If you ask almost any runner if they’d like to be able to run faster, the answer will be a resounding yes, which is why the pursuit to run faster is a never ending quest. From taking on harder speed workouts to increasing your mileage, there are many adjustments you can make in your training to help you become a faster runner.
However, not all of the training modifications you can make to get faster involve running itself. Strength training has the potential to help you run faster, should you perform the right strengthening exercises in the right ways.
But, what are the “right” strength training exercises for runners? Runners often hear about the benefits of squats for running, and often them ask themselves, will squats help me run faster?
In this guide, we will look at the benefits of squats for runners and answer the question that may be the deciding factor for actually doing squats: “Will squats help me run faster?”
We will look at:
- What Is a Squat?
- How Do You Do a Squat?
- Can Squats Help You Run Faster?
- Will Squats Help Me Run Faster?
Let’s get started!
What Is a Squat?
A squat is a foundational lower-body exercise that involves flexing your knees and hips to lower your body down as if sitting back into an invisible chair.
Basic squats strengthen your quadriceps, glutes, hamstrings, and calves, as well as your lower back and core. There are also many modifications and varieties of squats that recruit additional muscles like your adductors, upper back, and hip rotators.
How Do You Do a Squat?
Many runners aren’t sure how to properly perform a squat, unless you played sports as a child or have worked with a personal trainer. Using proper form is crucial for reaping the benefits of the exercise and reducing the risk of joint injuries.
You can add resistance to your squats to increase the intensity by holding dumbbells, kettlebells, barbells, or other weights or wearing a weighted vest, but here are the steps to perform a basic bodyweight squat:
- Stand with your feet slightly wider than shoulder-width apart, with your toes pointing forward, your core engaged, and your chest up and proud.
- Inhale, bending your knees and pushing your hips backward as if reaching your butt back to sit in a chair and keeping your back straight and chest up. Your arms can come forward in front of your body to act as a counterweight.
- Lower your body until your thighs are parallel to the floor and your knees are flexed to 90 degrees.
- Exhale, pressing through your heels to return to the starting position.
If you struggle to achieve adequate squat depth (thighs parallel to the floor and knees bent to 90 degrees), you can place a weight plate or heavy book under your heels to help compensate for tight ankles and inadequate pelvic rotation.
Can Squats Help You Run Faster?
There are many benefits of squats for runners. For example, they increase leg strength, burn calories, and can improve balance, but the real question is, will squats help me run faster?
In general, the answer is yes, squats can help you run faster. Let’s take a look at how squats can improve your running and help you run faster:
Squats Can Improve Cardiovascular Fitness
Squats activate most of the major muscles in your body, so they increase your heart rate and respiration rate. If you perform them in a circuit, or do long sets of bodyweight squats, you can improve your cardiovascular fitness, which can help with your running.
Squats Strengthen Your Legs
Squats strengthen your glutes, quads, hamstrings, and calves, all of which are essential for power, core stability, and efficient forward propulsion when running, walking, jumping, and skipping.
A lot of runners struggle with activating their glutes, and squats can be a great way to not only increase the strength of your glutes, but also develop the neuromuscular connection to help you consciously activate your glutes more easily.
Properly using your glutes can reduce undue stress and strain on your hamstrings and lower back muscles.
Squats Can Increase Your Explosive Power
The strength you’ll develop in your glutes, calves, and hamstrings from squats can help increase your explosive power and speed. This can translate to better uphill running and faster sprinting.
Sprinting requires rapid force development, so plyometric squats like jump squats and max-effort squats performed explosively help build the muscular strength and neuromuscular firing patterns you need to sprint faster.
A study involving rugby players found that eight weeks of squat training improved sprint speed by increasing leg strength, force development, and power.
Squats Can Improve Running Economy
A 2008 study investigated the effects of maximal strength training on running economy, which refers to the metabolic cost, or energy, required to maintain a sub-maximal running pace. The better your running economy, the longer and faster you can run before fatiguing.
The study participants were divided into two groups. The intervention group performed a squat training program consisting of four sets of four max-effort half-squats three times per week for eight weeks supplemented on to their normal endurance training.
The control group maintained their normal endurance training without the max-effort squats during the same period.
Results indicated that the squat intervention led to significant improvements in 1RM squat weight (33.2%) and rate of force production. More importantly, significant improvements were seen in running economy at 70% max effort (5% increase). Time to exhaustion at maximal aerobic speed also increased by 21.3% after the squat program.
These improvements can be reflected in running faster for long distance races.
Squats Can Reduce the Risk of Injury
One of the keys to running faster is being able to train consistently without needing to take extended time off to nurse injuries.
Squats can help reduce the risk of injury by conditioning your legs to handle higher loads; improving the mobility of your knees, hips, and ankles; improving core control and balance; increasing your proprioception and body awareness, and training you to properly activate your glutes, which can take strain off of the hamstrings and lower back.
If you can run injury-free, you can train consistently and make gradual but constant progress.
5 Squats for Runners
There are dozens of variations of the basic squat. Here are some of the best squats for runners:
#1: Split Squats
Split squats transform bilateral squats into a unilateral exercise, which better mimics the demands of running.
- Stand upright with good posture and your hands on your hips.
- Take a big step forward with your right leg such that when you drop down into a lunge, both knees can bend to 90 degrees without your front knee (the right knee) going forward beyond your toes.
- Drop down into your lunge, and pause momentarily.
- Power back up by engaging your quads and glutes.
- Keep your feet planted in this staggered split squat position and simply continue dropping down and up into a lunge.
- Complete 15 reps, and then switch sides.
#2: Jump Squats
Jump squats turn regular squats into a plyometric exercise, helping you develop the power, speed, and force generation you need in your quads for sprinting, climbing hills, and absorbing the loading forces on downhills.
- Stand with your feet hip-width apart, core engaged, chest up, back straight, and arms at your side.
- Perform a squat by bending your knees and sitting your butt back as if reaching to sit in a chair while driving your arms forward.
- Push through your heels and then your midfoot and toes to explode upward as high as you can jump, straightening your knees and hips and using your arms to power your body up as high as possible.
- As soon as you land, bend your knees to cushion the landing, transitioning immediately into a full squat to begin the cycle again.
- Move quickly and powerfully from rep to rep, using your arms to drive your body upward.
#3: Banded Squats
Many runners have weak hip abductors. As a result, your knees can cave inward during squats and even while running, which places excessive stress on the knee joint itself as well as your IT band.
This exercise not only strengthens your quads, glutes, and hamstrings like normal squats, but it also works your gluteus medius, a key hip abductor, which can help you maintain proper loading forces through the lower body as you run.
- Place a strong loop resistance band around your thighs just above your knees.
- Separate your legs slightly wider than shoulder-width apart to place a good amount of tension on the band.
- Perform squats while maintaining the constant tension on the band and being sure to keep your knee caps facing forward the whole time.
- Remember to sit your hips all the way back when you squat as if reaching your butt back to sit in a chair, and squat down until your knees are bent to 90 degrees and your thighs are parallel to the floor.
#4: Sumo Squats
This variation is great for your glutes and adductors. You can hold dumbbells or other weights to make the exercise more difficult.
- Stand with your feet slightly wider than shoulder-width apart, with your toes pointing about 45 degrees outward. Your hips should also be externally rotated.
- Inhale, pushing your hips backward as if reaching your butt back to sit in a chair. Make sure your core is engaged, your chest is up, and your back is straight.
- Exhale, pressing through your heels to return to the starting position.
#5: Single-Leg Squats
Single-leg squats are one of the more difficult quad exercises because they require tremendous leg strength, core activation, and balance. A single-leg squat is often sufficiently challenging with just your bodyweight, but you can also load up with dumbbells as you get stronger.
- Stand upright with good posture and your feet slightly wider than shoulder-width apart.
- Lift your left leg and use your abs to draw it up towards your chest and hold it there, or bend it behind your right leg and let it hover above the ground. You can also extend it straight in front of your body.
- Bend your right knee and sit your hips all the way back as you drop down into a single-leg squat.
- When your right knee is bent to 90 degrees and your thigh is parallel to the ground, press through your right heel to stand back up.
- Complete 10-15 reps and then switch sides.
Will Squats Help Me Run Faster?
Now for the moment we’ve all been waiting for, the answer to, will squats help me run faster?
Regularly incorporating different versions of squats into your workout routine can potentially make you a faster runner, and will certainly make you a stronger, more injury-resilient runner.
The only caveat is that if you build a substantial amount of muscle mass in your legs, it might compromise your running speed for longer distances. However, this outcome is unlikely unless you’re running very little and specifically lifting heavy weights for substantial hypertrophy.
For an even longer list of squat variations to spice up your strength training program, take a look at our Squats For Runners Guide.
