Most strength athletes avoid running like the plague. In fact, I have personally witnessed near mutiny in my home gym when anything over 800m runs are programmed. There is no reason why you can’t be strong and you can’t increase your ability to run.

There are several reasons why a strength athlete might want to run. First and foremost, it will increase your overall work capacity, allowing you to put in more work on the barbell.

Secondly, it is perhaps the most functional movement you can do. In any serious, life threatening situation, you will need to get away from something dangerous, or like many readers of this site, you are required to move towards danger.

I can tell you that a 600 pound deadlift is sweet, but if you can’t express that strength after a 200m run to where you are actually needed, then what good is your deadlift then?

Lastly, strength athletes often times gain quite a bit of excess body fat along with their strength and power gains. In the long run this isn’t healthy, and adding in some running has always been my go to for weight loss.

Now that you all 100% agree with me on why you should be doing a bit of running, let’s go over the goals of this plan.

6 Month Running Program Goals

This program is specifically tailored for strength athletes. By that I mean this program assumes that you want to continue lifting while you improve your running. This will not make you an elite middle distance track and field athlete, but it will speed up your running and increase your general fitness.

Phase 1 Goals

The first phase is a transition phase where you add in a little jogging before and after your normal strength programming with a few dedicated running days. The goal here is to ease into running so we feel ready to tackle the more difficult programming later on.

Phase 2 Goals

This phase brings on the hard intervals, 3 days per week. This section of the program is going to optimize your anaerobic endurance and aerobic endurance as you build up your running capacity.

Phase 3 Goals

This is the last phase and it will continue to hammer your anaerobic and glycolytic energy systems. These intervals will be very short and very challenging.

The overall goal for this program is to increase your running capacity in the 30min and under time domain, with special emphasis on sprint speed development.

The 6 Month Running Program for Strength Athletes

The first phase is a fairly easy transition to running. You’ll be doing what I call sandwich training where you warm up with some jogging and cool down with jogging on your normal gym days. You will also have two dedicated running sessions each week.

Here is the link to that program

Week 1 Phase 1

WOD = lifting portion of your program

For most athletes I recommend 3-4 strength sessions per week, and two running sessions. If you need to reduce the volume for your strength program that’s ok, but that doesn’t mean you get to slack off on your strength training. If anything you need to more diligent now that you’ve adding in extra running.

Week 1 Phase 2

This phase is a more traditional interval based running program. It is designed to develop your running capacity in the 20min and under time domain.

Here is the link to phase two of the running program.

You should be noticing big improvements in your running, and general work capacity after each phase. I’ve personally tested all these workouts and I can say that they work very well, but they can be very hard to get through.

For this phase I recommend continuing with 3-4 strength oriented sessions per week. Keep reading further down where I will discuss how to pair your strength program with your running work so you maximize the benefit of both.

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Phase 3 Week 1

This is the last phase of the 6 Month Running Program for Strength Athletes. It is purely sprint oriented and as you will see, when you follow the link, sprint training, done correctly can really carry over to longer duration runs well.

Here is the link to Phase 3.

For this program you need to make sure you aren’t skipping this warm up. You need to gradually prepare your muscles to sprint at these velocities, otherwise you run the real risk of incurring injuries. You’ve been warned.

How to Combine Your Strength Program with Running

I’m not going to sugar coat this, adding running to strength work will slow down progress with both. It doesn’t mean you won’t make great gains but research shows that you’ll be about 15% or so slower to make the same gains as someone training with only one modality. This is just how our bodies work, you don’t get anything for free!

There are better and worse ways to incorporate strength programming with running. Here are the three rules of thumb I use when writing programs for my athletes.

Separate leg training and sprinting by time Two a days are the best if time allows Upper body training and running can be mixed as desired.

The first rule of thumb is the most important. Sprinting and heavy leg work require very similar motor patterns, and energy usage. You will also be sore in the same areas from both types of training. This means you need to separate them by time as much as possible. Easy runs really don’t interfere as much and can be programed on the same day.

If you want to maintain 4 days per week of strength training then you will most likely be doing 2 a day training at some point. This doesn’t have to be first in the morning if you aren’t a morning person. Personally, I prefer a lunch workout and an evening strength session.

The good news is upper body training and running really don’t interfere very much so you should seek to put heavy sprint intervals with upper body work if at all possible.

Check out this sample week.

This is just an example week. You will need to adjust this for your personal schedule. The important thing is the separation of hard intervals from leg days.

If you want to learn the principles behind creating solid programs, then checkout this ebook!

What to Do If You Don’t Have a Good Strength Program.

Well as luck would have it I have several strength programs for functional fitness athletes. If you aren’t a functional fitness athlete thats ok, you can just perform the strength moves.

This is my most popular strength program, and I would recommend it as a starting point. Here is part 1 and here is part 2.

This is an advanced strength training program. This will utilize variable resistance training, otherwise called accommodating resistance.

This should cover phase 2 and phase 3 of your training cycle, but don’t forget you need to be focused on your recovery as well. Check out this article where I discuss what recovery practices have scientific backing.

Lastly, I would also recommend checking out this nutrition calculator to make sure that you are eating enough to make good progress. You’d be crazy to do all this work and sabotage yourself because you weren’t eating enough food.

Now you have everything you need to get out there and start training. If you have any questions put them in the comments below!

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