Muscles, weight and strenght and conditionning

 

That is something to very carefully consider. Most people do not get it. Do not understand and do not see, how, what, when for who in what circumstances. 

I hate when people start saying: but Killian doesn't lift weights. No he is doing ice climbing, alpinism and ski mountaineering. He has not been sitting in an office for 15 or even 30 years. Or some other smart asses, Look at Joss Naylor, he never lifted a weight in his entire life, he lived long, performed well and died at an old age. The guy was a freckin' shepper his entire life ! He might not have been able to do one single pullup or deadlift, but you could have sent him hail bailing or stone wall building all day long for decades in the pouring english weather and he could have been fine. 

So, the question about weight training and strength and conditioning for runners is about simply understanding yourself. Viewing yourself first as a human and how you move. I know a lot of runners, actually most of them, that cannot move. I mean it is atrocious. Disaster. Cannot dance, no rhythm, doesn't know how to squat, bend over. Cannot work with a spade, an axe. Doesn't know how to hold a box in the air or farmer carry anything. Has absolute no clue about knee and hip position, joint angles, core utilisation and so. It is a natural disaster. 

The only thing that they can do is run. Run well, run fast. However, their general health might not be great and also their functional life might not be good either. Also their running is very limited to certain type of running and a certain type of distance ! They might improve on that, but cannot really get faster or extend the distance. Cannot swap, change or play with terrain.
In this case, the answer is, 100% they need to learn how to move, first, they need to learn how to squat and deadlift and overhead press. Learning these 3 moves properly is a freckin' key to everything. Don't get me wrong. It is not about squatting and deadlifting and military pressing ! Those are not the movements that you will be doing. However when you learn that 3 properly, you will understand how to organise your lower body, like side pressure with ankles, knee lock and hip thrust. With the deadlifting, you'll learn the importance of mid section organisation and low  back protection. With the military press you'll learn upper body organization and cervical and thoracic spine protection and alignment.

I never do these movements, but I learned them at school, than during my coaching education. I learned it multiple times as an autodidact, then from people who teach it. I learned it other ways too, like during Kettlebell coaching course and during boxing coaching course too, but we practised those even during the pilates teacher course. Once you understand these three moves, you can more easily go ahead and play with maces, kettlebells, warm up for judo or running, throw, push and pull stuff and more. Even things like parcour or free running needs understanding of these movements, for landing and exploding, hip hinge and hip thrust. Stretching needs knowing, in which position you can elongate a muscle and what sort of breathing you need to perform to push, pull, expand, extend, relax. 

I would not say I coach, more likely I guide a couple of runners. They run, do jiu jitsu, some play badminton and do other activities. How ever, when introduced running drills at a certain rhytm, it is horrible to see. Like during a simple high knee or high heel drill, they don't know what to do with their hands. They don't know how to do sirtaki or side to side hoping. A B or C skips, forget. Classic leg swings ? 

Why would you want to learn if you were already doing well ? 

Simple. Either you can do better or you can do the same well, but longer into your 80s. We know that muscle is part of longevity. Not having muscle going into your 50s is a problem, as building them up, while you have no genetic memory of having them is extremely hard. 
This is the age when some gets a performance age group boost, but most of them stop ! They cannot carry anymore on. Actually with muscles, you can replace some of the cardio. Increase leg strength and endurance by having trained quad and have muscle volume and drop 5 to 10 beats at the same speed ! In same cases, you need a so drastic weight gain, that actually you need to for sure fuel more during the first 4 to 6 years of your training to be able to sustain your speeds at higher weights. I find that to not to be an issue, but evidently, you need to learn even more and test out more stuff. Anyways, running on empty, un-fuelled, thin with no muscles, eventually will just lead to thyroid burn out and metabolic issues.