Cross training is a great way of increasing your training if you are worried about getting injured. Personally I would take it very slowly and try and add in an extra run a week and do that for maybe 3 weeks and then add another run another few weeks and keep this type of pattern going until you get to a point where your body is handling the running without breaking down. If you do need to add cross training instead there are a few options you can add. The 3 mains types (that are most closely related to running) are the eliptical machine, aqua jogging and cycling. Out of these 3 I would recommend cycling the most as you can really build your strength up and get some hard workouts in also. If I am injured I usually do a few spinning classes as that helps me to really push myself. I actually talked to Jos Hermans (Haile Gebrselassie's agent) about cross training and he was telling me how Haile has incorporated a lot of cycling into his training so that he can get the strength that he needs. The thing with cycling though is that you want to either put the seat as high as possible (so that you are replicating a running position - you don't have to but I would recommend it) or stay standing for most of the cycle. This can become very hard but if you can do it, the strength increases are great. I don't really like the eliptical very much because I can never get my heart rate up very hard, no matter how hard I am working. I tend to use this as a recovery tool when I am injured rather than one for hard workouts. Aqua jogging is great but be prepared for the boredom aspect of it. I have done quite a bit of aqua jogging so I don't use a belt and from the studies I have read, you also get the most out of the workout without a belt as you have to work hard the whole time.
Henry G - I have been having some hamstring tightness for the past several days. It doesn't alter my stride but it just achs and feels tight. I have been stretching and doing the roller but it doesn't seem to make a difference. Do you have any experience with this? What would you do?
I will have this sometimes if I have done something different that my muscles aren't used to like a long hill run or sprinting. Hamstrings usually take a little while to recover so I would give it a few more day and if you are still tight either go see a massage therapist or a physiotherapist as the tightness may be coming from somewhere else on your body. My hamstrings are always pretty tight no matter how much stretching I do because my back is quite weak. If I get my back worked on and there is no spasm, I can suddenly stretch my hamstrings further than I ever have. I use the Wharton stretching routine a lot to help with tightness.
Hi, I have a question if your open to them. When doing a threshold run of say 40 mins. How many seconds who you add on a loop route if the wind was say 10 mph. So you would have 10mph head wind for 50% of the time and 10 mph tail wind the other 50%?
ReplyDeleteHi Daniel. I think at that point you would just have to go by effort as you never gain as much time back running with the wind as you would have lost from running into the wind. That sounds confusing! - Basically your going to have a negative deficit so I would purely go on effort. When I run my tempos and it is windy, I will know at the end whether the effort was there or not. Its sometimes better just to forget about the watch!
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