Keeping The Main Thing The Main Thing

So I realize not everyone is going to agree 100% with this blog, which is fine because we are not all unique individuals and different training techniques work for different people and everyone has their own philosophy but this is what works for me.

Recently, while I was in New York City doing promotions for Nissan and Asics around the marathon I was out doing an easy run in the energy-rich, runner-filled Central Park when I ran into a friend and competitor of mine, former NYC Marathon champion, Hendrick Ramala. Hendrick and I spent some time chatting about life and training as we stretched after our run. I asked Hendrick how his training had been going leading up to NYC and about his typical preparation regimen. I am always curious as to what people do in the weight room, so I asked Hendrick if he lifted weights. He responded, “no man, weights are heavy. I am lazy when it comes to weights.” As funny as Hendrick’s comment was, his lack of desire to be in the weight room is fairly typical of the African runners that I have discussed training with. Throughout my career I have widely varied the amount of time I’ve spent in the weight room from up to an hour six times a week to doing only five minutes of core a day leading up to last year’s Boston Marathon. What did I find? Well, the results were all about the same, but perhaps my best result since I ran 2:06 in 2008 was from last year’s Boston Marathon when I did only five minutes of core a day and spent the extra time that I usually spent in the gym doing self-therapy with a roller, massage stick, and softball.

So before I get all the beef cakes all worked up that I am going to say weights aren’t important for runners let me give a few disclaimers. First of all, I do spend time in the weight room. I do believe that while many of the African runners don’t emphasize the weight room they still have a basic background of drills and other exercises that function similar to weights. I also believe that the importance of weights is very much event specific. For example, it is much more important for middle distance runners to spend some of their daily energy in the weight room developing the explosiveness that running at faster speeds requires. I think very few people would argue–I certainly wouldn’t–that weights are a waist of time for sprinters. Also, I think weights are very beneficial in bringing the body into balance, especially after injuries. I also believe that weights can help prevent injury. Lastly, I think weights and plyometrics can help wake up the nervous system and get the body firing going into workouts.

Now, with all disclaimers aside, let me say that as important as weights can be they shouldn’t be the main focus of training. I am thankful that my Dad taught me at a young age to keep the main thing the main thing, meaning focus most on what is important. So, my primary focus in my preparation for the marathon is running. One of my previous coaches, Irv Ray, used to use the illustration of an energy pie to show my daily energy expenditures. I only have so much energy to spend in a day and my job is to figure out how to spend that energy best. When I am at the height of my marathon training I find it hard to have extra energy to lift weights, so I make sure that the little time that I do spend doing weights is well spent on exercises that my body needs the most. So what exercises are these? Its different for everyone, or at least it should be. This past week Sara and I spent time with therapist John Ball in Tempe, Arizona, where he taught us a lot about discerning the difference between muscular weaknesses and what is actually just “bad tissue” or “adhesions” in the muscles that are not giving us the freedom to perform certain exercises. I have learned that just because I currently struggle with doing squats it may not be as much from weakness in my legs as from adhesions that are keeping my body from getting the full range of motion necessary to perform a squat. So before I can even know what individual weaknesses I have it takes a lot of quality therapy to figure out the difference between weaknesses and muscular adhesions.

So were does this leave us? There are two schools of thought in the weight room. One school says you should make yourself as athletic and strong as possible and this overall athleticism will help your running. Then there are those who say you need to do specific exercises that allow you to run more and therefore become a better runner. I personally feel like just as long as I keep the main thing the main thing, I will run well. I will continue to spend a small amount of time everyday doing various running-specific exercises but largely, I will leave my overall athletic development for later in life when running doesn’t take such a significant slice of my energy pie.