The Four Best Strength Training Exercises For Runners
- By Linzay Logan
- Published Oct. 27, 2011
- Updated Feb. 1, 2013 at 9:04 AM UTC
Core Work
There are hundreds of exercises to do to strengthen your core. Crunches, planks, the bicycle, reverse crunch—they are all effective. The important issue is doing these exercises often and treating them as just as important part of your training schedule as your weekly long runs or speed drills.
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“Most runners are probably sick of hearing about how they should strengthen their core, but guess what? There’s a reason! Those muscles are vital and they don’t always get worked enough with just running,” explained Leivers. “If you don’t have hours to spend in the gym it’s always best to focus on core muscles—and not just abs. Back muscles are just as important and are often ignored.”
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FILED UNDER: Injury Prevention / Training TAGS: core strengthening exercises / single-leg deadlifts / single-leg squats / Squats / strength training for runners / weight lifting
Linzay Logan
Linzay Logan is the copy editor for Competitor magazine and cares about punctuation probably a little too much. She particularly loves to avoid commas as well as add exclamation points whenever she can get away with it! She also loves to run marathons and half-marathons—probably a little too much. Don’t let her small size fool you; she’ll still try to outrun you anytime. Even though chances are she probably can’t.