Does strength training make endurance athletes faster?

Ramos-Campo and colleagues (Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, UCAM Murcia, European University of Madrid, University of Almería) gathered the systematic reviews and meta-analyses on strength training and the determinants of endurance performance in middle- and long-distance endurance-trained athletes.

They grouped programmes as maximal-strength training (above 80% of one-repetition maximum), explosive-strength training (below 80% 1RM) and reactive-strength (plyometric) training, and looked at VO2max, endurance performance, maximal aerobic speed or power, work and running economy, energy cost, and aerobic and anaerobic lactate thresholds.

Seventeen reviews were included, 12 of them with meta-analyses. Every review that assessed running economy found moderate to large effects. Four meta-analyses examined VO2max and none found a significant change. For endurance performance, three reviews analysed plyometric training and found small effects, except one that found a large effect against a control group.

On their risk-of-bias assessment, most reviews had low or critically low confidence, mainly from incomplete literature searches, unjustified exclusions and unhandled publication bias. The authors conclude that strength training improves endurance performance and running economy and helps maintain VO2max, and support adding it to endurance programmes.

Our reading: it confirms the direction the base already holds (SYNTH-44: economy and time-trial speed, not VO2max) without adding precision; it is a summary of the same, mostly small, trials, and its own quality ratings argue against reading it as stronger than its parts.