Abstract: Traditional strength training frameworks focus on squats, hinges, and lunges, but running is a three-dimensional movement that requires strength and mobility in all planes—sagittal, frontal, and transverse. While these staple exercises provide a solid foundation, executing them with intention and addressing rotational control, hip stability, and movement efficiency can make a significant difference in how they translate to running. Rather than simply “lifting heavy,” incorporating targeted exercises for rotation, adduction, abduction, and hip extension to support those lifts ensures you’re building strength that truly supports your stride.

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Hey Reader,

How’s everyone feeling?

It’s been a wild, frustrating, terrifying, anger inducing, and overwhelming week and half. I’m so worried about so many things and desperately trying not to get caught up in the spiral. The next 4 years are going to be a marathon, not a sprint. I’ve spent a lot of time the past 9 days thinking about what more I can do to help. It all just feels so overwhelming.

A friend of mine shared this post with me yesterday and I found the words in his caption so helpful:

“But if we shut down, they will have an easier time passing deadly, rights-inhibiting legislation.

… protect your health and energy. Don’t fall into doomscrolling…

Don’t shut down because of the scary big stuff. Show up.

Don’t go underground. Instead, go local. Dig at your feet.”

That for me highlighted that MY first step is to learn to have that hard conversations with friends, family and neighbors. For me, as a rule follower, people pleasing, first born daughter, this is scary AF. I just ordered the book Say More About That: ...And Other Ways to Speak Up, Push Back, and Advocate for Yourself and Others by Amber Cabral. Here’s the link to it on Amazon if you also struggle with the idea of speaking up.

Yes, I know Amazon is one of the companies that is rolling back its DEI programs. I definitely think that we can put our money where our mouth is here too. Baby steps.

If you are like, why are we even talking about this? I’m here for the running content. That’s coming 👇…

AND silence about this is neutrality.

Neutrality is a privilege that many humans do not have right now. I recognize that it is one I have in many ways as a white, straight, cis-gendered, middle class, done with having babies woman. If you also have the privilege of neutrality, how will you use it?

AND I want to make it abundantly clear what my business and me as a human stands for. I believe:

• Science is real and every single human has benefits from it on a daily basis.
• Public health issues run so much deeper that food dyes and seed oils. They are rooted in accessibility to food, preventive healthcare, mental health, and infrastructure that support all basic human needs first.
• Books should never be banned, libraries are wonderful places, and representation of all the way’s humans live and love is not dangerous (but guns in schools definitely are).
• Everyone is a human first. No human is illegal, black lives matter, LGTBQ+ lives matter, and women's rights are human rights.
• Diversity and inclusion benefits everyone.

If you are paying money to my business you deserve to know that some of it is donated to Planned Parenthood, gun safety and regulation initiatives, and LGBTQ+ support programs.

It almost feels wrong to keep talking about running and strength training now AND I know that running is a very powerful outlet for all that anxious energy, even more so when it feels good. So I will continue…

This email topic was also the topic of this week’s podcast episode. If you prefer to listen instead, click here or go find The Women’s Running Lab podcast on your favorite podcast player and find E24.

When it comes to strength training for running, you have probably heard the following framework where include something from each of these categories in your strength training:

• Push
• Pull
• Hinge
• Squat
• Lunge
• Core

For simplicity let’s just zoom in on the lower body stuff (hinge, squat, and lunge) and look at what this framework misses and how, if done with intention, can still really hit on all the parts.

And let’s start with the idea that running is a three-dimensional action. We think about the forward motion but you are really moving in 3D all the way up and down the chain!

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Working from the bottom up in that table…

In the sagittal plane:

Hip flexion is bending the leg up in front of you, like marching.

Hip extension is the opposite, trying to send the leg back behind you. We only need a few degrees of motion in that direction. Think about something like a donkey kick or the action, the action of standing up from your deadlift, or toeing off in your stride.

We can also look at how the pelvis moves in that same plane.

In an anterior pelvic tilt, pelvis tilted forward so that your hip bones are in front of your pubic bone, you'll also notice that your hips are now closer to your thigh. This moves you into a little bit of hip flexion. Can you imagine how being in a little bit of hip flexion already could affect your range of motion as you try to march that hip up?

On the other end of the spectrum, in a posterior pelvic tilt, bottom tucked under so that your pubic bone kind of sits in front of your hip bones, is analogous to hip extension. Can you imagine how always tucking your butt under and squeezing your glutes might give you no space to come from moving into hip extension?

In the frontal plane:

You can lift your leg out to the side, that's aBduction. Think about your lateral leg raises and traditional “glute med” exercises.

You can bring your leg across towards the middle, that's aDduction.

In the same way as above, we can also look at how the pelvis moves in the same plane.

If you can keep both feet on the floor, and hike one hip up towards your shoulder, notice how your pubic bone gets closer to the leg on that side. That’s ADduction. While on the other side, the pubic bone gets further away from that leg. That’s ABduction.

Those are your frontal plane movements that we don't think about as happening much in our running stride, and actually we don't want these to happen excessively in our running stride.

Think about the dreaded hip drop. There is some translation in the frontal plane in your stride but is small. I like to think of the muscles that control the movement of aBduction and ADduction as working to minimize both from happening too much in your stride (aka. stabilizing the hip) all so that you can move more efficiently in the other planes.

In the transverse plane:

If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it 1000 times: Running is rotation!

If you look at the running from the top down (not a view that we see of running very often) you'll see rotation. You'll see the rotation of the pelvis and counter rotation of the torso.

Rotating towards your stance leg is what we would think of as internal rotation. That's what's happening as you're moving from landing into mid stance.

Then that external rotation, rotating away from that leg, is what's happening from midstance to toe off.

All of these things are happening together in your stride!

When it comes to your strength training, it is important to make sure that in some way that we are addressing your range of motion and strength in all these planes.

That may make you feel that you need to include a ton of exercises, because I just listed so many different ways it's possible for you to move, and that might feel overwhelming.

It may also seem to you that the hinge, squat, lunge framework is inadequate.

However, what if I told you that squats, hinges and your lunge also involve 3D movement?

Many people think about a squat or a hinge, like a deadlift, as an exercise only in the sagittal plane. At first glance it looks like that movement is happening just like you view it from the side, up and down, legs bending forward and then straightening back out. In reality, if executed well, you are actually having movement in rotation, adduction, abduction throughout the movement!

We don't need to throw the baby out with the bathwater in terms of this hinge, squat, lunge portion of that framework. It still works, but it works with some intention and specific practice.

Meaning, that execution with intention sometimes does require some other support exercises:

• Specific work with rotation so that you can actually move through that hips through the squat instead of having to over arch or round through your back.
• Specific work in internal rotation so that you can actually shift back into your hinge and load your glutes.
• Specific work on hip extension range of motion (and the skill of hip extension before knee extension) so that you can fully stand up out of that hinge and get your full glute max contraction without having to extend your back instead.
• Specific work with aDuction and ABduction to stabilize these movements in your single leg variations.

This is where I feel so many women struggle with the “just lift heavy” advice. Yeah, but what if it doesn’t feel good?

This is where specific exercises and each of those movement patterns in all the planes in isolation can be helpful. Think about it as training the part to get more efficient as a whole.

It can be helpful to break it apart into smaller pieces, train the pieces and then put it all back together so that your squats, hinges, and deadlifts can be as efficient as possible, all so that you're getting all the juicy pieces out of them. From there you can include some of these isolation moves in the movement patterns that your body needs most in some of your accessory work.

This is exactly how we do it in my program Strong & Stable: The Ultimate Hip Strengthening Program for Female Runners.

In Strong & Stable we will:

• Work to improve the range of motion needed at your hips for an efficient stride in all 3 planes of motion.
  • anterior/posterior pelvic tilt
  • hip flexion/extension
  • abduction/adduction
  • internal/external rotation.
• Work to build strength through those ranges and put it back together for an efficient hinge, squat and lunge.
• Work to move in and out of those ranges dynamically.

AND it’s going to be available to the public starting on Tuesday next week!

Your Coach,
Alison

Alison Marie Helms, PhD Certified Personal Trainer and Running Coach Unlock your full running potential through physics and physiology. ​Work with me.​