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Running and Conditioning
Throughout our workouts we have included both anaerobic and aerobic training. Our conditioning has been choosen specifically to improve the athletes performance by increasing the efficiency in which energy is used in the body. We have a variety of sprints, speed and quickness drills, endurance runs, and or other running workouts that will place a demand on your cardio and respiratory systems.
Types of Conditioning:
- Anaerobic Training: Anaerobic refers to the bodies ability to produce energy in the absence of oxygen. This type of conditioning is usually based around longer but less demanding runs. By increasing the heart rate and therefore blood flow; anaerobic training allows your body flush metabolic toxins out of the blood in order to maintain healthy tissue in your joints and muscles.
- Aerobic Training: Aerobic Training refers to your bodies ability to produce energy in the presence of oxygen. This type of conditioning is commonly done in short and explosive bursts. By improving your aerobic threshold you in turn will improve your recovery time. This is due to when performing aerobically you are not producing lactic acid and thus need less time to recover.
You can perform conditioning four to five times a week in conjunction with your weight/resistance training. Keep in mind that which ever you perform first will effect the one that follows; therefore try to separate them during the day to ensure adequate recovery.
Whenever running and conditioning be sure to take time to warm up your body and prepare for intense activity. More on Warming Up.
Warming Up
Warming up before a workout is beneficial to any athlete no matter what the skill level. It allow you to warm and prepare your muscles for intense exercise, by doing this gradually rather than quickly you give you muscles time to adapt and therefore reduce injury. However, warming up does more than just prevent injury it also increases nerve activity and body responsiveness.
This allows for faster contractions and greater power output by the muscle groups. Before a work out take 5-10 minutes to adequately prepare your body.
Warm Up:
Slow:
- Knee to Chest
- Lunge Walking
- Toe Touches
Medium:
- Power Skip
- High Knees
- Skip for Hight
- Knee to Opposite Elbow (Right then Left)
- High Knee Kick Outs
Fast:
- High speed high knees
- Butt Kickers
- Carioca
- 75%, 85%, 95%, increasing sprints
Overall Body:
- Jogging in place
- Jumping Rope
- Jumping Jacks
- Jogging 2 Laps
Static Stretches: (Performed with sub maximal effort at 10 second intervals)
- Legs together, straight down
- Deep Knee Bends
- Quad Stretch
- Left over Right/Right over left
- Deep Lunge
- Calf Elongation
Over Training
Over training often happens with athletes who are training for competition, and they end up training the body beyond its ability to recover. This is often fueled by the athletes over emphasis on the need for improvement. The athlete believes that more and more work will result in more and more results. This is not always the case.
It is important to keep in mind that this drive towards improving must be kept in a delicate balance, between working to much and not working enough. If the required time needed to allow the body to repair the damage done to it is not given, the body will not perform as asked the next time training occurs.
Over training doesn’t allow the muscle to rebuild, so athletes and people who are over training are breaking down muscle that isn’t even fully recovered. This means they are making no progress, in fact they will usually start to lose muscle.
Athletes often exercise longer and harder so they can improve. But without adequate rest and recovery, these training regimens can have that counter effect, and actually diminish the athletes performance. That is why it is key to structure a exercise routine that has rest built into it in order to avoid over training.
Signs of over training:
- include tiredness
- reduced skeletal and muscular coordination
- soreness
- decreased immune system
- drop of performance
- decrease reaction times
- headaches
- fatigue
- insomnia
- slower reflexes
- decrease in muscle and stamina
- emotional (depression)
- oreness in joints
- increased risk of injury
Measuring Over training:
Orthostatic Heart Test: Used to measure recovery in athletes
How to:
- Once a day at the same time lay down and rest for 10 minutes
- Once the 10 minutes are completed record your heart rate in beats per minute
- Now stand up and after 15 seconds re-measure your heart rate
- Once another 90 seconds has passed re-measure your heart rate
- Once another 120 seconds has passed re-measure your heart rate
An athlete that is properly recovering will show a consistent heart rate between each measurement they take. If there is an increase that is greater than 10 beats per minute or more after the 120 second measurement it may be a sign of overtraining. Use this test to examine and evaluate your training strategies to ensure you are not over training. It is important to note that someone who is under high stress may show an irregular pattern of heart beats.
Treatment: It is important to recognize the signs of over training, and treatment is key if you have come to the point of over training. Treatment it is as simple as resting. Usually the amount of rest that is needed once over training has occurred will take 1-2 full weeks off from all types of training. This is especially the case if you have been doing intensive athletics work such as a camp or end of a season. That time will allow the body to fully recover every muscle and let the neurological system return to balance. Along with time off an increase in sleep, proper nutrients, plenty of fluids, and some sort of therapy (ex. massage, ice) will help the body recover from the damage done.
