Athletes of all levels of skill and interest can benefit from cross training, which really just means using a variety of activities in your workout program to achieve increased fitness.
Depending on your level of competition in your sport you may approach cross training differently. For those playing at the highest levels of your sport, you will be more focused on complimentary activities that train the same muscle groups, and nuero-muscular pathways that you use in your primary activity so your body becomes extremely efficient at performing those movements.
If your goals are more generalized to overall fitness and health, you may approach your cross training by choosing activities that work opposing muscle groups, or you might just change things up to train different neural pathways…or just keep yourself from getting bored.
Both of these approaches will help you with your training program by:
- Preventing you from getting bored or overtraining a single sport
- Injury Prevention & recovery
- Increased endurance, strength + flexibility
- Tools to overcome a stalled exercise program
- Reduces risk of overtraining
- Different types of exercise can lead to different sport-specific adaptations to the heart, creating a more well-rounded cardiovascular base for exercise and sport.
There are sports that compliment each other and use similar muscle groups or skills; and there are sports that oppose each other in terms of what is needed physically for each of them.
Two examples of groups of sports that compliment each other with their groups, and oppose in the other:
Downhill Skiing, Skating, Martial Arts, Gymnastics, Dance
Sports that develop a heightened sense of spatial awareness, flexibility, strength, balance and risk assessment.
Swimming, Running, Cycling, Cross Country Skiing
Sports that require cardiovascular endurance and strength. The presence of impact (or not) makes these sports compatible in offering different levels of resistance and gravity which make an impact on your training and physiology.
The beauty of cross training is that it’s supposed to be a fun way to change things up and build a new skill. If you are a gymnast who wants to work on their style in a dance class, that is just as valid as the dancer who wants to build up their endurance by running.
This is where defining your goals for building your work out programs/plans is useful in determining what to do with your time. It all comes down to whether you’re perfecting a skill or shooting for overall fitness.
If you have questions about what cross training would be good for you please don’t hesitate to contact your physio!