Question: how could i improve my athletic endurance without weakening my ability to exert strengnth

Mark Burnley answered on 21 Jun 2011:

Great question, and this is a VERY active area of research. The reason it’s so active is that we have begun to uncover the “signals” that tell the muscle whether to increase endurance or strength following training. We know these pathways are different (one is based on adapting to changes in the muscles energy use – this promotes increased endurance, whilst the other is based on adapting to changes in protein turnover – this promotes strength). We suspect that the signals promoting endurance either switch off or greatly reduce the effectiveness of the strength training signal, but the evidence for this is not yet conclusive. These studies are very hard to do, as you need lots of subjects and lots of muscle samples. Having said that, it’s a big problem because lots of team sports require combinations of strength and endurance (like football). Coaches have to work very carefully to try and maximise gains in both strength and endurance, but much of this is based on trial and error, and in the real world some athletes prefer training for one or the other, and won’t put full effort into both!