When it comes to running, many athletes focus on building endurance, increasing mileage, and speed. While these elements are important, they only scratch the surface of your running potential. To enhance your performance as a runner and increase your odds in avoiding injury, you should include dynamic skills and power in your cross-training workouts. In this blog post, we’ll explore why these factors are crucial for runners and how you can incorporate them into your training regimen. First let’s define what it means to cross-train and what dynamic skills and power training actually mean.
Cross-training
Cross-training involves engaging in a variety of different exercises, activities, or sports to complement and enhance one’s primary fitness goals or training regimen with the goal of improving the performance of the primary sport and preventing future injuries. Dynamic skills refer to a set of physical abilities and attributes that involve agility, balance, coordination, quick reflexes, and the capacity to adapt to changing situations or movements rapidly. Training power refers to the ability to generate and absorb force or work within a specific timeframe. In simple terms, it means to train load and speed. The load could the force created by your bodyweight or an added load from weights.
Dynamic Skills
When considering what skills and drills to include in your training, you should consider what you need for your sport. Runners need to be able to absorb and produce force on a single leg. Think about it, every stride or step you take, you have to land on one foot, and explode off that same foot. You absorb 2-2.5 times your weight in each stride you take while running, and to help prevent injuries, you should train to not only become more explosive, but to land safely and effectively. Once you get better at hopping, skipping, and landing, you can advance these movements by adding in a multi-directional approach. When training to improve force absorption in multiple directions, you are training yourself to land more efficiently and prevent risk of injuries in your ankle, knee, and hip joints.
Exercises
Add these exercises towards the beginning of your strength session, after you warm up, OR add them in before your next run. Complete 1-3 sets through, for :20-:30s or 3-5 reps.
- A, B, C skips
- Single leg pogo hops
- Bilateral and single leg depth drop
- Forward lunges
Once you practice your ability to absorb your own force and change direction, you will see yourself running faster, jumping higher, and moving more efficiently. You have to learn to load efficiently with tension to explode safely with force.
Developing and honing these skills through targeted training can enhance runners’ performance, reduce the risk of injuries, and increase overall agility and athleticism. Additionally, dynamic skills are valuable for improving daily activities and maintaining an active and healthy lifestyle.
