Effect of Functional Strength Training on Half-Mile Speed

Functional strength training may increase speed for runners who are slower to start with. For runners with a starting half-mile time of 300 seconds, adding the training had an average effect of increasing speed by 8.4 seconds. But for runners with a starting time of 180 seconds, the change was not statistically significant. However, the training protocols in this study were not well-defined, so it is unclear without further work if this effect is really due to functional strength training, or is simply due to additional training.