General Strength for High School Runners

And their fit dads and moms, uncles and aunts

April 1, 2011

As a freshman at the University of Colorado in the fall of 1994, I can still remember my biggest fear about joining the cross country and track program was this: I had always played basketball in high school, which meant that I had never run "all year long" like most of my new teammates. I had run 4:25 for 1600m in high school, training 30 to 35 miles a week, with a 10-miler as the longest run I'd ever done. But I also rode my mountain bike and hiked during the summer, and I had a physically challenging summer job on a golf course.

When my coach took me from 35 to 80 miles a week in my first year of collegiate training, I responded well; soon I was coming through the 3200m mark of a 5K 30 seconds faster than my high school 3200m PR. I'm convinced my athletic background allowed me to handle the dramatic jump in volume (and intensity) without serious injury.

I share this personal story for a simple reason: If you want to run faster then you'll need to run more or run harder, but you shouldn't lose all of your innate athleticism as you become a serious runner. I believe too many high school and collegiate distance runners are injured more than they should be (injuries happen, but many U. S. runners can't run more than eight weeks at "full volume" without injury) and that the primary reason for their injuries is that their running needs to be supported by other types of physical training.

I'm going to suggest a time-tested progression of exercises that I will refer to as general strength (GS), though other coaches might call this "ancillary" or "extra" work. (Please, please, please don't call these "drills;" save that term for a specific activity that relates to running, such as the A-skip or B-skip drills that sprinters employ.)

Why add to your workload? Here are three key reasons:

01 If you want to do something you've never done before, you've got to do things you've never done before.

The athletes I work with get sick of me saying this, but it's so true. And while your mom probably wants you to focus on your diet to improve your performance (and diet is important), I can assure you that these exercises are an investment in your running that will pay rich dividends this fall and during track season.

02 If you can do more, you can do more.

It's simple, but it also goes back to my thesis -- at some point you can't run more miles or run those miles harder unless you improve your tolerance for work, and GS is the most efficient way to improve your capacity for more running training.

03 All the cool kids are doing it.

Actually, that should be "all of the U. S. Olympic distance runners are doing it." Matt Tegenkamp, Shalane Flanagan, Kara Goucher, Ryan Hall, Jen Rhines ... the list goes on and on. But the point is that while you can't run the same pace in workouts as these athletes, you can devote 10 to 20 minutes a day to GS work.

Click here to see full videos of all of the routines discussed here, along with my commentary on how to do the exercises correctly. Below I want to share a simple to-do list to explain how you do this work and how you properly implement it into your training.

The progression is 10 weeks long; do not jump ahead in the progression. If you go on vacation for a week and you can't train, go back to the week you were on when you left home.