| Anyone
who trains everyday on a stationary bike shouldn't expect to be prepared
for a day of cross country skiing. It's true that any aerobic exercise carries
universal benefits that provide an advantage in any sports setting but specific
muscle adaption limits cross over benefits. There's a great deal of evidence
that the aerobic training in one sport won't yield the same results when
tested by another aerobic activity. Weekend warriors learn that lesson every
Monday morning.
When starting a training
program the first step is to decide what the final goal should be: an
age group win at a local race, a specific time in the New York City Marathon,
losing 20 pounds, perhaps it is just to gain enough strength to run 10
miles, or maybe even making an Olympic Team in 8 years. Whatever the goal,
once it has been defined then the next step is to choose training strategies
that will allow for the greatest chance of success.
The human body is an
amazingly adaptive tool. By introducing graduated stress a healthy person
will adapt and become stronger in response to that stress up to the limit
of genetic capability and within environmental constraints. That adaptive
response will be specific to the stress. If you run a lot of very slow
miles you'll become very good at running slow. If all you do is run short,
fast distances you'll become a sprinter but would have little hope of
comfortably running a marathon. If you live in south Florida you won't
enjoy running a hilly marathon in mid-winter Vermont.
When designing a training
program we always look at the specifics of the goal and create a program
of workouts that answer those adaptive problems. One of our athletes is
a very competitive mountain trail racer. Although much of her early season
training may take place in other settings, by the time she reaches mid-season
her hard workouts are all on technical trails that feature a great deal
of strength training. Those are the conditions she'll be faced with in
racing and those are the adaptive stresses we want to condition her to.
As coaches we look at
racing conditions, running surface, distance, terrain, and any specific
characteristic of the race or goal that might pose a challenge to the
athlete. An effective conditioning program features graduated challenges
that prepare for those specific characteristics the athlete will face.
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