Should I lift weights during race season?
By Neal Henderson MS, CSCS- Boulder Center for Sports Nutrition

The answer is that it depends, but increasing strength doesn't necessarily require weight lifting. For endurance athletes, the goal of strength training is to make you faster over the long run. To do this, weight training for endurance athletes should be both specific and functional. A properly designed training program should involve strength training exercises that are specific to the movements that you perform in your sport. To increase strength, you can use a combination of things such as lifting weights, running and cycling uphill, swimming with hand paddles, or doing plyometric exercises. Regardless of how you increase the resistance, you should also use proper technique. Especially for weight training, you should seek the advice of an experienced Strength and Conditioning Specialist or other certified professional who is also familiar with endurance sports. The research regarding the effects of strength training on endurance performance are variable. Most results show that concurrent endurance and strength training impair strength gains, but most do not show any negative effects on endurance and some have shown increase endurance performance. One of the more accepted reasons to include strength training is to help you avoid injuries by increasing the strength of not just the muscles but also the tendons and bones.

Ideally, the off-season and early base-training phases are the best times of the year to spend significant time with resistance training using weights. As you enter the more intense training cycles and your actual race season, it is typically recommended to enter into a strength maintenance phase. Maintenance of strength during the race season is best done by spending one to two days per week performing 1-2 sets of each exercise (typically, 8-12 different exercises in one session) using relatively light weight and performing 12-20 repetitions per exercise. I often recommend athletes also perform additional core training exercises in these maintenance sessions and to spend an additional 10-15 minutes in a stretching routine to maintain or increase flexibility. Yoga and Pilates exercises are also popular forms of functional core, stability, and flexibility exercise. Another option to maintaining strength during the season would be to do sport specific movements with added resistance such as using hand paddles while swimming, doing intervals by pushing a larger gear while cycling, or doing short uphill running sprints or even plyometric exercises.

Because improving endurance is the most important part of your training, strength training exercises should be considered secondary in importance. If you spend too much energy on your strength workouts, your endurance training will suffer. Remember, training in all forms is an act of balance - be sure to keep a relative balance of endurance, strength, and flexibility and you will continue to be successful year after year.