TO RUN FAST, YOU HAVE TO RUN

There are loads of different ways to get and maintain fitness. You might run or cycle, lift heavy or do a resistance workout. You could dance or do yoga. Movement can take many different forms and work many different levels of strength and endurance. Sport, however, is different. While you can bullet-proof your body by cross-training and strengthening up key muscles, becoming better at a sport requires some degree of specificity.

“You definitely need to run to be better at running,” explains online running coach Kyle Kranz. “Athletics is so very much about specificity and what I call specific endurance or the ability to tolerate exactly what you need to do for exactly the amount of time you need to do it in a race.”

Kate Carter is a runner who knows a thing or two about speed. For a start, she’s officially the fastest panda in the world (running a marathon in 3:48:32). Her non-panda 5K personal best? A mere 18 minutes and 16 seconds – which is about the time it takes for most of us to lace up our trainers and make it to the start line. She’s on the same page as Kyle but firmly believes that to “get used to running a bit faster, you need to run faster.” As a former Couch to 5K graduate, she says that once you’re used to running that distance, you’ll start to see gains and improvements “simply by keeping on doing it”. The problem comes when the plateau hits; if you’re running a couple of 5Ks a week, the chances are that you won’t see a significant improvement each time, “and that’s when you might need to explore different types of running (intervals, or hill repeats, or similar). It’s also when you might find that you improve by adjusting your schedule – like, doing two shorter runs and one longer one. The longer one will build endurance so that suddenly the shorter, faster 5K doesn’t seem quite as bad!”

Of course, there is also the point that you probably wouldn’t go chasing a one-rep max PB without working up to it – so why would you go for a 5K PB without running? PT and running coach Tashi Skervin-Clarke says that it’s “unlikely” that you’ll get a running PB without doing any running, “just like it’s unlikely you’ll get a new squat PB without doing any squats”.

Can you train to run faster with strength training alone?