Cross-Training – What Is It? Why You Should Do It?

Ever wonder how professional athletes can keep training and improving their PR? How it almost seems as though they’re invincible? Did you know that you can be just like them by changing one particular aspect of your workout routine? Well, guess what! You CAN and all it takes is incorporating cross-training.

So, what is cross-training?

Cross-training is a type of training that involves combining exercises from other disciplines. It’s a way to supplement a person’s training by improving strength, endurance, and flexibility. In addition, it prevents injuries, muscular imbalances, and burnouts. In other words, it’s whole body fitness. It can involve incorporating weight lifting, yoga, spinning, swimming, and the list goes on and on. You don’t have to incorporate everything all at once but the important thing is to break up your routine by adding cross-training to your exercise program.

Still not convinced?

Here are the benefits of cross-training. One of the best benefits from cross-training is injury prevention! Yes, preventing those same nagging injuries from overuse and repetitive movements. Take for example, running. Who doesn’t love running, especially since the Gate River Run is just a couple of months away! The constant impact from the pavement, improper shoes, biomechanical irregularities, muscular imbalances, over-training are just some of the reasons that injuries (is. joint pain, low back tightness) occur or reoccur. By incorporating cross-training, such as swimming, biking, or weight lifting, you can minimize the impact and instead work on building the endurance and strength a different way, which in turn will maximize your running in the end.

Another great reason to cross-train is for rehabilitation purposes. Let’s take running again. Say your low back is tightening up while running. Well, instead of continuing to beat your body down, incorporate biking, elliptical machine and some core training. The key is to not exacerbate your injury nor prolong the recovery process. Letting the body heal and recover will prevent you from sitting on the sidelines.

Other great benefits of cross-training are increased motivation and active recovery. By breaking up the routine and allowing you to explore more areas of the fitness world and other sports, might just give you an added kick to your motivation. Active recovery during your workouts is great in being able to enhance your endurance and strength, which will be positively reflected in your running performance.

So, before you create injuries or make current injuries worse, consider adding some cross-training to your training protocol. You’ll be surprise how much more your overall performance will be!

Pinky Uttayaya-Andrews