Whether you’re a runner, a cyclist, or a swimmer, you may think that sticking to your one sport would be most beneficial for you regarding your performance. While it is important to heavily train in your sport, it is also important to incorporate cross-training into your training schedule. Why you ask? Read and find out!
Reason #1: Injury-Prevention
Well this one is a no brainer (no offense to those who did not know this!). The large majority of injuries that endurance athletes endure are caused by overuse. Once an athlete suffers from an overuse injury, the same injury is likely to reoccur again…that is, unless you do something about it! That is where cross-training comes in. Cross-Training can help you to recovery fully from one run to the next and develop strength and flexibility imbalances. By doing low-impact endurance cross-training (walking, elliptical machines, etc.), you can gain big benefits such as improving your endurance without beating up joints, muscles, and connective tissues. You can gradually mix in some running once you’ve established a base of fitness. To summarize, endurance cross-training can therefore help you ease into the sport, if you’re a new runner, by reducing the amount of impact your body absorbs. And if you’re a veteran runner, it helps you stay in the sport.
Reason #2: Rehabilitation
If an athlete is faced with an overuse injury (which is very common, by the way), cross-training is a great tool for athletes to use to stay in shape while they are forced to take time off of their sport and to correct the cause of the injury. Taking time off of training for your sport is never easy. However, if you are injured, it is completely necessary. The best alternatives to running include water running, elliptical training, bicycling, and inline skating.
Reason #3: Greater Running Fitness (or swimming, cycling, etc.)
The ability to run faster and establish new personal bests are desires on almost every runner’s mind. Unfortunately, it is very difficult to set personal bests. Cross-training can actually help you to become a faster runner. Some ways that cross-training can enhance one’s running ability include:
1. Enhance a runner’s efficiency.
2. Increase a runner’s power.
3. Increase the amount of time a runner is able to spend training without accumulating fatigue or getting injured.
Reason #4: Active Recovery
The majority of endurance athletes that we know have one problem. We see it all of the time. They are afraid to take a rest or recovery day. It is important to understand that workouts help you achieve athletic conditioning ONLY when followed by rest or a recovery activity. Periods of REST are essential, but the athlete who performs active-recovery workouts between most pairs of key workouts will become fitter than the athlete who does not, provided he or she has gradually worked toward being able to handle the frequency of training involved. It’s true that in the context of a rigorous training program, light workouts accelerate recovery beyond what happens during outright rest by just slightly increasing the body’s need for recovery. Your key workouts–that is, your high-intensity workouts and your extra-long workouts–are the most important to your running performance, so those should almost always be runs. When you’re injured, you should perform cross-training workouts that match your intended run workouts in duration, structure, and intensity. But if you can run, you will be best served to make all of your key workouts runs and all of your endurance cross-training workouts active-recovery sessions.
Reason #5: Enhanced Motivation
It is likely that as an endurance athlete, there will be some days where you just don’t feel like biking, running, or swimming (or whatever your sport may be). Cross-training can help you to maintain your enthusiasm for your sport, making it possible to train harder and more consistently and ultimately to perform better in races. Anything you can do to increase your motivation for training is worth doing. If doing more cross-training and less running makes the training process more enjoyable, do it! Likewise, if you just don’t feel like running today, but you would be perfectly happy to ski cross-country instead, then ski! You’ll still end up in a better place than the runner who doesn’t cross-train and can choose only, on such days, between running with a bad attitude and doing nothing at all. After all, most of us run because we enjoy running! You do not want to find yourself in a place where you are forcing yourself to do something that you used to love.
Reason #6: Rejuvenation
If you want to run better next year than you did this year, you must give your body and mind a break from formal training after the final race. A good off-season transition phase (which usually coincides with winter) should begin with about 2 weeks of complete rest. Fourteen exertion-free days are just enough to allow your body to achieve a deep recovery from the recently completed training cycle and to restore your hunger to run, but not so much that you seriously compromise your fitness. After resting for 2 weeks, you should allow yourself between 2 and 8 more weeks of informal training in which you do whatever you want. Play basketball or ice hockey, do yoga, swim, lift weights–and run as little or as much (within reason) as you see fit. Your first priority should simply be to enjoy yourself. As long as you do some form of workout each day and get a cardiovascular, strength, and flexibility benefit from the activity or group of activities you pursue, there’s no wrong way to approach the transition phase.
Reason #7: Enjoying other Sports
Endurance is a highly transferable capacity. The strong heart and good lungs that serve you so well as a runner could serve you equally well in swimming, bicycling, skating, cross-country skiing, and other endurance sports. Yet endurance is also highly task-specific, because the only way to develop efficiency in a given activity is to perform that activity often. So while a trained runner would undoubtedly perform better on a bicycle than a couch potato would, that runner wouldn’t fare so well against a trained cyclist. You may never be as good a cyclist as you are a runner no matter how much cycling you do. On the other hand, you could merely dabble in cycling and discover that you are even better suited to that sport than you are to running. You never know until you try…and try you should! You might really enjoy the experience and do well, and if you do it right, training for and competing in a second endurance sport could help you enjoy running more and even run better. Maybe triathlons are in your future?
Cross-training can benefit your running, health, fitness, and performance.
[SOURCE]
QUESTION: what is your favorite form of cross training?
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
i really like to swim but i don’t really cross train ever. i did enjoy the couple of spinning workouts i did last spring but, again, haven’t stuck with them. want to take a trip up to new england and force me to do some xt?! hahah
Great post! Cross training is so important and usually I naturally incorporate it into my weekly fitness routine mainly because I get bored easily and always need to be mixing it up. But this summer I was traveling a lot so I didn’t think it was worth joining a gym for the summer and haven’t been able to cross train enough to my liking. I’ve definitely been noticing a difference in my body, it feels pretty run down. I’ve tried to be creative and do other types of cross training from home, but I always fall to running in the end.
When I cross-trained, I got faster as a runner. I wish I could get my butt to the pool again! Lol. I try and ride my bike to school when I can. I guess that would make it my favorite form of cross-training. Haha. Cross-training is such a great tool to have as a runner!