Training for Trail Running: Strength Training

01:05.94
Steve
Welcome to the Uphill Athlete Podcast our mission is to elevate and inspire all mountain athletes through education and celebration. My name is Steve House and I will be your host today along with Alyssa Clark we’re joined by a previous guest. Our esteemed coach and co-worker alexa hasman who returns with the podcast today to discuss strength training for trail runners. Alexa is the lead coach of our trail running training group and has an extensive background in both ultra running and a focus in strength work. And her educational academic background. Thank you for being on the podcast.

01:46.90
Lex
Hey thanks for having me.

01:50.88
Alyssa
We’re stoked to have you on again and the last time we touched on mental training quite a bit with you. You’re a woman of many hats. Ah, but this time you also have an extensive background in ultra running and strength training. I think those are 2 of your kind of main focuses right.

02:09.19
Lex
Yeah, I’m super passionate about strength training as a supplement to my first passion which is ultra running. So yes I love both.

02:19.78
Alyssa
So how did you decide to focus on strength training like what led you to that seeing that as a super important aspect of training for ultra running and also just being a really good mountain athlete?

02:36.32
Lex
Yeah I think what was the main catalyst for it was knowing that a lot of the races I wanted to do went up massive climbs and to get up massive climbs you have to be massively strong right. So that was like the first aspect and then dealing with injuries and noticing that I was a lot stronger and less injury prone when I was strength training was really important. I dealt with a lot of ankle sprains. Because of that I was dealing with a lot of tendinopathy. And sort of just imbalances in my body and so strength training became sort of integral in helping me rehabilitate and come back from those injuries and come back stronger and healthier and sort of prevent that going forward in my running.

03:28.40
Steve
So to summarize that, what are the important points for trail runners? I think that we can all agree that strength training is not super popular in the culture of trail running and mountain running. So if you’re selling a trail runner on the value of strength training I think you’ve kind of just summarized some of those points but what would be your elevator pitch for why a trail runner should strength train.

03:52.60
Lex
Yeah, good question. Do you want to be efficient in getting through your ultra? Do you want to finish strong and feel good? Do you want to prevent injuries like there’s so many ways to sort of sell strength training and it’s hard because yeah in this field strength training is often talked about as a negative or it’s sort of like oh you don’t need to do that. I think people get worried about being bulky. I think people worry about the time commitment because it’s true ultra running training includes a lot of time and strength training is just on top of that. But the importance of it is astronomical. So why train for an ultra and put in all those hours of running and then put yourself at risk of injury when you can add just a little bit of strength training and help prevent that.

04:47.40
Alyssa
I would also add on to those answers and you honestly gave us like the best elevator pitch for this whole entire episode right? It’s crucial for the later parts of the race when you’re starting to deteriorate. It’s your strength and that power that will get you through the challenging ascents and descents especially I think strength is so key oftentimes if we’re racing in the alps. If we’re racing in the mountains we have these massive descents to get back into town to get to the finish and if you have blown your quads out if you’re really feeling the delayed onset muscle soreness. That’s something that you’re going to end up walking it in I think we’ve all experienced what that feels like and straight training is so key to delaying that response as well as just if you live in a flatter area and you want to tackle these big mountain races if you love doing that, strength training is so key to being able to be successful. It’s kind of our quote unquote secret weapon to living in flat area is being able to strength train and be successful when you step out into those mountains. So Alexa when you’re designing a plan for trail runners. What does your prescription of strength look like for the week and how do you periodize your strength training for a trail runner.

06:22.84
Lex
Yeah, good question. So I think it really depends on the athlete and their history with strength training. That’s gonna be the first thing that I look at but remains the same is the periodization. So we’re always going to start with a max phase. And by max phase I don’t mean like one rep max I mean like you’re doing strength max strength phase. So you’re working on that muscular strength aspect of training and we’re going to do that for like depending on the amount of time that you’re training 4 to six weeks and then we’re going to move into muscular endurance and again this is really based off of the amount of time that the athlete has to train for their event muscular endurance. We’re working on the longevity of the muscle contraction. How can they hold that when going down a hill up a hill? That repetitive movement and that is going to be another four to six weeks after that max strength phase and then after that two to three weeks before the event. We’re really focusing on the maintenance phase of strength. So we’re working on maintaining core strength and glute strength and shoulder strength which I think is often overlooked. So yeah I think those are the 3 main phases that we go through now on a weekly basis again that depends on the athlete. How much time they have their history of training. But ideally what I like to see is 2 to 3 specific sessions focused on strength right and then ideally if they can add in little strength things throughout the day just to sort of add to that. So whether that is doing single leg stands while they are watching Tv or cooking dinner or anything like that just adding in little things that they can do throughout the day so that strength training doesn’t become this burden on their life but is more of like just an addition.

08:16.92
Steve
Yeah, and this follows right along with you know everything we’ve laid out the training for the new alpinism and training for the uphill athlete books. You know we will also talk about the general conditioning or general strength phase the beginning to kind of get people ready for training that the max strength and students of the books will recognize that those phases the max strength phase can be extended. You know, typically around eight weeks is where we see things start to fall off in terms of gains and then the muscular endurance phase of course is like a lot of fun and everybody loves it and it’s one of our most trainable qualities. We’ve talked a lot about that on the podcast in other places but also a lot in the books. So the maintenance I think those are all great places to kind of dig into so let’s just take it one by one. I’d like to talk about Max Strength. You have favorite exercises for trail runners. You know I think we’re all kind of aligned maybe start off by sort of aligning people on what that feels like what is a max strength workout itself actually feels like to an athlete when they go into the gym.

00:19.26
Lex
When we think about max strength I think it comes off as a really intimidating term we think of one rep max like what can I squat? What’s the heaviest I can squat? What’s the heaviest I can deadlift and when we specifically go uphill. Talking about this max strength phase what we mean is 4 to 6 reps of heavy weight and that means the feeling that you should get is I could do a couple more reps of this but I would really rather put the weight down right now and so you’re doing 4 to 6 reps and you’re doing 4 to 5 sets of those reps the biggest key to this max strength phase is the rest that you do between those sets and that’s going to be a long rest period and we’re talking like three five minutes this is what I think is the ideal time to look at ultra signup. Scroll through the races you’re interested in. Will I get myself amped up and then go back to squat and so yeah, that’s what that max strength phase looks like and this is the really important part for that power and that push off and that really explosive strong ability that Ultra runners have that’s where this max strength face comes in.

01:38.47
Steve
Yeah, and I think I would add you know there’s just a big neurological component and people need to remember that there is a lot of training effect here that is purely neurological and this is the reason we use this for athletes where they have to carry the engine so to speak we have to carry the muscles around. We’re not body build builders. We don’t want to be big. We don’t want to be heavy, but we do want the muscles we have to be able to fire together and generate a lot of force so we can be fast and strong on the uphills and resilient on the downhill. So I think that that’s a really important way that I try to communicate with my athletes. How to think about it.

02:22.77
Lex
Yeah, absolutely I think we’ve all been in that situation where we’ve seen those downhills and there’s runners on the sides of the trails and their quads are blown up and and how can we avoid that because we all want to avoid that and that’s where max strength comes in. So It’s not just giving up the amounts, not just going down. It’s also yeah, flat running everything so and and like I said the injury prevention part of it.

02:51.70
Alyssa
So why that long rest we had a great question yesterday we were doing a training group and someone asked what is the actual physiological reason for needing that long rest versus us who are constantly like oh yeah, the more we do. The more we can cram in a short amount of time the better, like why do we need to rest what’s happening in the body?

03:11.97
Lex
Yeah, that’s a really good question. The amount of rest is really so that you can get the most muscle recruitment in your next set right? So it’s sort of like interval training. You want to rest as much as possible so that you can have the best next interval in your running that you can, right? So you don’t want to go into this set or rep tired. That’s the muscular endurance Phase. We’re not in that phase right now, we’re in the I want to be strong phase. So this is the time to rest and really make sure that you’re able to recruit as many muscle fibers as you can.

04:16.54
Steve
Because you’re teaching your neurology to recruit as many muscle fibers as you can and if you’re a little fatigued and the muscles themselves aren’t recharged with nutrients and haven’t flushed out their waste products. They won’t be able to actually. You know, fully contract to so it’s a great point alexa. I just wanted to follow up on that.

04:37.68
Lex
Yeah, absolutely.

04:40.56
Alyssa
Awesome! So after we have max strength we’re going into muscular endurance and we’re not going to get too far into Muscular endurance on this episode because we actually have an entire episode dedicated to talking about Muscular Endurance. I guess just really briefly what is Muscular endurance and how long would you recommend a trail runner stay in this phase?

05:10.50
Lex
Yeah, so muscular endurance is really important because we’re endurance athletes right? We’re going for a long time. So muscular endurance is that phase where we’re really working on getting lots of reps so eight plus reps and we’re doing that 2 to 3 sets.

00:00.52
Lex
Yeah, so Muscular Endurance is really important for ultrarunners and trailrunners because while we’re endurance athletes right? So we want that longevity of strength and power. So when we’re working on the muscular endurance phase. this is eight plus reps. And we are really working on that burn factor like you know that feeling that like that aching burning feeling that you get when you’re doing a muscular endurance workout. That’s the goal of it.

00:32.51
Steve
The heavy legs the hard to push through.

00:37.13
Alyssa
Like the limiting factor is the legs aspect of the trading. It’s like I can breathe all day but I cannot move faster because my legs are just killing me like my muscles are giving up. That’s where muscular endurance comes in, so that’s super important because a lot of what we do and this is something again. We’re going to talk about a little bit later is that I think we often consider trail running and you can get really light with trail running. I mean I’ve seen Jim Walmsley but I haven’t seen him specifically but see pictures of him running with just a handheld for shorter races that have a lot of aid stations. But if you start getting into longer races more required equipment. You’re not running scot-free. You’re running with quite a bit of weight on your back with you and so being strong through this being able to carry weight is super important to training.

01:38.88
Lex
Yeah, and I think that’s something I’m really experiencing right now especially training for the 200 is that the aid stations are so far apart that you have to carry a significant amount of hydration and food and all the required gear. And it is a lot. It adds up really quickly. So it is really practicing being able to. That’s why I say like we often overlook shoulders but shoulders are really important and also when you’re using poles, shoulders are really important.

02:08.25
Alyssa
Completely.

02:11.55
Steve
Lifting those poles up, I always remember when I would start my guide summer guiding season and I would just lift the ice axe up 3000 times it just simply walking uphill lifting up.

02:26.77
Steve
Its amazing how specifically we get conditioned to certain movements and you gotta practice those but train those before you actually get to the race for sure.

02:29.74
Lex
Yeah, totally and we’re also just even if we’re not using poles we’re using our arms to propel us forward and so I think a lot of trail runners will be like well I’ll just do my lunges or I’ll just do squats or deadlifts. You got to really think about your shoulders but also your core like I know yeah specifically I am always the sorest in my abdomen after races.

02:58.38
Alyssa
Same I like to think of it as I’m just laughing away down the course. That’s why it’s so but it’s truly I mean gosh I think the worst case of it was finishing Moab my core was so sore from just.

03:05.81
Lex
.

03:14.82
Alyssa
As with a pack I mean you’re wearing that pack for upwards of seventy eighty ninety one hundred hours and that is just a lot of strength and especially as you’re climbing mountains and you’re pulling your leg up. You know things are. The more strength you have the more kind of defense lines you have along the way to keep you moving forward. If you shoot yourself like you use your major muscles you start weakening because we all do. The more you can continue to rely on as many muscles and as much recruitment as possible. The more you’ll be able to keep pushing forward.

04:03.90
Lex
Ah, absolutely and remember that core keeps you stable. It keeps you upright. That’s the whole point of your core is to keep you balanced and moving. So ah, this is sort of an important aspect to being upright in trail running.

04:17.98
Steve
Yeah, yeah, you had mentioned you know we talked about general strength max strength muscular endurance. We talked briefly about you know strength training during the specific phase but let’s go back a little bit and go back into max strength like. How many times can an athlete do a max strength you know period in say a year or what does that look like and so a lot of runners. They’re training for multiple events. Maybe they have a big A race in may maybe they’ve got another A race in I don’t know September, that’s not an uncommon layout. There’s probably some b and c races along the way you know. I think it’s really important to think about the distribution of these periods and in your planning and what framework do you have for people to think about that.

05:12.60
Lex
Yeah, so how I look at it as a coach is I always start with the As and I plan backwards from there now a lot of us have multiple A races throughout the year so and I always suggest not having more than three would be on the high end. But you know, let’s say the average trail runner has 2 to 3 A races per year. So you’re going to build backwards from that. So after the first A race you want a recovery time. You want that like a rebuilt check-in phase of things where you’re checking to see where there’s imbalances. Where there may be some injury potential where can we work on like getting all sort of situated before we move into that max strength phase and then you move into that max strength phase and let’s say you have plenty of time leading into your second A race then let’s aim for 6 to eight weeks let’s get the most out of that time. Before moving into that muscular endurance and same thing so you’re working backwards from the A race. You’re taking 2 to three weeks for maintenance, you’re doing 4 to six weeks for muscular endurance. You know upwards of eight weeks of max strength and before that you’re really working on things like checking in with your body and seeing where you need a focus and what might need to be addressed before moving into those phases.

06:27.22
Alyssa
And Alexa brings up a great point. We’ve also heard from John Kelly in that podcast that it can be extremely exciting. Ah and people can get too focused on racing too often and really getting the sense of fomo of like oh my gosh I want do that race and truly you can only have between 1 to 3 really A goals because you have to train to get better to see improvement and if you’re racing too much. You’re preventing yourself from actually training because you’re always even if they aren’t per se A races. You’re always building and then tapering and then recovering and so you’re spending all of your time in these kinds of transitional phases rather than putting in really solid training phases. And I think that’s one of the especially with younger runners or we’ll call them overenthusiastic runners who are like I just want to do all the races and then they get really defeated because they’re not seeing improvement. It’s like well actually you need to race less to then see that improvement. And I’m sure Steve you can probably attest to that in the climbing world like how many big expeditions and goals did you have per year.

07:53.75
Steve
Yeah I mean I would have basically 1 big expedition a year and in reality I would have like 1
a trip and then 2 and then some you know two b trips and I would try to get one thing a year that was a good year doing one one good thing.

08:09.62
Alyssa
Yeah.

08:13.42
Steve
And I think that I’ve seen that a lot as as a coach too Alyssa, where people start off with training and they’re doing exactly what you described and I think there’s probably a lot of people listening who are like oh that’s me. I actually do that because a lot of people do and it’s totally normal and that’s more or less the shift in the culture that we’re trying to help people understand the value of you know both in all of these mountain sports. You can just say race yourself to shape or climb yourself to shape to a point. But then you just kind of kind of hit that level that’s going to be your level and you’re never really going to progress beyond that which can be fine if you’re just you know there to finish but where I think that it comes up short a little bit is that people actually get bored with the racing because when they’re not seeing improvements because ultimately. These sports are more of a personal journey than a competitive journey and you want to feel like you’re learning, growing , progressing and if you’re stagnating and not doing longer races or similar races. But at faster times and that kind of thing. You’re going to lose interest and I think that that’s to everyone’s detriment.

09:30.49
Lex
Yeah, absolutely and I think you know I can relate to that too like there’s so many fun races. It’s hard to be like oh I only want to focus on 1 thing. So I think what a good plan for that is having those b and c goals you know like having some fun races that aren’t the big focus of your year and saying like I’m gonna do these casually and I’m gonna have fun with this and that’s a really good way to combat that sort of Fomo feeling and still focus on your
A goals.

10:04.16
Alyssa
So with that. What does that look like for strength training when you are working in these B and C races? How do you alexa if your client comes in and says or even yourself says hey I’m going to do instead of this training run I’m going to do a 50K race this weekend. How do you structure their training around that racing?

10:29.71
Lex
Yeah that’s a good question and I think of it like myself. That’s literally what I’m doing currently. I’m just jumping into a bunch of local trail races just for casual assisted long runs. I think it’s fun. I like being with the community but I’m not racing them right. And so I don’t change my strength training. Nothing about that changes so whatever phase I’m in is the phase that I’m in or is what I’m gonna be doing leading into that race and another reason behind that is because I want to be able to train on tired legs right? That’s the goal of trail running. Your legs are gonna get tired at some point so I want that feeling of fatigue when I go into these b and c races. I’m not trying to be fresh. I’m not trying to be tapered so I’m not changing anything about my strength training now that does mean there are. Avoid places like where I put them in the weekly schedule. So I’m not gonna do a hard leg day the day before the race. I might put it on a few days earlier but other than that I’m not taking away any of those strength training activities that I’m doing.

11:34.76
Alyssa
Awesome! Yeah, and the other thing that I would add as a caveat to using b and c races as training is to know yourself so Alexa is awesome at being like I can run a 50k at a very conservative pace because I know it’s training. I know myself and I know that I am really bad at being able to literally even a 5k I’ll be like I’m just going to do this in jean shorts and then all of a sudden I’m running as fast as I can in jean shorts so if you are someone like me who can’t dial it back because you get in a competition you’re like I’m competitive. Then you have to realize that maybe racing actually isn’t the best way to train and so you have to be really honest with yourself of what your level of self-control is because it’s kind of like if you want to eat the whole cake probably don’t put the whole cake in front of you. If you’re good with just a slice. Awesome. Then leave the cake out. You know you have to understand your personality for me. I know that using races I can use them with the idea that like yeah I’m probably going to go pretty hard in this race and that’s okay and I don’t have to be rested for it. But I’m also not going to say hey i. Think it’s a good idea to j p in this fifty k and I’m gonna try to go slower. That’s just not really how my mind works and so I think it’s very important to be honest with yourself of what does my mind does when I get in a race. Is it okay for my training or does it actually act as a detriment and I should just go out and do my own thing.

13:27.40
Lex
Yeah, absolutely I think that’s such a valid point and there are so many of us that are uber competitive and I totally get that I was very much the same way and it has taken a ton of mental training to be like. And that’s why I have to put up checkpoints in my casual as I call them casual 50k’s or casual B or C races I have to put in like I specifically cannot chase down anybody I specifically have to do these things at aid stations and so I put in these checkpoints to make sure that I am not doing not being competitive because I’m the same way like you know you get that sort of like Hunter Mentality. You see a runner in front of you and you’re like just locked in and to break away from that you just gotta be like nope head down like this is training. And it is so hard and takes so much practice.

14:22.32
Alyssa
I think you had some great because I know you just did a 50k the other weekend and I remember you saying your goals and it was like dance with aid station members say hi to as many of them as I can you ended up tacking on some bonus miles at the start somewhat by accident. But I think just having those goals rather than finish goals are so key and also just really being focused on what’s the bigger picture. What am I really aiming for that will help with some of that self-control. I guess what I heard the aid station one but what were some of the things that you were aiming for in that race over placement.

15:09.89
Lex
Yeah, so there’s a few things that I tried. Well I think it really helped that I got lost in the first place before the first aid station. So I had already put myself at a bit of a detriment with being a couple miles off course but yeah I try to stand there, talk to the aid station people and check in with them and sort of just have a conversation with them and then I try to find people along the course to run with and sort of I often go into this coach mode because you end up running with a lot of people. It’s like oh this is my first trail race and sort of just sit back and running with them and learning about them and talking to them and it’s great for me. I don’t know if it’s great for them because I’m like hi tell me about yourself, tell me your life story and they’re all probably trying to focus on breathing but those are some of my big goals and then I do not allow myself to hunt down runners. It’s just that I cannot do that when I’m doing those races. So yeah, those are sort of the main things to make as many friends as possible. Learn about as many people as I can talk to as many aid station people as I can check in with every runner that you see on the side of the trail. You know. All those things.

16:21.50
Steve
Those seem like generally good things to do in life anyway. So make as many friends as you can I can with people that look like they’re not doing well.

16:28.37
Lex
Yeah yeah, just be a good human.

16:36.39
Steve
Sounds like a lot of crossover here. Be a good human. Thank the volunteers. Yeah, yeah, so I know that people are going to expect us to ask. I know that people are going to expect us to answer this question.

16:56.18
Steve
So what are the exercises?

17:00.88
Lex
Yeah, okay, so my favorite exercises so when we’re thinking about trail running the biggest thing I try to reiterate with everybody is we are constantly in a single leg position and we’re on uneven terrain. So when we’re strength training. We want to put ourselves in a single leg position and ideally in sort of an unbalanced position right? So we start with a single leg deadlift, a single leg squat now if you have the experience and you have the training at a balance board to do that, you know those sorts of things. Step Ups, Step Downs really important declined squats then we go to core and we want to focus on I really like my favorite thing is the bear hold and that’s also known as like a quadruped hold or bear walks I really like that and that also is really good for the shoulders. So there’s that then there’s a single like standing with shoulder press. You’re working on balance stability and shoulder work which is really nice. It’s like a very good combo, a dynamic movement or you could do a single leg deadlift to a shoulder press. So those I could go on and on about all my favorite straight training exercises.

18:19.51
Steve
Yeah, those are all great ones and I don’t. I just want to highlight you know for people who have not done these movements before and aren’t familiar with them before you jump on Youtube just make sure you can do a really good deadlift. You know that’s a great place to start for a lot of people because you get that. Posterior chain you get some strength. It’s safe. It’s not intimidating because you can always just drop the bar or you know something like that is really a good place to start another place. That’s good to start in the book as well as a goblet squat where you’re holding a weight in front of your chest again. It’s not single-legged but it’s a great place to start out if you’re not comfortable with these things because doing a pistol squat or even a thing like deadlift can be challenging for people.

19:09.58
Steve
Or you know the other thing you can do is do it in your high volume or what do you call that the high cushion shoes and your foot’s already squishing around that makes it harder. It’s way easier to do those barefoot.

19:21.32
Lex
Yeah, absolutely I still can’t do a pistol squat. So then also you know take it down to the ground and do some glute bridges. Add some weight to it, do single leg glute bridges before you move up to being upright.

00:39.15
Lex
Where you’re on the ground but you can add some instability and you can add some way you can add some variance you can also do that with bird dogs and I think bird dogs is sort of an essential core balance stability move that you can add in right? You’re on all fours. But you’re lifting up opposite leg and opposite hand so you’re automatically putting yourself in sort of an unstable position and your core is being forced to learn how to stabilize yourself and in that you’re using your posterior chain to lift up that leg. You’re using your shoulder so that’s a really great overall exercise and it’s really good for somebody that well I like to do it before all my workouts just to get things fired up. But also if you’re new to strength training. This is a really good entry level move that really is foolproof in that it’s hard to get injured from doing a bird dog. You know you’re not putting yourself in sort of a compromising position like you could be with like doing like KettleBell Swings or something like that where you could actually really hurt yourself. So I think bird dogs is a really good option for most people.

01:44.21
Alyssa
Yeah I think that makes a lot of sense. I think the other scary part about lifting for a lot of people. Especially if you don’t come from a strength background, some of the movements are scary and can feel a little bit dangerous. You know you have a bar across your back. You’re doing these bigger step up things like that can be really intimidating. So I think exercises like the glute bridge like the bird dog. You know those are things you can do around your house and they feel a lot less intimidating. Then per say walking in a gym being like am I going to drop this weight on my toe. I’ve certainly been involved in seeing some strength training fiascos and it is scary when there’s a lot of weight being moved around.

02:31.57
Lex
Oh yeah, absolutely you can definitely open yourself up to some bad possibilities. So it’s important that you either know what you’re doing when you’re playing with a heavyweight or you have somebody there. That’s helping you that knows what they’re doing. And that’s essential.

02:48.89
Steve
And people are really friendly in the gym. You know they want to help you out. So it’s always good to ask for help if you need a spot or whatever. But I also think that there’s a lot of movements and exercises and we talk about mostly these types of movements and exercises in the books. On websites that are very safe it’s really easy to dump the weight forward or something like that. One of the things that we haven’t mentioned that I want to kind of hit on because I think it maybe is one of these points. It is so obvious it’s easy to overlook that it’s really important to track your weight and write down what you’re doing and to make sure you’re progressing. My rule of thumb with my athletes when I’m coaching is they get to do the same workout 2 times and if they’re not. They have to increase the weight in the third session with the same movement so to do that you have to know that you did you know that movement with a seventeen point five pound dumbbell and because you’re not going to remember it next week and if you’re not able to progress then you need to look. We’re talking about max strength primarily so we’re not going to be talking about 17 pounds we’re going to be talking about I don’t know 145 or one hundred and thirty five pounds of these kinds of weights and you know you really need to pay attention to what you’re doing. Ah, in terms of what the actual weight is and make sure you’re progressing.

04:20.88
Lex
Yeah, absolutely I think that is a really important factor for that max Strength period.

04:24.95
Alyssa
And that’s a really easy thing to keep track of whether it’s notes and training peaks or even just notes on your phone just as soon as you do it write down and then you won’t forget it. Otherwise I think we all know that every good intention of remembering things goes out the window as soon as life comes back to you right after the gym.

04:47.40
Lex
Yeah, and that’s a good thing to do in that rest period. You don’t know what to do in that few minutes of rest hey write it down write what you’re doing.

04:56.51
Steve
Yeah, and it’s really really motivating to look back on the last few weeks and notice how much stronger you’ve become. Yeah so one last question from me I just wanted to talk about.

05:14.98
Steve
How to train strength train for the downhills.

05:15.73
Lex
Yeah, strength training for downhills is my favorite I love having the strength and power to blow past everybody on the downhills. And the big part of training for a downhill is eccentric strength. So that means having your muscle in an elongated state because when you’re going downhill, you’re in a single leg position as always, but your muscle is elongated so meaning like you’re in that lowered squat position and it’s contracting at the same time. So we want to mimic that exact same thing when we are doing our strength training to prepare for downhills. So that means we’re doing eccentric squats and that means we’re slowly lowering our body with that weight and then we’re powering in the up movement. We’re slowly lowering in that deadlift and then we’re powering up through that pull up right? So those are really good ones and then putting your leg in that eccentric position while holding it there. I love wall sits. They’re just such a powerful tool that we can do really anywhere and you’re putting that leg in that bent eccentric position. You’re holding that position and also you can see a lot of change happen when you start incorporating more wall sits I’ve had a client that really struggled with downhill running because his knees always hurt. We started incorporating wall sits and he was terrible at them. Could barely hold them for like 5 seconds right? And across time we’ve been able to increase that significantly. And in the meantime that pain in his knees is gone and he can run down hills way more efficiently and effectively and it’s really alarming that just wall sits can do something so amazing like that.

07:14.68
Alyssa
I think that’s awesome that you saw so much progress just with that exercise and that’s a super I mean you can do that anywhere. You get into competitions with your kids. You know that’s such a great way to incorporate something like that. Has a huge impact.

07:34.75
Lex
Yeah, and you can elevate it. You can add weight to it. You can lift up a leg at a time and hold one leg up for a few seconds and then put down and switch to the other leg and it was so interesting with this clients that you could pretty much correlate like the time that he was able to hold in a wall sit with like the decrease in knee pain and the ability to run downhill so it was such a dramatic change with both of those things that it was yeah I want to make a graph of like wall sits to downhill running.

08:08.45
Alyssa
What’s awesome I would pay for that graph. So the last aspect of this periodization is our taper. What does tapering look like when it comes to strength training? How do we bring ourselves down to that sharp point so that we’re ready to go and have kind of maximized what we can do and are well recovered for it.

08:34.86
Lex
Yeah, so this is what I call the maintenance phase and this is like two to three weeks out from your event and this is where you’re maintaining that core control. So those bird dogs that bear hold really important glute bridges. But this is not the time to be doing burnout stuff or like adding in the heavyweight. This is you’re just turning on those muscles you’re still doing that neuromuscular adaptation and like firing ah but you’re not creating that burning or that muscular response where you want to stop.

09:09.27
Alyssa
Awesome. Yeah, it’s so important to make sure that you’re well rested with your strength by just really giving because I mean all of what we do is we are damaging muscle tissue. I mean damaging is a strong word. But we are weakening it so we have to give it the time to recover and build back up and if you don’t give yourself the time to recover before your race you’re going to be at a declined level of fitness than what you can be.

09:47.20
Lex
Yeah, absolutely and that comes to fueling too, like you need to make sure that you’re fueling after your strength training too because we are tearing down our muscle fibers and we need to be able to rebuild them and enable them to do that. We need to be fueling correctly too. So don’t forget that part when you’re training.

10:02.78
Alyssa
Yeah, and I think that we see that I think a lot of people with the taper crazies are like why am I so hungry like I’m not training as much and it’s because your body is repairing and preparing. So listen to those hunger cues, honor those hunger cues and we are going to have a whole episode with Rebecca, our nutritionist, coming up talking about that. But just make sure that you’re not skimping on that. It is super important that you rebuild and recover. Well I think that brings us to the end of this great conversation. Alexa and Steve thank you so much for coming here and bringing strength training to trail running. We’re on a quest, we’re gonna do it. We’re gonna make believers of everyone. So absolutely thank you for listening to the Uphill Athlete podcast if you could rate review and subscribe.

11:09.82
Alyssa
On your favorite podcast platform that really helps us to get in front of more athletes and convince them that strength training is the way to go.

11:19.70
Steve
It’s not just one but a community together. We are uphill athlete.