How to combine running and strength training.

You can want to run well and get stronger at the same time. But most weeks still need a clear emphasis. It might be improving a 5K while maintaining strength, or building strength while keeping a regular running habit.

That emphasis helps decide which sessions need your freshest effort, what can stay steady and how much total work fits your available time. It is more useful than treating every lift and every run as equally urgent.

Running and lifting can both make your legs tired. A hard run, a long run and a demanding lower-body lift all ask more of you than an easy run or a lighter upper-body session. Put the sessions that matter most where you can complete them with intent.

There is no universal perfect weekly pattern. Your training history, goal, recovery, schedule and session length all matter. The useful question is whether the sessions are arranged so one does not repeatedly compromise the next.

A good running and strength programme has a shared focus over time. That means the running sessions, strength sessions and rest days should make sense together rather than each following a separate rulebook.

Progress can show up in different ways: a more controlled run, a stronger main lift, a better-fitting session length or a week that you can complete consistently. More work is not automatically better work.

A plan is a starting point. The useful information comes from what you were able to complete, how sessions changed and where evidence is still thin. A missed or unlogged session does not explain itself, so it should not be treated as proof of a problem.

Review the whole block before deciding what to change next. That makes it easier to preserve the work that is fitting your life and adjust the work that is not.

Onward is being built for people who do not want to programme their running and lifting separately. You share your goal, current training, weekly schedule, equipment and constraints. The planned result is one six-week programme containing both.

The first version is not a live calendar that automatically rearranges a week. It focuses on manual logging and a next-block proposal that you inspect before accepting.