For my next series of post, I’ll be talking about different forms of cross training and how they can benefit your running.

For running, cross training is doing another activity that will help maintain or build on your training. For instance, riding a bike to help build stronger leg muscles or swimming to help increase your cardio would be considered cross training. There are endless exercises a runner can do to cross train that will help their running in some shape or form and over the next few weeks we’ll be looking at a few of them.

Those will be:
Biking
Swimming
Ellipitcal
Walking
Aqua Jogging

So why would a runner want to cross train in the first place?

Perhaps they have developed a running specific injury (such as a stress fracture) and while they can’t run, they can swim or bike. The injured runner could cross train while the injury healed and would be able to maintain some or all of their fitness without aggravating the injury further. Perhaps a runner is getting bored with only running and would like to mix it up with laps in the pool or playing ultimate frisbee. Runners who have just started or are building up their mileage could cross train to get in an extra day of training while not over doing it running and possibly injuring themselves due to over-training.

So which cross training is right for you?  We’ll take a look at the previously mentioned activities in the coming weeks to help you better understand how each of these can benefit your training and keep you from getting burned out on running and hopefully keeping you injury free.

By Adam Rabo

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