Workout Crazes
I’ve been meaning to write this blog for a while and finally decided to stop procrastinating. I have seen many different fitness crazes come and go almost but not as frequently as diet crazes. Is there anything that makes one better than the other? My personal opinion is no.
Not to hit on these fitness programs because they do the job of getting people moving whom probably don’t have the self-motivation otherwise. Now I am starting to see workouts geared towards runners or more specifically endurance athletes. Running and endurance events take time, and in the fast pace society that we have created – time is precious. Many of the newer regimes advertise intense workouts for less time to achieve the same effect as training at a less intense rate for longer periods saving time. Seems simple enough, but there are some precautions there.
Take a look at CrossFit Endurance (www.crossfitendurance.com) meant to be combined with regular CrossFit workouts (www.crossfit.com). Both are pretty good workouts, but don’t appear to be anything special simply because they aren’t preaching anything new. Probably the most challenging part of any training regime is maintaining self-discipline to follow it. I have always contended that training and training regimes is not “one size fits all” which is why I experiment with numerous programs during the off-season and take away the little bits of each that seem to work for me.
The basics have always been there, speed, strength, and endurance whether you use some fancy training program or make something up for yourself. As runners, we seem to gravitate towards the endurance side of the sport more than the other two because it’s the easiest really – throw on some running shoes and go out. I’ve always used strength training for a bridge through the hard winter days. Speed has always been the aspect I avoided with some great success over the last few years, firmly believing that increasing my weekly mileage and long runs would do the trick. What I think happened with that philosophy is I trained myself to go slower than I was capable of.
My question for others is what do you do for training? Do you have specific goals? Do you follow a prescribed training program or do something on your own? Either way, how has it worked out for you?