Brian’s fitness journal after a brain stroke
I’ve been running for nearly a decade. A few years ago, I added resistance training. And yet—brace yourself—there’s one thing I somehow never did: leg strength training.
Yes, I run. A lot. I convinced myself that running was leg day. Turns out, that logic only works until it doesn’t—usually in the form of injury. Somewhere along the way, it finally clicked: runners also need resistance training for their legs.
My wife has known this all along.
She does resistance training six days a week, and she works her legs especially hard. Her reasoning is simple: cardio doesn’t fully train leg strength. Recently, she’s taken it even more seriously, and the results are obvious. Her legs are noticeably stronger than before.
So I made a decision.
I would join leg day—late, but sincere.
I introduced squats into my routine, and my quadriceps responded immediately by filing soreness reports. That’s how I know something new is happening. I do have to be careful, though. Once a week, I already run 10 kilometers, and our neighborhood is aggressively hilly. My legs aren’t exactly underworked.
Still, the soreness tells me something important: I’m using muscle fibers that running alone doesn’t reach. Whether increasing strength first will eventually improve my speed is still an open question—but early signs suggest I’m on the right path.
As with everything else, I’m introducing this change slowly. My kidney condition limits how much protein I can consume, so I can’t afford to destroy too many muscle fibers at once. At the same time, muscle growth requires some breakdown. Balancing those two realities is the real workout.
To stay honest, I track my biometrics using our scale—water percentage, protein, bone mass, muscle mass, weight—and I cross-check all of that with quarterly blood work. Numbers don’t lie, even when motivation does.
For now, the goal isn’t speed.
The goal is durability.
I’ll continue monitoring, adjusting, and easing leg exercises into my routine over the next few months. After nearly ten years of running, it seems only fair to finally give my legs the attention they deserve—outside of just asking them to carry me uphill.