Harry Styles ran a sub-3-hour Berlin Marathon. Does performing help train for an endurance event?
The singer is known for his high energy shows. But did all that dancing help him achieve a sub-three at the Berlin Marathon?
Harry Styles is known for his high-energy performances, from his early days with One Direction to his most recent nearly two-year-long Love On tour.
But recently, the 31-year-old singer made headlines for another reason: He finished the Berlin Marathon in just under three hours. This follows a strong performance in the Tokyo Marathon earlier this year.
Could the hours Styles has spent performing onstage make him ready to run a marathon? It can’t hurt, according to Northeastern University experts.
“Performers are singing and moving around,” says David Nolan, an associate clinical professor of physical therapy, human movement and rehabilitation sciences at Northeastern. “The amount of cardiovascular fitness is huge. I think that’s certainly contributing to their overall fitness and endurance component. Somebody like Styles is going to have a great foundation.”
But that doesn’t mean he can just hit the course without training.
“(Dancing) is not readily transferable,” says Rui Li, associate clinical professor of exercise science at Northeastern. “(But) it’s greatly beneficial. (When it comes to) cardiopulmonary endurance, dancers performing on stage already have an advantage … but it’s not readily transferable because it requires high specificity.”
Performing on stage, Li explains, requires coordination of the muscles in bursts, not the same steady energy output that’s done in a marathon. Running also requires large muscle movement in a few particular areas, whereas dancing engages a lot of muscle groups.
“(In dance), they have to express through the toe or fingertips,” Li says. “The energy demands on a marathon runner are definitely much higher. Dance performances, even for hours, you get rest in between. With marathons, you have to constantly run, and running requires extraordinary mental drive and stability. The challenge for dancers is marathon running can be monotonous. The mental drive needs to be constantly maintained.”
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Because of this, a dancer like Styles would still need to put in the training before running a marathon, though experts agree his previous fitness level and age are to his benefit.
“If you have two people and they have both been dancing and the first person has also been engaging in running behavior and the second person doesn’t really run, we would expect that the person who’s actually trained in running would outperform in a marathon setting where running was the outcome,” says Aston McCullough, an assistant professor of physical therapy, human movement and rehabilitation sciences at Northeastern.
“You can have two people who have the same fitness level, but because the training program that they use to reach that fitness level would be different, we would assume there would be differential benefits,” McCullough says.
But the fact that dancers use more muscles could be to their advantage.
When it comes to marathon training, most runners focus solely on running, says Nolan, a physical therapist who works with marathon runners. Many training for a marathon log 40 to 60 miles per week.
“The biggest component of training for a marathon is a gradual ramp up of the volume of miles, which will happen over a period of a couple of months,” Nolan says. “Generally, as they’re getting closer to the race.”
This helps with endurance as well as glute and quad strength. Strength training is also an important component of marathon training, but Nolan says many runners overlook this, leading to injury.
“Many runners feel that they’re doing a lot just with (running),” he adds. “But different muscles being strong is a big component of what controls our movement during the race.”
For example, the glute muscles control the position of your pelvis and leg, Nolan says. If those muscles are weak, there’s a chance people will see more of a collapse when running.
“One of the misconceptions many runners have is that because they’re running and active, they’re automatically going to be strong,” Nolan says. “But running is a straight-ahead activity. If runners aren’t intentionally doing something to target muscles (outside the frontal plane), they’re often not getting stronger by just running. Dance is more dynamic and can be helpful in working on some of those muscles.”
Dance and performing experience can be a huge help. Dancing not only has huge psychological benefits, but can increase one’s balance, flexibility and working memory, says McCullough.
“The dose of physical activity that we receive from dance is on par with the dose that we receive from other types such as jogging,” McCullough adds. “Depending on the intensity, it could also be similar to biking.”
