Beginner strength training for runners

Two sessions a week, six movements. Here is what strength training will actually do for your running — which is not what most running websites, including this one previously, have told you.

A correction first

This guide used to say that strength work is the single thing that most reliably keeps a new runner running. We were repeating a figure from a meta-analysis showing strength training cuts sports injuries to about a third. That figure is real, but its trials were mostly footballers, handball players and military recruits.

When researchers searched the entire literature for randomised trials in endurance runners, they found nine, covering 1,904 people, and pooled them: no significant reduction in injury risk or rate. The largest single trial — 720 first-time marathoners randomised to a strength programme — found RR 0.97 (95% CI 0.57 to 1.63).

So the injury case is weak. The performance case is genuinely good, and that is the honest reason to lift.

What strength training actually does: running economy

Running economy is how much oxygen you burn to hold a given pace. Improve it and you run the same speed for less effort, or a faster speed for the same one.

The most-quoted figure — a large effect, SMD −1.42 (95% CI −2.23 to −0.60) — comes from five studies and 93 runners with VO₂max above 60, which is a competitive standard. A much larger 2024 analysis covering roughly 650 athletes, with formal evidence grading, found a small effect instead (ES −0.266, p = 0.039). Both are real; the honest number for an amateur is the smaller one.

The load matters more than anything else in this guide. That 2024 analysis broke the results down by training type:

• Heavy loads: improved economy
• Combined heavy plus plyometric: improved economy (the largest effect)
• Plyometric alone: improved economy, but only at paces of 12 km/h or faster
• Submaximal loads (40–79% of your one-rep max): no improvement (p > 0.131)
• Isometric work: no improvement

Read that fourth line carefully, because it describes most of what gets prescribed to runners. Three sets of ten easy bodyweight reps sits in the category that did nothing. The trials that worked used loads like four sets of four repetitions at a weight you could only lift four times, three times a week for eight weeks — added to normal running, not replacing it.

One thing strength training does not do: improve your VO₂max. Two separate pooled analyses found no effect on VO₂max, velocity at VO₂max, or sprint capacity. It makes you more efficient, not more powerful aerobically.

Will it interfere with your running?

Barely, and if you are new, not at all.

Across 43 studies, adding endurance training to strength training reduced maximum strength gains by a trivial and non-significant amount (SMD −0.06, p = 0.446) and muscle size not at all (SMD −0.01, p = 0.919). Explosive power took a real but small hit (SMD −0.28, p = 0.007) — and that disappeared when the two sessions were separated by at least three hours.

By training status, in the lower body: trained lifters lost some strength (ES −0.35, p < 0.01), moderately trained a little (p = 0.08, not significant), and untrained people lost nothing whatsoever (ES 0.03, p = 0.87).

Note also that this whole literature tests endurance blunting strength. The reverse — strength blunting your running — is not supported at all.

The honest gap for beginners

Every trial above was in trained runners. Inclusion criteria were things like VO₂max above 60, or at least six months of running experience and six hours a week. There is no untrained category anywhere in these meta-analyses.

The one trial we found in novice runners assigned 57 women to strength and plyometric preparation or plain walking. Only 21 completed it, the outcome measured was running technique rather than performance or injury, and there was no difference between the groups.

So: recommending strength work to a beginner for running performance is extrapolation. It is a reasonable extrapolation — nothing suggests it harms beginners, interference is absent in the untrained, and the general health case for resistance training is strong. But you should know it has not been demonstrated in people like you.

How much, and how little you can get away with

The trials that improved running economy used two to three sessions a week for eight to twelve weeks. That is the evidenced dose.

Below that, in the general resistance-training literature: a single set of six to twelve repetitions at 70–85% of your one-rep max, two to three times a week for eight to twelve weeks, produced a meaningful strength increase — described by its own authors as “suboptimal, yet significant.” When total volume is matched, training more frequently adds little.

And for maintenance, which is what matters when life gets busy: strength and muscle size can be held for up to 32 weeks on one session a week and a single set per exercise — provided you keep the load heavy. “Exercise intensity seems to be the key variable for maintaining physical performance over time, despite relatively large reductions in exercise frequency and volume.”

Older runners are the exception: over-60s needed two sessions a week and two to three sets to hold what they had built, where under-35s held it on a third of that.

The six movements

Two sessions a week. Build up to loads that are genuinely hard — the trials that worked used weights people could lift four to twelve times, not thirty.

1. Squat or split squat — 3–4 sets of 4–8. The main lower-body strength movement, and the one used in the trials.
2. Deadlift or Romanian deadlift — 3 sets of 5–8. Posterior chain.
3. Single-leg calf raise — 3 sets to two reps short of failure, slow and full range. The calf does most of the support and propulsion work at ordinary running speeds.
4. Step-up or step-down — 3 sets of 8 each leg, controlled.
5. Hamstring curl or Nordic curl — 3 sets of 6–8.
6. Jumps or hops — 3 sets of 6–10, quality over quantity. The plyometric component, which is also what your bones respond to.

Separate it from hard running by at least three hours if you can — that is where the small interference effect disappeared.

Should women or older runners train differently?

On the evidence, no. A meta-analysis found no sex difference in hypertrophy (p = 0.31) or lower-body strength gains (p = 0.20); the only difference was in upper-body strength, favouring women. A separate analysis of the running-economy trials formally tested sex as a moderator and found no effect (p > 0.166).

Older adults respond well — a meta-analysis of 25 trials in over-65s found large strength gains, best at two sessions a week, two to three sets, seven to nine reps, at 70–79% of maximum. The evidence quality was poor, and the authors said so.

The honest summary

• Lift because it makes you more efficient, not because it will keep you injury-free. The running-specific injury evidence is null.
• Lift heavy. Light circuits sit in the category the trials found did nothing for running economy.
• Two sessions a week, eight to twelve weeks, is the dose that was actually tested.
• It will not raise your VO₂max, and it will not blunt your running — especially if you are new.
• Almost none of this was tested in beginners. It is a reasonable bet, not a demonstrated one.

References

• Llanos-Lagos C, et al. Effect of strength training programs in middle- and long-distance runners’ economy at different running speeds. Sports Med, 2024;54(4):895–932. doi:10.1007/s40279-023-01978-y
• Balsalobre-Fernández C, Santos-Concejero J, Grivas GV. Effects of strength training on running economy in highly trained runners. J Strength Cond Res, 2016;30(8):2361–8.
• Blagrove RC, Howatson G, Hayes PR. Effects of strength training on the physiological determinants of middle- and long-distance running performance. Sports Med, 2018;48(5):1117–49. doi:10.1007/s40279-017-0835-7
• Støren O, et al. Maximal strength training improves running economy in distance runners. Med Sci Sports Exerc, 2008;40(6):1087–92.
• Wu H, et al. Do exercise-based prevention programs reduce injury in endurance runners? Sports Med, 2024;54(5):1249–67. doi:10.1007/s40279-024-01993-7
• Toresdahl BG, et al. A randomized study of a strength training program to prevent injuries in runners of the New York City Marathon. Sports Health, 2020;12(1):74–9.
• Schumann M, et al. Compatibility of concurrent aerobic and strength training for skeletal muscle size and function. Sports Med, 2022;52(3):601–12. doi:10.1007/s40279-021-01587-7
• Petré H, et al. Development of maximal dynamic strength during concurrent resistance and endurance training. Sports Med, 2021;51(5):991–1010.
• Androulakis-Korakakis P, Fisher JP, Steele J. The minimum effective training dose required to increase 1RM strength in resistance-trained men. Sports Med, 2020;50(4):751–65.
• Spiering BA, et al. Maintaining physical performance: the minimal dose of exercise needed to preserve endurance and strength over time. J Strength Cond Res, 2021;35(5):1449–58.
• Roberts BM, Nuckols G, Krieger JW. Sex differences in resistance training: a systematic review and meta-analysis. J Strength Cond Res, 2020;34(5):1448–60.
• Borde R, Hortobágyi T, Granacher U. Dose-response relationships of resistance training in healthy old adults. Sports Med, 2015;45(12):1693–720.