The Importance of Cross Training

Casual athletes often overlook cross training, assuming that it's only important for professionals and that it doesn't matter for general personal fitness. In fact, cross training is crucial for performance, endurance, and overall health.

All professional athletes know that cross training is important. In the world of professional and Olympic sports, athletes include rigorous physical conditioning and cross training activities in their training routines, in addition to training in their sport of choice.

However, for those of us who do physical activities as a hobby rather than as a calling, cross training can be easy to overlook. If you enjoy a particular sport, such as running or swimming, but you want to keep it casual, you may not think of engaging in other types of exercise.

Understanding a little about the potential benefits of cross training could change your mind.

At its most basic, the idea behind cross training is that doing the same type of exercise over and over again hinders the athlete's ability to improve, and could even be harmful in the long term.

Activities like bowling and archery are primarily driven by upper-body strength, whereas lower body strength is primary in sports like running and soccer.

If you only do archery or only play soccer, you run the risk of developing strength unevenly. Although it may not be obvious at first, this is usually not a good thing. Even though you may not need powerful arm muscles to engage in your chosen sport, having underdeveloped arms can be bad for your overall endurance, decreasing your ability to perform well and presenting a health risk.

The reason that uneven strength development is dangerous is that the body, especially the cardiovascular system, works as a single, functioning unit, rather than parceling off effort to the areas of the body that are working.

So, although it's possible to develop muscle unevenly, the stronger muscles will end up doing more work than they need to, making them much less efficient at doing what they are supposed to do.

For example, if you are a runner, you probably already focus on speed and distance in your workout, and you may even incorporate exercises to improve leg strength into your weekly routine. But if you neglect the upper body, your heart, lungs, and legs will end up doing more work to compensate for your lack of upper body strength.

To continue with the example of running, consider the issue of running form. A runner who has not worked to develop core strength, including strengthening abs, back, shoulders, and arms, will have a more difficult time keeping the upper body from swaying side to side while he or she runs.

The extra side to side motion will cause the body to be less stable while running, and the legs will have to compensate by doing work in the side to side direction to keep the runner from falling over.

Of course, that type of effort, even though it may be unconscious on the part of the runner, requires energy that would be better spent in creating faster forward motion. So, by neglecting cross training that would strengthen the upper body, runners can create a situation where they are not running as fast or as far as they could, because the body has to compensate for uneven development.

The best way to prevent the type of problem described above is to engage in regular cross training along with your regular training in your sport of choice. Cross training can be just about anything, from hiking or playing basketball to lifting weights at the gym or attending yoga classes.

Workouts like yoga and pilates are particularly good for cross training because they focus on core strength and flexibility while improving strength in all the major muscle groups and improving lung capacity through controlled breathing.

That's why, if you start attending yoga classes once per week, you are likely notice an overall improvement in your training on the other days. Whatever type of cross training activity you choose, remember not to overdo it so that you have enough energy to notice improvement the next day!