Distance runners focus on strengthening key muscle groups to become faster runners. These exercises can make you a substantially fast runner by improving posture, lengthening your stride, and keeping you feeling tall when racing.
To begin, the abdominal muscles are are extremely important to prevent a runner from hunching over when feeling fatigue late in a race. I work my abdominal muscles every other day. I work my abs by doing 10 minutes of planks, crunches, bicycles, leg raises, toe touches, Russian twists, and many more exercises.
The second muscle group that is necessary to strengthen in order to improve performance are the gluteus and hips. Having strong gluteus can help you run with better form, therefor using less energy. It also allows the runner to have a longer stride on each step. If a runner can step a couple inches further on each stride over a 5 mile race, much time can be made up.
Having strong hamstrings is another very important muscle group to strengthen. These muscles can really help a runner with speed and running up hills. Whether you are running a 400 meter sprint or side by side with a competitor at the end of a 5 mile race, having strong hamstrings will help you sprint and beat out the competition. The main hamstring exercises my team does are weighted single leg Bulgarian split squats and single leg deadlifts.
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