Strength Without Weights
By
Woody Green
of
RUNNERS NICHE
When thinking of strength training, you might normally be expected to picture a
weight room in your local health club or rec center. Free weight stations and
specialized machines of all types are available to anyone wishing to improve their
strength. This is a good idea both to improve running performance and to protect
against injury.
The fact is, many people have a hard time finding the time or motivation to go to a
rec center or health club to lift weights. Also, some runners feel rather self
conscious lifting weights around big, muscular folks who's forearms are wider than
the average runner's waist.
One solution is to buy a weight set for your home, but this is expensive, and it
takes up a lot of room. This doesn't mean you can't do a good deal of strength
training at home, though. With no or very little equipment you can still find ways
to improve your strength.
Here are a few ideas for your upper body:
Push-ups are a much underrated exercise. If you have problems doing regular
push-ups, try doing them from your knees instead of from the toes. Start with just
a few and slowly increase as you get stronger.
Another great exercise is chair dips. Using a desk or dining set chair, face away
from the chair and put your arms behind you so that just the palms of your hands
rest on the seat. Put your feet well out in front of you with your legs straight so
that you are resing your weight on your heels and palms only. Do the exercise by
lowering yourself toward the floor by bending your arms, then pushing back up by
straightening your arms. Do this several times until your arms are fatigued. Be
careful at first, this one can leave your arms very sore after the first few times you
do this exercise. Also be careful that you don't tip the chair over by putting too
much weight on the very edge of the seat. Make sure you use a solid, stable chair.
For a small investment, you can purchase a chinning bar at your local sporting gods
store. This will mount in your doorway. Chin-ups are another simple, yet effective
exercise. If you can't pull yourself up, you are not alone. Many people can't. Work
toward the goal by first jumping up and lowering yourself down as slowly as you
can. Eventually you will probably find you have gained the strength to pull
yourself up.
After mastering these exercises, they can be made more difficult. Push-ups can be
done with your legs elevated above your body on a chair. Some people enjoy
pushing up forcefully and clapping their hands together between repetitions.
Another way to add difficulty is to do the push-ups on your fingertips.
Chair dips can be done with some sort of weight in your lap, such as a heavy book.
You can increase the work load for both chair dips and pull-ups by raising and
lowering yourself very slowly.
While these simple exercises cannot replace a gym full of weight equipment, they
can do a surprising amount to increase upper body strength and increase a
runner's efficiency. Next moth we'll look at some ways to increase leg strength
without weight equipment.
