Loads off your maxes, dose off your mileage
Strength is prescribed as a percentage of your actual numbers, with the working weight computed for you — and the weekly dose scales to what your running week is asking of your legs.
Strength for runners · Adaptive S&C
Strength is the missing half of your marathon training.
Your running app writes the run plan and stops there. This is the other half — strength off your real maxes, placed around your mileage so it never steals from the running, or blended with your running into one interference-managed plan. Regenerates from every session you log, with a real coach in the loop.
The free tier is a real program, not a trial. No card required.
Today · StrengthWeek 5 · Day 2
Strength for runners · Base phase
Trap-bar deadlift — 4 × 5 @ 72.5%Logged
Working weight off your 1RM · RPE 7
Rear-foot split squat — 3 × 8 eachLogged
Single-leg strength · the stride is one leg at a time
Single-leg calf raise — 3 × 12 eachUp next
Interference engine
Heavy legs never land the day before your quality run. Log a bigger mileage week and the strength dose adjusts to it.
Why it’s different
Your running app stops at the running.
Run-plan apps
The run plan, and good luck with the rest.
They pace your intervals and build your long run — and leave strength training for runners as a YouTube search. So squats land the day before your tempo, or never happen at all, and the injury that ends your block was preventable.
Composite Athlete
The strength layer, built around your mileage.
A runner-specific strength plan off your real maxes, placed around the running week you’re already doing — or one hybrid plan that programs the lifting and the running together, interference managed, so both actually progress.
What runners actually need
Strength that survives a 60 km week.
Not a bodybuilding split with ‘runner’ in the title. The specific strength that holds your stride together when the mileage climbs.
01
Posterior chain
Hinge, glutes, hamstrings — the engine behind every stride, loaded off your real numbers.
02
Single-leg strength
Running is a single-leg sport. Split squats and step-ups fix the imbalances mileage exposes.
03
Calves & feet
The tissue that takes the pounding — and where many running injuries start. Trained, not hoped for.
04
Trunk & core
Anti-rotation and carries — the form insurance for the last 10K, when your stride wants to fold.
05
Plyometrics, dosed
Small doses of stiffness and spring for running economy — free speed that easy miles can’t buy.
06
The rebuild
After the race: rebuild tissue before you chase fitness — the Post-Marathon Rebuild block most runners skip.
Training guides
Learn it free. Train it for real.
Coach-written guides with the actual numbers — standards, loads, pacing, and session prescriptions. No fluff, no locked content.
The complete guide
Strength Training for Runners: The Complete Evidence-Based Guide
What runners should lift, how heavy, where it fits in a run week, and how strength work changes across a marathon block. Coach-written, evidence-based.
13 min read · updated 2026-07-19
How we program it
Your numbers drive the plan.
Placed so it never steals from the running
Hard days hard, easy days easy: heavy lower-body work is kept away from your quality runs, so lifting makes the mileage more durable instead of leaving you flat for the sessions that matter.
One plan when you want both halves
Keep your own run plan and add the strength layer around it — or have the running and the lifting programmed as one hybrid plan. Up to four sports, one interference-managed week.
Adapts to the runner who logs honestly
A bigger mileage week, a missed lift, a cranky Achilles — the next block responds to what actually happened. Flag pain and it deloads and alerts your coach rather than pushing through.
Start today
Add the missing half this week.
Free is a real strength plan for a runner. Pro adds the adaptive engine — loads off your maxes, the dose fit to your mileage, regenerated from every session — plus a coach in the loop, for $19/mo. The programming a hands-on coach charges $100–300 a month for. Prefer a fixed block? Strength for Runners: 8-Week Base Build and Post-Marathon Rebuild are in the store.