Strength training

Hi,

To cut a long story short, I ran my first marathon at the weekend (a very hilly offroader), 3 weeks after being diagnosed with a tibial stress fracture (with my physio's permission!) I was pleased to finish but my time was pretty slow. I think that in terms of cardio-vascular fitness I was ok, but my (lack of) strength let me down.

I've been told I should now have a month off from running to allow my tibia to heal. I will be keeping my cardio fitness up by cycling, but I'd like to use this time off to work on strength as well. I have never done any specific strength training, and I don't really know where to start- what exercises/machines, how many reps, how much weight, etc etc.

Can anyone advise? Thanks!

Harri, hope you are keeping well. sorry to hear about tsf.

I'm not much accomplished but will give you an account of what i do if it may help. i generally do spinning class for 1 hour in the gym, followed by  reps/ weight training for 45 mins twice a week as a part of cross training.

Reps class involves squats, lunges for legs, bench press for chest, bicep curls, shoulder raises and abs and press ups and abs curls. Typically repetitions are 24 and 2 sets each. Wieght to be used is go asses yourself whilst doing. They say doing 24 reps should be tough, for the muscles to work and grow.

I'm sure others will come along to give a better idea. Good luck.

It is very difficult to advise on  forum with regards to weight training as we don't know what facilities you will have available to you.  If you go to a good gym they should haave a qualifed instructor who will write you a programme based on how often you want to train and take into account why you are training. They should go through it with you as there may be some exercises that you dont get on  with, in which case there is no point being told that you have to do them as you will either not bother with that particular exercise or do it incorrectly.  I personally would go for a split programme if you are training 3 times a week to break up the boredom factor, and enabling you to concentrate on areas more intently and then being able to rest those areas worked.  Good Luck, but the secret is in finding a good gym and good instructors.