Back in 2016, I wrote a column with the rather glib headline: “Yes, Professional Runners Are Weak.” In my defense, I was merely paraphrasing the recently retired marathoner Ryan Hall. After hanging up his running shoes, the American record holder in the half marathon had hit the weight room hard and transformed himself from a scrawny endurance athlete into a muscle-bound beefcake. “I’ve been small and weak all my life,” Hall said in an interview with Runner’s World. “I’ve always wondered what it would feel like to be big and strong.”
For Hall, getting jacked was also a boon for his overall vitality. As he told CNN in 2021, his energy levels are “ten times better” now that he spends “60 to 90 minutes a day” lifting weights, as opposed to when he was grinding out 130-mile weeks. Who can’t relate?
Ryan Hall may be a physical outlier, but his example speaks to one of the more enduring debates in popular fitness culture: Is one better off prioritizing cardio or strength training? (With apologies to gym bro taxonomists, in this article “strength training” will be used interchangeably with…
