Change it up
Cross-training may prevent exercise from becoming monotonous and make staying fit more enjoyable.
Adam’s journal
After a couple of years of good luck, I’ve been felled by an injury. After 10 days of increasingly painful — and increasingly slow — jogs, I finally did the smart thing and gave my aching hamstring a rest.
In the weeks since, I’ve spent a lot of time on a stationary bike. In addition to the opportunity to catch up on my TV viewing, I’ve found that I’m enjoying the change to my exercise routine. Happily, my hamstring is feeling better, too.
How effective is this kind of cross-training at maintaining fitness for running? Are there specific activities I can do that will best prepare me when I’m ready to hit the roads again?
Dr. Prescott prescribes
For many of us, cross-training prevents exercise from becoming monotonous and makes staying fit more enjoyable. The variation in workouts also can help develop different parts of the body while avoiding overuse injuries.
For someone like you who’s focused on a single sport, cross-training can serve as a valuable supplement to your training. It also acts a substitute when you need a break because of psychological fatigue or, as is your case now, injury.
Researchers have looked at the cross-training effects of cycling, running and swimming. Not surprisingly, they’ve found that all of these activities have a host of benefits for the body and fitness levels in general. However, the vast majority of these studies have shown that if you want to maintain or improve performance in any one of these activities, crosstraining is less effective than doing that specific activity.
In other words, for you, riding an exercise bike or hitting the pool likely will not help your marathon times as much as running.
That said, one study found that when recreational runners switched their exercise routine from running to cycling while maintaining comparable levels of training intensity for four weeks, there were no changes in their treadmill VO2 max (a measure of how much oxygen they were able to utilize during an intense running session). These results suggest that, at least for a short period of time, running fitness can be maintained by biking.
Another study involving competitive collegiate swimmers also yielded some promising results. There, researchers determined that intense swim training actually resulted in a significant increase in treadmill VO2 max. (But these subjects weren’t engaged in regular running before the study, so it’s not a shock that long, intense aerobic sessions would make them better runners.)
I think the key to both these studies is intensity. If you want — or have — to take a break from running, the choice between swimming and biking seems less crucial than the ability to maintain intensity in training.
In other words, the best cross-training choice is the one where you’re most likely to push yourself for sustained periods of time. Obviously, that will vary from person to person.
That said, there may be one method of crosstraining that offers an advantage over others.
In a 2011 study, when recreational runners switched to elliptical training for three weeks, they showed no statistically significant loss in treadmill VO2 max. Empirically, this makes sense, as elliptical training most effectively mimics the muscles used in running.
Because of this, with a sore hamstring, you’ll want to be careful about taking this path. But if you find that you can do it painlessly while maintaining the same levels of intensity you use when you run, I’d recommend giving the elliptical a try.
Prescott, a physician and medical researcher, is president of the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation. Cohen is a marathoner and OMRF’s senior vice president and general counsel.