With an increased range of motion, your muscles will become more pliable and strong, making them less prone to injury.

Cross training also helps to increase mobility and circulation, allowing your body to move more freely and with greater ease. This type of training can also help you develop better coordination and balance, both of which are important components of any workout routine.

By working different muscle groups at various angles, you can improve your overall strength, while also reducing your risk of injury. Additionally, increased muscle flexibility can help you maintain proper posture during exercise, helping you work out more effectively.

Cross training is an excellent way to improve the mobility of your joints. Working out with a variety of exercises and machines can help improve range of motion, balance, and posture.

It also helps reduce the risk of injury and strengthen the muscles that support the joints. When you cross train, you are using multiple muscle groups at the same time, which helps create balance in the body. This helps to reduce stress on the joints by distributing forces evenly throughout the body.

Additionally, as you become more accustomed to various movements, you will find that your body will become more accustomed to them and your joints will be less stiff after working out.

One of the lesser known benefits of cross training is its ability to improve lymphatic drainage. The lymphatic system is responsible for eliminating toxins from the body, and working out helps to enhance this process. When you cross train, your body works hard to move toxins around and out of the body.

This can help to reduce muscle soreness and fatigue, as well as improving overall physical health. Cross training also helps with circulation and can help reduce swelling in the body. Improved lymphatic drainage leads to a healthier and more efficient body, which is an important part of any fitness routine.

One of the major benefits of cross training is that it can help to increase your metabolism. When you work out, your body needs more energy to fuel your activity. The more intense and varied the exercise, the more energy your body needs to sustain it. When I raced bikes in-season, I paddled paddleboards in my off-season.

I ended up with a pretty solid core when I got back into aerobars. When I was a surf-lifesaver in-season, I did track and field alongside this and became much more explosive.

Sooner or later, with age, we all become a product and result of our chosen lifestyles. By drilling into your chosen sport and experimenting with new things, you may find new ways to improve both physically and psychologically.

Dr Bryce Dyer is Deputy Head of Department at Bournemouth University and a Visiting Professor at the University of Bolton. With a passion for the equipment we use in sport, Bryce has worked with athletes or national teams for the , and Paralympic Games. A masters athlete with a self-professed emphasis on versatility and variety, Bryce has won medals in his age group at national championships in six different sports and gone on to compete at age-group world championships in a few of these.

He currently competes as a cyclist in time trial, track and offroad events. Bryce has published over 50 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters, is a Chartered Technological Product Designer and is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

Subscribe Get performance advice emails. Get advice. For the general population, cross-training may be highly beneficial in terms of overall fitness. Similarly, cross-training may be an appropriate supplement during rehabilitation periods from physical injury and during periods of overtraining or psychological fatigue.

Abstract Cross-training is a widely used approach for structuring a training programme to improve competitive performance in a specific sport by training in a variety of sports.

Search the site. Remember Login. Register Reset Password. x You are viewing 1 of your 1 free articles. Cross training: sport-specific workouts to boost your performance Base endurance training by Andrew Hamilton.

Endurance athletes are diversifying: swimmers are cycling and lifting weights, cyclists are doing more running, and runners are taking up stair stepping, cycling, and resistance training. Can such "cross training" workouts really help athletes in their preferred sports?

Does being a better cyclist automatically make you a better runner, too? Owen Anderson provides some answers. Owen Anderson provides some answers There are three ways that cross training might help you: 1 Improved leanness: Doing some cross training can help you burn more calories per week.

For example, runners who maintain their usual running schedules and add one minute cycling workout per week can lose one extra pound of fat every 10 weeks, provided they don't increase their food intakes. Over the course of a year, that's about 50 additional cycling workouts and five pounds of lost fat.

True, such runners could simply run 30 minutes more per week, but heightened running mileage often leads to injuries, whereas time spent on the bike is seldom damaging. The vanished corpulence that comes from the 30 minutes on a two-wheeler can make a big performance difference. For example, a female runner who trims her percent body fat from about On the other hand, throwing in a hell-fire bike session produces little trauma to the leg muscles and can often be well tolerated.

This upswing in intensity can do two great things: it can make the heart a bigger, stronger pump, and it can hoist blood volume. Receive top quality information about Fitness programmes as well as a bundle of free reports by subscribing to our No.

Sure remember that a 5'10', well-trained endurance runner has about per cent more blood than the sedentary man on the street corner. This extra blood produces performance bonuses, because it allows the heart to send more blood and thus fuel and oxygen to the leg muscles during exercise and more blood to the skin for cooling.

Now, bear in mind that the best way to upgrade blood volume is to perk up the intensity not the length of your workouts. You get the picture now: adding a sizzling bike workout when it would be very difficult to add in a demanding running session can produce enhanced increases in blood volume, which would then improve running capacity.

Putting in the incendiary bike workouts probably also improves the 'buffering capacity' of runners' leg muscles, making them more resistant to the fatigue-inducing effects of lactic acid.

Those two very positive changes higher blood volume and improved tolerance of high work rates probably represent the mechanism underlying a startling recent study, in which 10 well-trained runners added some scalding bike-interval training to their weekly schedules.

Within six short weeks, the runners improved their 5-K times by almost 30seconds,from to As a result, fewer muscle cells need to be activated when you run at your usual race intensity. This saves energy and improves your running economy, a key indicator of running prowess.

This is why recent studies have linked weight training with augmented running efficiency and improved running performances.

Strength training has also been linked with higher-velocity tennis serves, faster throwing speeds by baseball pitchers, and larger-amplitude jumps among basketball players.

It's a form of cross training which really works. Why cross training CAN'T work All of that sounds fine, but there's also a key reason why cross training should not work.

As you already know, the best workouts are the ones which are SPECIFIC to the demands of the event for which you are preparing.

To get ready for 5-K racing, running intervals at 5-K pace is better than long, slow running, for example. Likewise, running is better than biking at preparing for running competitions, and biking is better than running when readying oneself for the Tour de France.

In that regard, cross training is a waste of time, since it can never prepare athletes as well as more specific training.

The overall idea is that a cross training workout doesn't groom you for the exact neuromuscular demands of your main sport. That's because the muscular and nervous systems work in contrasting ways in different sports, with differing accents on various muscle groups. The calves are the main muscles of running, for example, but are no big deal in cycling, a sport in which the quads go full tilt.

Bear in mind that that's not necessarily such a bad thing, though. Runners who take up cycling might improve their quadriceps strength enough to become terrors at hill running, or they might improve the 'anaerobic' and buffering capacities of their quads to such an extent that they could more easily tolerate very high running speeds.

Note also that the cross-training arguments are definitely biassed toward the idea that cross training is a good thing. We have three key positives about cross workouts higher workout intensities, improved leanness, and greater strength and only one real knock against them the lack of specificity.

That's probably why scientific research has been very kind to the concept of cross training. There are now four separate studies documenting improvements in running capacity after runners took up biking.

In two of those studies, runners completely substituted cycling for running; in two others, they added cycling to their existing running programmes. Other studies have suggested that stair stepping and aquarunning can do a nice job of preserving running capability when it's not possible to run.

And we still haven't mentioned the possible mental benefits of cross training. If you can learn to mentally tolerate a super-tough bike workout, you can probably better cope with the pain of running fast, too. Plus, it's important to consider the 'muscle-trauma scenario'.

Let's face it, most runners do a great job of battering their legs. They run when they're tired, run when they're hurt, run so much that they never really let their leg muscles recover completely.

Switching over to bike workouts can at least produce partial recoveries, because it prevents the damage which can accrue to leg muscle cells when a tired runner decides that a miler is just the thing to improve fitness.

Which other sports are best for runners? Many runners aren't sure which alternative forms of exercise are best for their running.

For that reason, we've listed some popular sports or activities below, ranking them from best for your running no. I Cycling: Narrowly edging out resistance training, cycling comes in no. These investigations have shown that cycling can improve K race times by 9 per cent, quicken 5-K race performances by 3 per cent, upgrade two-mile times by 1 per cent, or boost V02max by 15 per cent!

Cycling allows runners to attain all three goals of cross training heightened workout intensities, improved leanness, and greater strength. Recent scientific research has linked strength training with a 4-per cent improvement in running economy, reduced heart rates while running, and improved race times at distances ranging from the SK to marathon.

Older research linked weight training with a per cent uptick in endurance at intensities which could be sustained for a little over an hour and a per cent spike in endurance when running at about onemile race pace.

Resistance training probably also protects runners against injuries, and circuit training provides a decent cardiovascular workout, in addition to hiking muscle power.

During a typical game, soccer players travel from metres, which includes metres of jogging, metres of running at a high but not maximal speed, metres of sprinting, metres of walking, and metres of moving backwards.

Soccer players' heart rates are above beats per minute for most of a game, and blood lactate levels often rise to millimoles per liter, comparable to the concentrations commonly observed during 5-K and 1 0-K running competitions.

Overall, a soccer competition is like an excellent, prolonged interval workout. It's not surprising that many of the top Kenyan runners were originally excellent soccer players.

In a recent study, deep-water runners who totally abstained from regular running for six weeks were able to perfectly preserve their racing ability. Aquarunning actually mimics real running more closely than cycling, but the tedium of spending time in the pool gives the activity only a no.

In a recent study, individuals who participated only in stair-climbing workouts for nine weeks improved their running performances as much as athletes who engaged in regular running sessions.

If there's a negative to stair climbing, it's that actual stride rates are seldom very high even during maximum exercise, so it's hard to learn to run fast on a stair-stepper. Great for losing weight, hitting high intensities, and raising muscle strength around the hip areas.

Plus, the upper-body movements used in aerobic dance may even tone up runners' torsos a bit. Plus, the high impact forces associated with running are much reduced.

Unfortunately, the start-stop nature of the games is sometimes hard on runners' knees and quadriceps muscles. Use the following rules to guide your cross-training efforts: I Being in great running shape does not mean you're ready for prolonged exercise in another sport, so approach new activities cautiously.

An hour on a stair stepper or two hours of tennis if you've never tried those sports before may leave you too sore to complete a running workout you've planned for the following day.

When you try an alternative sport, limit your first workout to no more than 20 minutes. If you run five times per week, adding a cycling workout to give you six workouts per week might transport you into a zone of fatigue and poor performances.

You can increase your total number of weekly workouts later. For example, runners with sore quads or Achilles tendons sometimes find that cycling aggravates those conditions, and runners with plantar fasciitis or lower-back stiffness often don't respond well to long-distance walking or court sports.

For example, if you usually run 45 minutes a day, let your cycling workouts last for 45 minutes, too, if you've had previous experience with cycling see rule no.

I above. Within the 45 minutes, throw in a couple of tough two-minute intervals, increasing the number and length of the intervals gradually over time. Fatigue is a sign that your body needs rest, not extra work.

Remember that the whole idea behind cross training is to keep your fitness and interest in exercise high over the long term not to leave your body drastically depleted.

Two common questions Here are two questions which are frequently asked about cross training: Question: On a day when your muscles are too sore for running or you feel too tired to run, are you better off cross training or resting completely?

If your muscles really need restoring, that's obviously a bad thing. On the other hand, if you are physically OK but MENTALLY tired, you should base your decision on what the workout will actually do for your psyche. If the cross session will recharge your mental batteries and reinforce the idea that working out doesn't have to be humdrum routine, then by all means do it.

If the effort is not going to be fun, avoid it. Question: Why does cross training seem to be better for some sports rather than others? Answer: It's true that the effects of cross training are specific to the main-sport, cross-sport combination.

By mixing it up and trying to do other exercises outside of your wheelhouse, overuse injuries can be prevented. The reason why is simple: constantly performing the same physical activity targets the same muscle groups repeatedly, and it taxes the body over time. This break from intensive training in your sport can provide new motivation, too, and help alleviate any gym-session boredom.

Cross-training programs vary, depending on the sport you practice. Generally, though, the purpose of cross-training is to strike a balance. For instance, if you are an avid cyclist or runner, you may choose to ramp up your weight training to give yourself a break from your cardio-heavy activities.

Cross-training may simply mean mixing up your regular routine by taking a new Zumba class or doing yoga in the park with friends. This sense of camaraderie will help you find the joy in working out in a new, exciting way.