S. et al. (2015). Sports Medicine – Open 1:7. DOI 10.1186/s40798-015-0009-9
Dorn T. W. et al. (2012). Journal of Experimental Biology 215(11):1944–1956. DOI 10.1242/jeb.064527
Engeroff T. et al. (2023). Scientific Reports 13:4167. DOI 10.1038/s41598-023-30798-3
Paavolainen L. et al. (1999). Journal of Applied Physiology 86(5):1527–1533.
Wilson J. M. et al. (2012). Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research 26(8):2293–2307.
Schumann M. et al. (2022). Sports Medicine 52:601–612.
Lauersen J. B. et al. (2018). British Journal of Sports Medicine. DOI 10.1136/bjsports-2018-099078
Toresdahl B. G. et al. (2020). Sports Health 12(1):74–79. DOI 10.1177/1941738119877180
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