Our resident nutritionist, personal trainer and founder of Real Food Function, put together a brilliant article for 220 Triathlon Magazine discussing the best kettlebell exercises for runners. Have a read and have a go!

When looking for ways to improve your muscular endurance, speed and running efficiency, it’s generally accepted that you need to incorporate strength training into your weekly training plan.

For triathletes in particular developing strength endurance, the ability to express force many times over, is key if you want to swim stronger, ride harder and run faster.

As many people continue to train at home during the pandemic, your ability to load movements with additional weight may be somewhat limited.

When it comes to strength training, loading up movements with weights over time is a tried and tested method of progressively overloading the body to generate strength adaptation.

With this in mind, this article is will explore how you can use just 1 piece of kit - the kettlebell - to make progress in strength, stability and power to enhance your running ability as a starting point.

Top 5 Kettlebell exercises for runners

The exercises included in this list take into account the key joint actions that occur during the running gait, those being:

Ankle dorsiflexion and plantar flexion.

Knee flexion and extension.

Hip flexion and extension.

We’ll also focus on developing strength in the abdominals to help with a tall, upright posture when running.

1. Offset Reverse Lunge Knee Drive

Loading up the KB on one side of the body is a really good way of testing out your core stability and balance in the reverse lunge knee drive. The goal here is to stay upright and not let the KB pull you over to one side. This requires the muscles of the core to work hard in stabilising the spine and also a lot of hip and quadricep strength to keep your knee from rolling inwards. The knee drive can be seen as an addition the reverse lunge that makes this more challenging from a balance perspective.

2. Goblet Multi-Planar Lunges

Whether you run on or off-road it’s important to develop strength in the 3 main planes of motion, those being Sagittal (forwards and backwards), Frontal (side to side) and Transverse (rotational). The multiplanar lunge takes all of those planes of motion into account helping to challenge your body to develop strength when force is being transferred in each direction. This is a brilliant way of working on your hip mobility too which is shown to reduce risk of developing knee injuries.

3. KB Single-leg Deadlift

Single leg deadlifts require you to be stable on one leg whilst also generating strength in the glutes, hamstrings and lower back. The hip hinge movement is good for developing hip flexion and extension which both play a key role in running mechanics.

4. Supine Leg Lowering w/KB

The ability of your abdominals to stabilise your spine and pelvis when running is a key part of being able to hold good posture and create efficient mechanics to develop a strong running pattern. This move uses the KB to lock your shoulders and upper body down whilst you focus your attention on slowly lowering one leg at a time towards the floor. The goal is to brace your abdominals to keep your spine in a neutral position (no movement up or down) throughout.

5. KB Swing

The KB swing is a great movement that will help to create more explosiveness in the hip extension portion of the running gait. This move requires your glutes and hamstrings to be strong and powerful and your core stabilising muscles to do their job of supporting the spine.

As this is a power-based movement it’s best to dial in your focus on movement quality over quantity…that means a repetition range of 6-8 at the top end with explosive power on each rep then recovery with the goal of going progressively heavier in weight.