As athletes we love our sport- or at least really like it! And because of it we tend to get caught up in it and only practice our sport.
That's where cross training comes in!
I'm sure you all know how it feels, we excel in our sport, look at the tiniest of details and techniques to adjust to improve. Cross training is when we also add practices where we do other sports or exercise to help with us in our primary sport.
When I was competing in swimming we would do 'dry-land' either before or after practice. So after two hours of swimming we would put our tennis shoes on and do weights, or go for a run, or do pilates, or do medicine ball exercises to help our butterfly abs. It was fun to add variety to our workouts.
Focusing on one sport can get tedious both mentally and your body.
Have you reached a plateau on your practices? Are your times not improving or worsening? Do your runs just seem too flawless?
Adding some cross-training to your workout might help.
Not only does it force you to learn a new sport or exercise, but it also works out muscles that you may not use as much normally.
For example in biking, legs are the big power source. If a few days of weights are added to the weekly schedule it could allow for time to work on upper body strength to even out the muscle use throughout the body. Or if biking is the main focus, adding a few running sessions would allow your legs to use other leg muscles as well as to condition more those that are already well developed.
I would do some research on the best cross training for your athletic needs and try it out.
For swimmers, I do have some advice on out of the water training based on my experiences as a competitive swimmer:
- workout all areas of the body, arms, legs, abs, back.
- for arms, focus on pulling exercises. This helps with swimmer's shoulder and to improve your pull. In swimming we constantly have make a pushing motion, so working on pulling motions help even out our muscles and improve stabilization in the water.
- Pilates is a great way to improve flexibility and work on core balance
- dry land can be incorporated into swimming practices also. For example, 10 50's freestyle: 25 sprint, at the wall get out and do 25 crunches, 25 easy, next 50 do a different exercise. It can be almost any dry land exercise. (We had many of these in our practices! Oh the memories!)
Because I have really loose joints (seriously.. I can bend my knees backwards) my shoulders became susceptible to swimmer's shoulder when I competed years ago.
So of course now that I'm back in the water and training a decent amount they started to hurt a bit. I also noticed my stoke felt heavier and harder to do.
I started to add some dry-land to my weekly routine and I can feel a difference in the power of my stroke. It also keeps my workouts interesting!
Do you have any cross training tips for your sport?
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