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Aerobics & Cardio Information |
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Run for Your Life
Running is an ideal symmetrical activity for keeping fit. However, it is common for people to blame running for injuries rather than accept that it may be how they run that is at fault. Is there more to running than just putting one foot in front of the other? The answer appears to be yes! If it were as simple as this there would not be so many running-related injuries. Observe the many different styles, or interpretations, of running and it is obvious that we may not necessarily know how to put one foot in front of the other! What should be an ideal way to improve and maintain fitness is often the cause of many problems. A large percentage of runners, whether running for fun or as part of a training programme, do not seek coaching. We assume it is within our ability to run as we did when young. However we cannot suddenly change our body and attitude when going for a run. How we use ourselves during the day will have an impact on running and if we spend hours slumped at our desk or on the car, our style will reflect the asymmetric nature of a body that has lost the poise of youth. Our approach to any type of training is susceptible to habit. If we keep doing the same things we will get the same result, yet this is exactly what most of us do. Try the following in place of your usual routine. If you feel you do not want to interrupt your schedule for fear of your performance suffering, you may well be a slave to habit. Leave your stopwatch at home to avoid giving any consideration to the time. Following your warm up, try walking the first two hundred yards. Enjoy the ease of the movement and let your legs swing from the hip joints, note these are located at the front of your pelvis. Allow your arms to swing like pendulums from your shoulder joints. Be aware of the ground beneath your feet and think of 'walking tall' by using the upward thrust from the ground in response to your body weight. Before you start to run let the arms swing faster without losing form and allow the legs to match the speed. The next stage is important. Before you move up to a running pace, see if you start to prepare for the effort by holding your breath, stiffening your neck or lifting the shoulders in anticipation of effort. Any unnecessary tension applied at this point is likely to be carried throughout the duration of the run. Try to make the transition from walking to running without additional effort. Allow the arms to bend at the elbow and keep them swinging in a linear motion. Think of the legs swinging from the hips and raise the legs with the knee leading the move. Once the knee has been raised, the lower leg can be allowed to swing through. The common kicking action of most runners increases the workload on the quadriceps, and in my view totally unnecessary. Be conscious of the hip, knee and ankle joints working together in the movement. As with walking tall, think of running tall to utilise the force of gravity. This may sound a little strange initially but the ground is where the force comes from that moves us forward. Be wary of trying to hold yourself up to achieve an upright position. If you can remove unnecessary effort, your body will attain an effortless upright stance due to the absence of inappropriate muscular activity. The stimulus to return to your normal way of running will be very strong, as this would be the most familiar. If the new way feels wrong you are on the right track - this will not be your comfortable habitual style. Resist the urge to get it right and continue the experiment for as long as possible, thinking up through the spine and letting the limbs move freely. Try changing the speed of the arm movement to regulate the pace. Remember to monitor whether you have stiffened the neck. A head pulled back by tightening the neck and trapezius puts more pressure on the back and ultimately affects the whole movement. At some point along the route allow, the arms to stop swinging and drop in front of your hips, an action common with many runners. Observe what this does to your back. You will notice the back starts to twist and shoulders roll. The movement of the psoas muscle, in the lower back, requires a balancing action in the upper trunk to maintain form. This unnecessary twist reduces efficiency by throwing weight in the wrong direction. Return to swinging the arms and observe how the twisting action disappears. The most common response to the thought of stepping up the pace is to put more effort into the stride. If the legs are already being over worked due to a less than efficient technique, the centre of the brain (motor cortex) that initiates the action has to send more impulses adding to the traffic in the feedback loop. We have the sensation that we are running quicker because of the increased effort, but are we using our energy efficiently? When you want to increase your speed try the following method. Initially, when you have decided to quicken the pace, observe what you normally do to achieve this. After a minute, slow down to a comfortable jogging pace and again think about raising the pace. This time do not think about running faster but instead just move your arms quicker. If we think of only moving the arms faster, requiring less energy, the legs will match the speed. Try the exercise and experience the difference. The first time you speed up you will use your usual habitual method, the second will feel different because it will be unfamiliar. Try experimenting with your running, always with the goal of giving an alternative approach a chance. If you are experiencing injuries or loss of form first check your style, get someone to watch or take a video. If its habitual actions that are the cause, you will be the last person to notice - because you are the habit! Running coach legend Percy Cerutty, who coached Olympic Gold medalist Herb Elliot, stated: "The head rests loosely on the shoulders, that is, is not held rigid. It should be capable of movement as the needs of the athlete demand. In my techniques I often test this rigidity of an athlete. Many are quite incapable of turning their heads freely on their neck and shoulders. Any rigidity here spreads right through the whole musculature. Keep the head and neck free and the rest of the moving parts will tend to be free." Less is more! Roy Palmer is a Teacher of The Alexander Technique and author of The Performance Paradox: Train Smarter to enhance performance and reduce injury. More information can be found at http://www.artofperformance.co.uk He works with sports people of all abilities to recognise and overcome performance-limiting habits.
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Skiing Exercises for Recreational Skiers 01/06/09
by: Jim Safianuk
If you exercise often, you'll begin to build your strength and enhance your endurance in the muscle groups used in downhill skiing. You'll be preparing yourself for the rigors of skiing in the expert zones where both staying power and explosive power are of the utmost importance. First, we’ll get into the why and when you need to exercise, before moving onto the five essential elements of ski-specific exercising.
The ultimate body for an expert skier is powerful, from strong ankles to strong shoulders, and every finely-tuned muscle in between. Remember the last time you watched someone effortlessly weave through a mogul field and wondered, "How does he do that?" It's partly due to practice, and partly to the body awareness and balance that strength training provides. The expert skier, who is physically strong, instinctively cues every part of his or her body. A fit body is like a well-tuned sports car. It handles effortlessly, acting on subtle intuitions.
Skiing requires a number of athletic abilities including technical, physical, and mental skills. This article is all about the physical requirements of expert skiing. Future articles will deal with the technical aspects of all-terrain skiing, as well as establishing the right mind set. But first, to ski strong you need to be strong.
Why do ski exercises?
If you think skiing exercises are just for serious skiers, think again. Strong muscles improve every skier's performance, whether he or she is a beginner, intermediate, advanced, or expert skier. For those who feel they’ve reached a plateau in their skiing ability, ski exercises may provide the boost you need to reach the next level.
Few sports are as physically demanding as downhill skiing, especially skiing on moguls, in trees, and down steeps. Yet, many skiers hit the slopes after little or no training in the preseason. They pay for it with sore muscles, but that's only the beginning. The lack of good physical fitness also increases the chances of injury. The most common ski injuries are joint related, and the best way to protect joints is by building muscle. Strong muscles stabilize your joints and, in turn, enable you to control your skis.
In light of the above, this article focuses on building the muscle groups around the joints that skiing taxes the most, including the knees, hips, and ankles. For the knee and ankle joints, we’ll be dealing with the upper leg muscles, including the quads and hamstrings, as well as the lower leg muscles, most noticeably the calves and Achilles tendons. For the hip joints, we’ll be concerned with the core, namely, the hip flexors, glutes, abdominals, groin, and lower back muscles.
Doing the downhill skiing exercises on a regular basis will make your skiing a lot easier, as well as take your skill set to the next level, because you will:
When should you do ski exercises?
Exercising can be done any time you feel like it. However, in the context of the sport of downhill skiing, I recommend you begin exercising at home, two to three months prior to the start of the ski season. If your season kicks off in December, try to begin your preseason conditioning program in late September.
Exercising in the Preseason
However, if you’re already involved in a ski-related conditioning program during the summer months, you’ll be able to shorten you’re fall program from three months to about six weeks. In addition, you should do your ski exercises on three nonconsecutive days each week. This will allow 48 hours between successive work-outs. The muscle groups will have plenty of time to recover.
Does this seem like a lot of work? At first, it will be. But after your first runs of the season, you'll be amazed at how much easier it is to link smooth, short-radius turns from top-to-bottom, all day long. You’ll look back up the hill and smile, knowing that your exercise program in the fall was well worth the effort. You will have cleared the first hurdle on the road to expert skiing. Physically, you will now be much stronger!
Exercising during the Season
Strenuous activities like downhill skiing, especially at the expert level, promote tightness and inflexibility in the muscle groups. Therefore, stretching before and after skiing will keep you flexible and help prevent common injuries. Should you do the ski exercises after the season starts?
Yes, definitely. After the season starts you can catch up and get in sync by doing the exercises during the week when you’re not out skiing. If you ski on Saturday and/or Sunday, do the skiing exercises on Tuesdays and Thursdays. By exercising throughout the season, as well as skiing, you’ll accelerate the strength building process, and your performance will show a marked improvement.
Exercising in the Postseason
By exercising in the postseason you will maintain your fitness level that you worked hard to implement in the preseason. Aspiring expert skiers need to impart continuity in their conditioning programs throughout the year. Once you become strong, you need to stay strong.
In addition, by participating in a ski-related exercise program from June to September, you’ll be able to ramp up much more quickly in the fall. The summer is also a good time to improve your cardiovascular endurance.
The Five Essentials of Ski-Specific Exercising
Flexibility, cardio, strength, balance, and power are the five essential elements for the expert skier to master. Let’s consider each one of these requirements in turn.
Flexibility: Your range of motion or mobility is of prime importance. Stretching to maintain muscle elasticity, which decreases with age, is vital for skiing. Stretching for skiers will not be covered here, as we have already dealt with this subject in a previous article entitled Ski Fitness for Recreational Skiers.
Cardiovascular Endurance: Aerobic capacity is very important to skiers so they have the stamina to ski in the expert zones, and the endurance to ski all day long. If you wish to improve your cardiovascular fitness, try one of the following activities on three nonconsecutive days per week. Perhaps it would be best to do your cardiovascular routine on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and your strength, balance, and power exercises on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Strength and Endurance: Muscular strength improves the expert skier's ability to relax, yet still maintain control, and to handle the quick adjustments needed in all-terrain skiing. The movements in alpine skiing include all the major muscle groups, so total body muscular strength is of prime importance. You'll want to do exercises that strengthen your entire body.
With this in mind, target the following ski exercises and muscle groups:
Stability and Balance: Why should you care about balance? Well, for starters, it’s the basic skill needed in practically every sport. Changing your center of gravity to match your moves is the key to efficiency in sport. Good balance can help you keep your form when you encounter changing terrain and snow conditions. The result is better skiing and fewer spills.
Slight deviations in terrain often require subtle adjustments in your balance to avoid injury. To enhance your stability and balance, target the following muscle groups:
Fortunately, the exercises that help improve stability and balance work to build muscle strength and endurance in the core, all at the same time. This can be seen if you look back at the previous topic, Strength and Endurance.
Power and Quickness: To improve your reflexes and foot-to-foot quickness, you need dynamic, ski-specific drills from lateral training that simulate the actual movements you do on the ski hill. With this in mind, we’ve included five jumping exercises, which are also called plyometrics, as the essential exercises to improve your foot-to-foot quickness and explosive power.
Plyometrics are commonly referred to as explosive types of exercise drills, and are often used in conditioning programs for elite skiers because the combination of squatting with weights and lateral jumps, sprints, or quickness drills, develops the leg and hip power necessary for high performance skiing.
Before you Start
Caution must be exercised whenever beginning any conditioning program. Use an exercise regimen that’s appropriate for your body type and your present level of conditioning. Please consult with your physician, if you suspect that this ski-specific program is not suitable for you at the present time.
About The Author
Jim Safianuk is a certified ski instructor and writer of the downhill skiing lessons in the course Skills of the Expert Skier. Discover the oldest secrets and learn the newest skills to help you become the expert skier you always dreamed you could be. Click here for more information: http://www.becomeanexpertskier.com/
Copyright 2004, by JKS Publishing. All Rights Reserved
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