Strength training for endurance athletes

Do you strength train ? Do you jump ? Do you crawl ? Can you ? 

This was the question I was asking my self when running on the trail when encountered an obstacle. It was a trail-gator of about 2 meters wide. I had to slow down work my way close to the edge, even a bit more down and then jumped and climbed up on the other side. 2meters ? I say what the hell. In high school I was already jumping 5 meters and now a two meter jump poses a problem ? The same thign happened when there was a tree log across the single track I was running on. Instead of leaning on it and just kong/leap over it, I stopped and stepped over. 

Us as human, regardless that we were runners, climbers, office workers or practicing any other professions we should be able to do these real human movements, with no limitiations at all. Yeah I am nearly two meter tall. And what ? I should be able to jump, from any positions, with any speed and land without the slightest chance to injure myself. 

We can see so many injuries about knees and ankles and hips. It is very often because of jumps. Actually, we call those jumps, but they were not even frog leaps. Dynamic step overs ? Knees caving in, damaging the meniscus and the ACL, rupturing ankle ligaments and achilles tendons, muscle tears in the posterior chain. It happens all the time just from some small leap. I see the ambulance nearly every time I race or visit a sport event. 

This is actually the lack of strength, the lack of ability to genereate power, static contraction and muscular resistance. This need is crated by the lack of pracatice. We don't jump, crawl, explode, move sideways, do diractional changes in a radical and fast manner like we normally did just 30 - 40 years ago. People in villages still do, as at the morning before their office work, they still have to feed the animals, gather some veggies in the garden, maybe shovel some ground and chop wood. 

We should and it should be incorporated into our daily routines. 

We don't need necesseraly a dedicated training routine for each movement. Before your track workout after some mobility, you can incude a lot of stuff into the warming up. Frog jumps and bunny hops with correct knee position. Same for burpees and moutain cimbers. 10 to 15 meter sprints, then side movemnts and 180° squat and lunge jumps. Here you go, so easy. 

The thing is, that we are so much away from these very natural basic movements of push, pull, turn, twist, rotate, jump, land and throw, crawl on the fron and back, that one single repetition of any of these can smoke you for months. However not recognising this and engaging in a paintball game, obstacle race, ultiamte freezbee or rugby play and you are off the field for 6months to a year with a serious injrury.