Dr. Slava Shut

To stay healthy in your sport, you need good form, good flexibility, and good nutrition. 

That might mean something different for each person, but it turns out, a lot of sports require the body to do a lot of the same things. You have to keep your body healthy in order for it to perform at its best.

But to really specialize in something and become the best you can possibly be at it, you need to find ways to train specifically for the best performance.

Welcome to Topic Tuesday, where we discuss something specific about health, business, or life in general. Today, we’re going to talk about running.

Running is an exercise with great crossover benefits for most athletes. Improving something about your running will almost always improve your performance in your sport.

Although plenty of athletes have to train ther running most should have very different workouts.

Let’s talk a little about how running benefits athletes:

Specialized Training

Marathon runners, soccer players, sprinters, boxers, and basketball stars all have this in common: these people do a lot of running. All of them have to run in order to compete. And when they do run, it helps when they’re quick and efficient at it. The quicker they can run, the more of an advantage they have against opponents. 

But as far as running is concerned for all of these athletes, that’s about where the similarities end.

Cardiovascular Conditioning

Generally, the more you run, the easier it is to run. Your heart becomes more efficient at getting blood to all your organs when you need it. Good cardio makes running feel a lot more comfortable.

Leg strength

Running strengthens the legs. The calf muscle does a lot of work when you run. More powerful legs can make accelerating and climbing easier over time.

You don’t need to be able to squat 500 lbs. to have legs strong enough to run. Often, runners are finely tuned to specialize in running efficiently. The strength your legs develop from running might not be obviously visible. Running doesn’t trigger a lot of muscle growth. But legs that are conditioned for running won’t become exhausted as easily.

Physical endurance

Just as running longer distances can make you better at distance running, sprinting shorter distances can yield improvement in sprints.

All of these attributes are important to some degree for most athletes. But everyone isn’t going to benefit the same from running. Different people competing in different sports are going to have completely different needs.

Running For Soccer Players

Soccer players get to manage their own pace for much of their time on the field. There’s lots of running in soccer, but there’s also quite a bit of standing and walking. A player might go from a standstill to a sustained sprint for 30 seconds, before a whistle is blown and the player stands still again for a while. Football is a lot like this too.

But to best prepare the athlete, it would also be important to work in a specialized conditioning workout to maximize performance. A soccer player would also likely benefit from a challenging and dynamic HIIT routine. Changing intervals and switching the intensity of the workout often is great preparation for the pace of a soccer or football athlete.

A long distance running workout might be an amazing benefit to a soccer player. A better conditioned cardiovascular system is always a big advantage in sports. 

But training a soccer player specifically to plod along at a relatively lukewarm pace is not the best long term strategy for their success. An athlete that needs quickness, strength, and the agility to change speeds and directions quickly should train specifically for those abilities. The right preparation can give you the best performances.

Running For Sprinters

Finely tuned athletes propelling their bodies forward as quickly as possible for short distances can lead to some exhilarating spectacles. Though there are rarely any collisions, the potential of pure human speed has created memorable olympic moments throughout the ages.

Aside from the Olympics, there are national sprinters at the college level becoming stars now in their own right. Veterans and rookies alike all have some of the same objectives. To an extent, everyone that walks has a lot of the same objectives; move in a direction without injury. 

I’ve seen injuries where someone just lost their balance while they were walking, so it’s always amazing to me to see someone effortlessly sprinting at top speed!

A good track sprinter needs a very specific type of mastery over their central nervous system. The CNS connects your muscles and organs to your brain through a network of nerves that runs throughout your body. The nerves trigger voluntary and involuntary body functions by transmitting electrical signals originating from the brain.

When you become fatigued, your brain might be sending signals through your nervous system to your legs to keep running, but your lungs, heart, and muscles might be causing you to move more slowly than you want to.

HIIT is great for track sprinters, but because of the power involved in accelerating, I always recommend progressive overload as well. High Intensity Interval training is still great for stamina and overall endurance. To improve performance though, a weight training routine for associated muscle groups is essential.

Running For Boxers

The sport of boxing puts a completely different set of demands on the body than other sports. It requires the quick movements of soccer, the explosiveness of basketball, and the toughness of football. There are no timeouts or substitutions. If you suffer an injury that prevents you from continuing, you are, by definition in most cases, the loser of the match. It’s a brutal sport.

And even boxers must make their peace with running to be successful in their careers. Many are known to run as much as 5 miles a day to prepare for their fights. Many run even more. Due to the unpredictable nature of the sport itself, there are all kinds of strategies around why certain fighters choose to run more than others.

Whereas in many sports, the goal of preparing in training camp is purely to improve your performance, the training camp of a boxer has additional limitations. Fights are sanctioned at specific weight limits, meaning that there are often severe penalties for coming to compete if your weight is wrong.

Boxers might use running and conditioning exercises to lose weight so they can meet contracted limits; even if they’re already in their peak athletic shape. Sometimes, this can be useful for building additional endurance. Other times, this can lead to overtraining, which can actually wear a fighter out and possibly cause injuries. 

No matter what kind of athlete you are, a one-size-fits-all training style is usually not the best if you’re trying to get better in a specific area. After you’ve set some good habits, it’s time to improve.
Do you need a workout routine tailored to your specific needs for the new year? Contact my team to set up a 1-on-1 with me. Together, we can get you to the healthiest version of yourself!