I often put strength training often gets put on the back-burner with one exception – leg strength. I may not get my upper body strength training in this week but I will always get my leg strengthening session in.

The reasoning is two-fold. First, if I skip a week of lifting legs, I will be incredibly sore the next time I lift legs. This sets all of my other training back. Second, I fundamentally believe it helps for longer races or races with rolling terrain. In marathons where I continued to strength train my legs leading up to a marathon, my quads held up considerably better compared to when I did not strength train.

The caveat is that I am not getting under a barbell and doing low rep sets of squats. Instead I train fairly light, with the rep range in the 8-12 range. The total number of sets I perform for legs is under ten (squats, a hamstring exercise and perhaps one other exercise). My strength does increase, but I am not adding much, if any, muscle mass.

The biggest issue I usually encounter when in the thick of training is when do I perform my strength session? I have settled on doing it the day of a hard workout and my theory is that I have already trashed my legs so why not pile it on a bit more. I am not sure if this is the best strategy, but my thinking is that the more days I have where my legs aren’t being taxed and can recover the better.

Finally, the week leading into a goal race I either skip lifting altogether or go lighter and earlier in the week. If you are not doing strength training I highly encourage that you reconsider, the benefits for general health alone are worth it and I believe it will help you become a better run.