Letter from Your Race Medical Director

By: Dr. Jason M. McHugh, DO, CAQSM
Bon Secours Sports Medicine
Western Branch Family Practice

Jason McHugh, DO, CAQSM

Hello runners! I hope this message finds you all feeling great and ready to PR. For this letter, I would like to lay out the benefits of weight training, and why it is important for my running friends. The most common comment I hear from runners when I mention weight training is, “why would I use weights? I’m a runner. I don’t run with weights.” That statement is entirely true; however, with a bit of guidance I bet I can show you why it is worth the time and effort.

Running is an aerobic activity that can be done for many, many hours at a time. There is really no resistance component to it, as the runner is only moving his or her body weight through space. The part of us that does the moving is our muscles, which are asked to contract and relax thousands and thousands of times in series, which makes us run. Those contracting muscles turn into tendons which connect to our bones.

As we all know, the more you do something, the better you get at it. The flip side of that last statement is the more you do something, the more likely you are to get injured. Because runners ask their leg muscles to do the same activity over and over again the muscles get stronger for sure, but with that amount of use there is a definite risk of injury from either a missed step or over-use. Weight training does a lot to help our muscles and bones stay strong enough to do what is asked of them, without subjecting ourselves to the impact and quantity that happens when running.

I am certainly not trying to convince anyone to become a power lifter and move hundreds and hundreds of pounds around on a regular basis. However, high repetition, low weight resistance training incorporated 1-2 times per week can greatly benefit our tendons and muscles’ ability to withstand the pounding and impact that running dishes out. Simple things such as lunges, squats, and calf raises will provide our lower extremities with the strength necessary to deal with the punishment thrown at them. Best of all, they can all be done without any equipment. Our website has some great examples of what you can do to get started.

And as always, Live, Love, Run!