Weights: a mixed blessing in endurance sport
Issue: Volume 28 Number 1
Pumping iron is big business these days. Once restricted to puffing pugilists building up their strength for the next fight (boxing rings were an essential adjunct part of old-style gymnasiums), weights are now used by office secretaries and bricklayers, senior executives and mechanics — in fact, by anyone who for one reason or another wants to reshape their body with contours that were not there before.
But what about sportspeople, and especially those who take part in endurance events? Surely the extra muscle and stamina that comes from long sessions in the gym can only be of assistance. In fact, the answers are mixed.
Champion kayaker Adam Scott, who coaches beginners for the Burley Griffin Canoe Club in Canberra, says weight training has many benefits for his sport, which requires both strength and endurance. Just as road cyclists get into each other’s slipstream for an easier ride, so paddling in someone else’s wake can reduce effort by up to 30 per cent.
‘However, if you fall off the wave, the ability to sprint and then climb over the wave to get back on is very important,’ he said.
‘With beginners we teach technique for about the first seven months; as they become more confident in their paddling we get them into the gym.’
One of the main reasons for weight training is injury prevention. ‘If you are strengthening everything, the points where kayakers are vulnerable, such as the elbows and wrists, are better protected.’
Later on, weights become even more important. ‘It is not just the upper body that needs strength,’ he said. ‘You start with a leg drive right from your feet and transfer power up through your legs to the core, then into the arm twists that finish off the stroke.
‘A lot of the stuff we do includes using strength to maintain balance, because the boats are not stable. If you are trying to correct your balance all the time just to keep upright, you won’t have a very efficient stroke.’
Weights also play a role for the Australian Institute of Sport track cyclists, team physiotherapist Karin Stephens says. ‘It depends on the time of the year,’ she said.
‘Most riders come back from the Northern Hemisphere season in October, have a month’s break and start again with just a few hours a day on the bike and three time a week with weights.
'As we get into January and February, the time on the bike increases and weights taper off.'
‘When we’re in the gym we concentrate on the leg work and do a lot of core stability training. Because riders crash a lot, we work on imbalances that might have come about as a result of old injuries.’
Stephens said general weight training had not been part of cycling’s culture in the past. ‘It is slowly changing as people see the benefit of it through fewer over-use injuries and quicker recovery from crash injuries,’ she said.
‘We have proved to our riders that if they do their exercises properly, they can get through a two or three-week tour with less back pain or Achilles problems showing up.'
‘Even so there are still plenty of riders in Europe who can’t see why they need to do gym work after spending six hours on the bike.’
Weight training should be introduced gradually into a junior swimmer’s training schedule, coach Raelene Ryan believes.
‘Certainly not for the little kids,’ she said. ‘We start them at around 12 with circuit work and sit-ups restricted to twice a week. This will be mixed in with rest periods when we concentrate more on skill, getting into the correct position and doing the exercises properly.’
Ryan, the head age group coach at the Miami Swimming Club on the Gold Coast, where Grant Hackett trains, said starting junior swimmers with weights too early could cause physical problem. ‘It’s not good for their bodies, especially if they want to be in the sport a long time.
‘The kids trying to make age group teams are here 10 hours a week, just swimming, we will mix that with half an hour of circuits on two nights and a Saturday morning.
‘As you can see, swimming is a very demanding sport for those who want to get to the top.’
She said the club’s seniors worked with weights ‘but not to any great extent…four and five kilo dumbbells, free weights and circuit training aimed at core strength and good body position’.
Former world champion marathon runner Rob de Castella said weight training was never a significant component of his career.
‘There was a time when I did some circuit work three times a week, but even though the training was low-weight-high-repetition, I found I was beginning to bulk up,’ he said.
‘If you look at endurance athletes, especially in the marathon, they are almost emaciated in the muscles they don’t use for the sport.
‘I found I had an extra two kilos of muscle, which I had to carry in a race for two to two-and-a-half hours, so I stopped doing it. I thought I would be better off concentrating on running.
‘That involves training twice a day seven days a week, so to add in weight training would have involved yet another session and I had doubts about what that would do to the body’s energy stores.’
In hindsight, however, he believes he was too hasty in dismissing weights entirely ‘especially towards the end of my career when the muscles I used were very strong in relation to those I didn’t,’ he said. ‘This began to give me hip instability and lower back problems.
‘Running is two dimensional, but you can get some very good three-dimensional training in the gym, whether it is with free weights, machines, or just using your own bodyweight.’
He believes weights are even more important for female endurance athletes. ‘A lot of women marathon runners end up with stress fractures and ligament damage,’ he said.
‘Because of their different muscular development, their muscles tend to get fatigued earlier and the shock and jarring of running is transferred to the bone. That is when quite serious injuries can occur.
‘So I would suggest it is very important for women to do that kind of strength and general conditioning work.’
Fact Box
- Weight training plays its biggest role in endurance sports which also require strength, such as kayaking.
- The additional strength that comes from weight training must be set against the extra muscle weight the athlete has to carry in sports such as marathon running.
- Junior athletes should not be introduced to gym work too early. Apart from the possibility of damage to bodies which are still growing, there is a danger of ‘burn-out’.
- Weight training may help endurance athletes later in their careers when muscles used in their sport have grown disproportionately to those that are not, causing balance problems and associated pain.
- Women are more susceptible to stress fractures and ligament damage and should consider building muscle mass as a means of avoiding this.
