Power, Spring, Stability: Three Lifts That Earn Their Place

Trail running strength isn't just about building stronger legs. It's about building a body that can produce force, absorb it, and stay stable when the ground underneath you isn't.

That's three different jobs. Here are the three exercises I keep in rotation, one for each job, and the research that earns them the spot.

Barbell hip thrusts: uphill power

The glutes are your hill engine. Hip extension is what drives you up a climb, powers you over a rock step, and gets you accelerating out of a switchback, and the hip thrust loads that exact motion with more weight than almost any other exercise lets you handle safely.

The research case for lifting heavy at all is strong: a 2024 meta-analysis in Sports Medicine (Llanos-Lagos and colleagues) found that heavy resistance training, loads of 80 percent of max and above, measurably improved running economy and time-trial performance in distance runners, while light-load circuit work produced essentially nothing. The benefit isn't aerobic, your VO2max doesn't change. It's mechanical: a stronger hip produces the same force at a lower cost.

How I program it: 3 to 4 sets of 6 to 10, heavy enough that the last two reps demand attention, twice a week.

Weighted deficit calf raises: spring and durability

Here's the fact that changed how I train: the soleus, the deep calf muscle, is the single largest contributor to support and propulsion in running. Biomechanics work by Dorn, Schache and Pandy (Journal of Experimental Biology, 2012) showed plantarflexor forces are the largest in the entire lower limb during running. Your calves aren't an accessory. They're the spring the whole system bounces on.

The deficit, standing with your heels hanging off a step, strengthens the calf through a larger range of motion, which matters when trails load your ankles at every angle. And research on runners with Achilles problems (O'Neill and colleagues, Physical Therapy in Sport, 2019) found large strength deficits in both straight-knee and bent-knee positions, which is why I train both: standing raises for the gastrocnemius, seated or bent-knee work for the soleus.

How I program it: 3 to 4 sets of 6 to 8, slow, three seconds up and three seconds down, twice a week. The tendon research (Beyer and colleagues, American Journal of Sports Medicine, 2015) shows heavy slow resistance matches the old eccentric-only protocols with better adherence, so slow and heavy is the whole recipe.

Side plank hip lifts: lateral stability

Every step on a trail is a single-leg balance problem, and off-camber terrain asks your lateral hip to keep the pelvis level while one leg takes everything. When that system is weak, the knee pays: research on female runners with IT band syndrome (Foch and colleagues, Gait and Posture, 2023) found lower hip abductor strength compared to healthy runners, and a 2024 review (Sanchez-Alvarado and colleagues, Frontiers in Sports and Active Living) found hip strengthening featured in nearly every effective ITB treatment protocol, with pain reductions from 27 to 100 percent across studies.

The key word is loaded. The research favors progressive, genuinely challenging hip work over endless unweighted band circuits, which is why the side plank hip lift, with a plate on the hip once bodyweight gets easy, beats thirty clamshells every time.

How I program it: 2 to 4 sets of 6 to 12 per side, twice a week, adding load the moment it stops being hard.

For the women reading this and worrying about bulk

An 11-week study of heavy strength training in well-trained female endurance athletes (Vikmoen and colleagues, PLOS ONE, 2016) found a 40 percent increase in maximal strength with no change in body mass. None. And the follow-up work found the performance benefit shows up exactly where trail runners need it: not in a fresh five-minute test, but after hours of accumulated fatigue. Strong is not heavy. Strong is what's left at mile 25.

The honest fine print

Effect sizes in this research are real but modest, and nothing changes in under 8 to 12 weeks, so consistency beats intensity of enthusiasm. Twice a week is the dose. And sequencing matters: research on combining lifting and running (Eddens and colleagues, Sports Medicine, 2018) found better strength gains when you lift before you run, or separate the two by at least a few hours.

Power. Spring. Stability. Three exercises, twice a week, done heavy and done patiently. You don't need to make strength training complicated to make it useful for the trails.

What's the one lift you never skip? I'm always looking for a reason to add a fourth.