4 Ways to build muscle between marathon blocks

As marathons are wrapping up, many runners are looking to build more strength and speed. While marathon training, these two things were likely reduced or their intensity lowered. Especially in the final weeks leading up to race day. Being past race day, we start to look forward to the things we didn’t get to do as much before. Not only is this human nature, but it’s the best time to make the most of this layer of your fitness, given we’re only doing one or two marathons a year at most.

Yet there can be some uncertainty as to how to best build muscle in an effective way while both contributing to future running goals and continuing to protect the running experience in the present.

As a marathon coach looking to build as much muscle in the next couple of months as I can, here are the five things I’m doing to make that happen.

FAILURE

First and foremost, if we want a strong stimulus to build strength and grow muscle, we need to scare the muscle into creating more. And the best way to do that, is to fail. 

Even when I’m training for a marathon, I still want to train as close to failure as frequently as I can. But the quality of that failure, due to the accumulated fatigue from marathon training, is not the same as when you’re a little bit more recovered, you’re a little bit more restored, and you have the time and the energy to focus on true failure in the gym after the marathon is completed.

Now that we’re past the most recent marathon, we should be maxing out your reps for nearly every exercise on nearly every set (there can be some exception, but this is essentially the rule). If you’re planning to complete eight reps of a seated cable row, for example, and you reach the eighth repetition and probably could squeeze out four more, then you haven’t failed on that set. Keep going. Reps are important, but failure is more so.

Depending on your experience, confidence, and injury history, you may need to ease into that practice. That’s okay! Give yourself a couple of weeks at least to build comfort with rep ranges, heavier weights, and recovery to ease into a more failure-driven focus. At some point, we do want to make this the first priority for creating a muscle-building, strength-building stimulus. 

FREQUENCY

Training to failure is great, but how often you’re training to failure can make a big difference.

If you were to aim for four days a week, you could have four workouts that focus on pushing, knee dominant, pulling, and hip dominant exercises alternating upper-body, lower-body, upper-body, lower-body workouts. This could come out to Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday or however you’d like to schedule it. To improve the overall frequency of the main moves or muscle groups, incorporate a movement pattern from a workout two to three days before and incorporate it into that workout for the day. On your knee dominant days, you could also incorporate push-ups and tricep dips. On your pulling day, you could also incorporate leg press or leg extensions. If you had the time to include a short fifth workout, make this one accessory focused (biceps, calf raises, sit-ups, shoulder raises, or hip thrusts). There are a thousand ways to schedule it, but either way try to move from the idea of doing only one movement pattern on one day, and repeat a muscle or muscle group two to four days later, rather than a full week. In the end, any frequency is good. If that means two or three days a week instead of four or five is the best you can do right now, DO THAT.

NUTRITION

Putting all this stimulus on the body is great, but if the resources aren’t available to recover and rebuild, then it’s not going to happen. There is a lot that can go into how to effectively feed and fuel yourself to have the best results, but for simplicity, let’s focus on protein.

How much protein you need really depends on who you are, regardless of what the next body-building personality on TikTok tells you, and depends on what you’re already doing.

Some people might see the results they want with 1.2-1.4 grams per kilogram of bodyweight. This could be 92g to 108g for a 77 kilogram or 170lb person.

Others might do well with more, 1 gram per pound of bodyweight being a common recommendation.

My personal goal is between 0.8 to 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight. For a 170lb person, this would be 136g to 170g per day.

You can’t build with what you don’t have.

CARDIO

What kind of runner-focused advice would this be if we didn’t talk about how to maintain, if not build, your ability as a runner while trying to build more muscle? But how do we do this without interfering with the muscle-building signal for immediate and efficient progress? Lower the demand of the “running” recovery while keeping intensity similar. And this can be done in three different ways:

1. Simply swap out a run for another low to non impact lower body cardio. Much of the need for recovery in running comes from the demand of deceleration on the muscle tissue every time you land. If instead, we spend time on the bike trainer, elliptical, or stairmaster, we can still reach the same or similar intensity on the cardio-respiratory system without accumulating as much post-workout fatigue so we can bounce back quickly for effective strength sessions while maintaining aerobic fitness.
2. Keep speed training short but intense. Let’s still keep some degree of higher intensity or higher demand running days, but instead of mile repeats or hour long threshold days (and remember this is only for a relatively short training cycle), we can work more on our sprint speed. This can have a direct carry over to the strength-building goal, can be scheduled on the same day as a leg day to maximize stimulus-specific workouts on the same day, and continue to support potential for faster speeds and easier runs in the future.
3. Remember that you’re not marathon training right now. So already, your running volume should be a little lower, and that extra space is going to be enjoyed through your new strength training routine.

NOW WHAT?

There are likely a thousand more things we could identify to maximize muscle growth as a runner, but these four things should be present before trying to take things any further.

In the end, strength train regularly, seek heavier weights and failure, eat well, and cross train with low to non impact cardio to keep aerobic fitness strong.

If you’re starting your running journey, and want to read about the 3 Things Beginner Runners Get RIGHT, Click to read more…

If you want an even easier approach to improved performance, please sign up for a complimentary consultation with me here or at the link below!

Happy running!

Nick Savin