Does strength training leave you too sore to run?
You’re not alone.
There are a lot of reasons why runners don’t enjoy strength training.
Some of those reasons are notably better than others.
(For example, no, you’re not going to do one strength training session and wake up the next day looking like Arnold Schwarzenegger.)
But one complaint I hear pretty often?
“Whenever I do strength training, I always end up too sore to run for a couple days.”
Well…
I hear you.
It’s a real problem.
It also tends to have a pretty simple solution.
“Do more strength training.”
I know that sounds insane.
But please hear me out.
In exercise science, there’s something called the “repeated bout effect.”
It basically says, “You’re going to be really sore the first time you do a new exercise, but if you do it again within a reasonable time frame, you’ll be a lot less sore.”
Why does this happen?
Soreness comes from muscle damage.
The first time you do an exercise – or the first time you do an exercise after a long break – you create a lot of muscle damage.
As a result, you end up pretty sore.
Your body doesn’t like that any more than you do, so if you do that movement again within a week or two, then you will cause less muscle damage and end up less sore.
Quick side note: I’ve seen estimates ranging from a few days to a few months. I can tell you from personal experience that it seems to depend on the person and the exercise, so I usually say a couple weeks.
So whenever someone tells me they’re always too sore after strength training, my response is, “I almost promise it’ll feel better next time.”
The thing is, we know this.
As runners, we know about the repeated bout effect.
We all know the first time we do a big downhill run, your quads will be trashed.
Yet if you do the same run a couple weeks in a row, they will get progressively less trashed.
Same with uphills.
And speed work.
And all the other forms of intense running that leave our legs feeling it the next day.
We all know that if we want to make progress the answer isn’t just to stop.
It’s to give it time and let our legs adjust.
It’s the same with strength training.
The first time you do an exercise, it’s gonna feel bad.
Yet if you do it a few weeks in a row, it will feel a lot less bad over time.
Will you still be sore?
Yea, probably.
That’s just part of training.
If you work hard enough to make the adaptations you want, then you might get a little sore.
But it won’t be that level of soreness that prevents you from doing the activities you love.
It’ll just be a bit of sensation that lets you know you did something.
I’ll admit I’m not immune to this whole avoidance mentality.
I hate calf training.
Whenever I start doing calf raises with an amount of weight that matters, my calves feel like shit for days.
As a result, I’ve avoided it.
For years.
I also justified avoiding it because “I get enough calf work from running.”
Which would arguably be true…
If I didn’t have some issues with my right Achilles tendon.
But seeing as I have some tendon stuff going on and the only real way to improve tendon stuff is slow, heavy, full-range-of-motion lifting…
I need to be doing calf work if I want it to improve.
So a couple weeks ago, I decided to stop whining and just start the calf training.
As expected, it sucked.
My calves hurt for three days and I had to skip a run.
But I’ve been at it for a couple weeks now and I’m much less sore – even though I’m using heavier weight.
I just needed to responsibly push through the initial unpleasantness.
Now I’m not here to try and sell you on strength training.
I mean… I guess I kinda am – it’s part of my job – but I’m certainly not expecting to change your mind in a single email.
But I do believe strength training is valuable for everyone, for so many reasons that go far beyond running performance.
And if you agree, but have been struggling to get started because it makes you too sore, then I just wanted to say that the suffering is temporary.
If you stick it out, it gets significantly better in a couple weeks.
So… probably don’t start a new strength training regimen two weeks out from a race.
That’s a great way to destroy your race performance.
But if you’re early in a training cycle and think strength training matters, now’s the time to start.
It will probably suck for a week or two.
But then it’ll get better and you’ll be no more sore than you would be after a hard speed workout or a good downhill trail run.
And if you have any questions as to what that training should look like… let’s chat.