If you like doing athletic things on your feet, whether that is running, hiking, team sports, or trying to chase your nephew and niece around the yard (which I experienced this weekend) then make sure to include some heavy direct calf work in your strength training. 

I’ve been writing more off season strength programs for endurance athletes lately, and an exercise that often shows up in the first few weeks of any program (both for beginners and advanced lifters) is the goblet squat. While this exercise might seem very basic to some people, there is nothing wrong with starting here, especially when you are first starting out or returning to strength training after a busy summer. 

Hill climbs are an interesting discipline in cycling. It's a fight against time and gravity. The miles go slow but the time goes fast. What the other riders are doing is irrelevant. It's just you and your bike, and finding a way to get to the top as fast as possible. 

Lifting straps can be a handy thing to have in your gym bag, especially you feel like your grip is limiting the amount of weight you can use on certain exercises.

Like many out there, I usually feel a lot of nerves and anxiety the morning of a race. Here are two lists that help make race morning as easy and as stress-free as possible so I can focus on preparing myself mentally for the effort that is about to happen. 

A runner I am working with is preparing for an ultra event at the end of this year, and we got talking about the mileage and training requirements to prepare the body for the demands of a long day out on your feet. Here are some general mileage targets I recommend runners and cyclists shoot for in preparation for an ultra distance running or cycling events.

Many people make the mistake of just going trough the motions with their warm up sets. Lifting with intent and trying to accelerate the weight as fast as possible—whether it is the empty bar or your top set of the day—is a simple way to take your strength work to the next level and make the most of your limited training time.

If you told me I would “run” a vertical kilometer mountain race 4 weeks after fracturing my arm, I wouldn’t have believed you. Although I went into this event without much expectation, I was surprised to see that I can still move uphill (and most important for this event, suffer) pretty well.

Delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS) is muscle soreness that occurs 1-3 days after an intense training session or unaccustomed activity. It’s one of the main reasons why endurance athletes are hesitant to start strength training. Here are some tips to reduce the likelihood of DOMS after your strength sessions.

I had just been thinking about how well my training had been going lately. The last 6 months are probably the most consistent and dialed-in I’ve ever been with both my strength and endurance work. I was feeling the strongest I’ve ever felt on a bike and had some high hopes for the rest of the year. All it took was coming into a slick patch of pavement a little too fast to change all that.

There seems to be a lot of confusion around what to do in the weight room in the last week or two before a goal race or event. Here are some tips for how to manage your strength training during the “taper” period to help make sure you arrive on the start line feeling strong and ready to go.

“If you want to do something you’ve never done before, you have to do things you’ve never done before.” Don’t play it safe. If you know you’ve done the work, and believe what you want is within the realm of possibility, then you should bet on yourself and take your shot.

During a recent bike workout I did a few all-out 1-minute efforts up a steep hill. As expected, it was a profoundly unpleasant session that left my legs and lungs screaming from the first rep. But what surprised me most was how taxed my entire upper body felt afterwards, and how long it took for my arms to stop shaking and feeling like jelly. This got me thinking about how important upper body training is, even for lower-body dominant sports like running and cycling.

Last week I rode the Rasputitsa spring classic, which is always one of the first cycling races on the calendar in New England and makes a great spring “rust-buster” to kick off the riding season. Along with resting my body, I spent the last week or so writing and reflecting on my experience. A post-race evaluation or reflection is something I recommend everyone do after their “A” events or races to help them become a better athlete.

Have you experienced how the same weight can feel heavier or lighter from one day to the next? Training by RPE (rate of perceived exertion) is one way you can adjust training in real time in response to how fresh or fatigued you are on that particular day.

For a while the belief was that since running and cycling are endurance sports, strength training should mimic that with light weight, high rep sets to improve their endurance. More recently, the pendulum seems to have swung the other way, and people are lifting heavy and trying to max out on squats and deadlifts. In reality, I think that strength training for most runners and cyclists should fall somewhere in the middle.

With the spring and warmer weather fast approaching, the tendency for many runner and cyclists is to greatly reduce or even completely cease from strength training until winter returns and the cold weather forces them back indoors. While a reduction in gym time can certainly be part of the plan, it's important to still carve out some time during the week to maintain the strength you worked hard to build during the winter months.

First and foremost, it's important to remember that the best time to strength train is whenever you can fit it in to your schedule! It's better to complete a strength training session at a less than optimal time than to just not do it altogether! With that being said, there are some best practices for scheduling strength alongside endurance training, which I will try to cover in this article.

A mistake I see some endurance athletes make is trying to cram too much into their workouts, resulting in excessive fatigue both during and after the session that carries over into their running or cycling performance. However, you don’t need to spend several hours in the gym or include every lower body exercise variation known to man for a strength session to be effective.

Runners and cyclists don’t have to spend several hours in the gym, multiple days a week, to benefit from strength training. The optimal dose will vary from individual to individual, but here are some guidelines to make sure your strength work complements and supports your life and endurance training, and doesn’t detract from it.