Hello- I am back from Austria and Germany, and will post about that in a bit. In the meantime I have a guest post about cross training:
Cross training is one of the best ways we can keep fit. The benefits of cross training, from survival fitness to premium endurance fitness are too amazing to ignore, so today we are sharing all the fantastic ways that cross training can change the way you approach exercise and can benefit your life in general.
What is Cross-Training?
Cross-training is a training regime that combines several different forms of exercise, usually a combination of variations of swimming, running and cycling. Most athletes focus their attention on improving and perfecting just one sport, and that is of course understandable. However cross-training actually helps athletes to improve their overall performance and fitness, leading to greater levels of sporting success.
Prevent Injuries from Overuse
It is normal for anyone starting a new sport to want to go all in and completely dedicate themselves to that one new and exciting sport. However putting all your energy and time into one specific sport can result in all sorts of injuries that can have you out of practice and recovering for weeks on end.
Quite often your muscular fitness can’t quite match up to your aerobic fitness and that is where some of the problems lie. Cross training can help prevent that from happening. It will help to ease you into new activities and exercises. You can begin running to build up your leg muscles, then you can cross that training with swimming to slowly but surely improve your aerobic health and you can them mix that with cycling for a low-impact endurance sport.
Challenges & Experiences
Getting involved in cross-training will open up a whole new world of exciting new fitness challenges that will have you boldly travelling around experiencing new levels of fitness as a way to see the countryside, different cities and new countries. Everything from London to Paris bike ride, from triathlons across Europe, marathons in foreign cities, to swimming the English channel. Getting involved in different types of sports will naturally have you itching to show off your new skills, and challenge yourself to keep building on them, by getting involved in a wide range of different challenges in your local area and abroad.
Maintaining General Fitness
If you only ever practice one sport your body will never have a natural and healthy balance. Look at bodybuilders for example, they don’t do cardio workouts and the result is that they are enormous. This makes them lack flexibility, endurance and overall mobility and speed. Same with runners, they are associated with really lean bodies that don’t have the upper body strength that other athletes will have. In order to have a more well balanced overall health and fitness you will need to find a balance between endurance and strength and cross-training gives you just that.
So as you can see, getting involved in cross-training is a no-brainer for anyone who wants to take their fitness to the next level, whilst being kind to their bodies and building stamina, fitness, endurance and strength.
Do you cross train? How do you keep a balance in your fitness? I used to cycle a bit, but I have lost confidence riding on the roads and so haven’t for a few years now. I get very antsy if I am not active each day, so I tend to have a walk if I am not running, as I can’t really run for more than 4 days a week. I used to love body pump classes as some strength, but I have swapped that for yoga, which I think suits my needs better as it works on strength but also flexibility.
