Strength

                Runners obviously have to use their legs and arms when they are running but does that mean that runners should try to strengthen their arms and legs with certain exercises such as weightlifting and if so what should they do and how much should they do? If you can improve your running by working on improving your strength then it could be very useful for runners to do weight lifting or cross fit.

                It is important to learn anything that a runner can do in order to better their running. If lifting weights helps a runner to be faster than if they were not to lift weights and only ran to train then it would be very beneficial for runners to make sure they do different exercises like lifting weights or cross fit to better their running.

This year my track team has started to incorporate more strengthening into our workouts. The distance runners have started to do some cross fit type exercises for strengthening after their running exercises. My sister says that she thinks she is getting stronger and she does think it is having a positive impact on her running. The sprinters have been doing workouts to strengthen their core which could also end up being very beneficial for their running.

               In the newspaper there was an article about a schools track team, Jefferson that my school runs against a lot. In the article it talked about how the Jefferson track sprinters did a lot of weight lifting in order to train for track and the sprinters from Jefferson always seem to have really good relays and are normally really fast. So weight lifting to help strengthen their arms and legs seems to be very beneficial in their case.

                Weight lifting and cross fit seems to be helping the runners in track to improve their running but it would still be interesting to see if there is a point in which doing too much strengthening or having to strong of muscles could slow you down and hurt your running instead of helping it. If runners are able to find the perfect balance between weight lifting or cross fit and running it would help runners improve their running in order to run the best that they can. Runners use their arms and legs so if strengthening them helps improve their running it is a good thing for runners to do. (401)