I am a High School runner focused on mile/2mile currently recovering from a stress reaction in the lower back. Any opinions on the benefits of aqua jogging vs the elliptical vs cycling on a serious road bike?
I am a High School runner focused on mile/2mile currently recovering from a stress reaction in the lower back. Any opinions on the benefits of aqua jogging vs the elliptical vs cycling on a serious road bike?
I was injured before and found that eliptyical was the best way to train the heart as you could get your HR to 160bpm and move along for an hour.
I found it was hard to to do that in the swimming pool. and the spin bike class is more anaerobic and HR dones not stay high long without getting very tired.
depends for you what stresses you back.
last year Elish McCOLGAN uk 3000m steepel chase done all CV on eliptyical due to stress fracture. and just 2 track work outs no jogging to limit milage and got PB
Rowing. Total body.
roshea101 wrote:
I am a High School runner focused on mile/2mile currently recovering from a stress reaction in the lower back. Any opinions on the benefits of aqua jogging vs the elliptical vs cycling on a serious road bike?
I have been in all those places. I would say that rest is the best.
You won't come back any slower, and as long as you start up again as if you're needing to get fit, and not just making up for lost weeks, you'll come back better.
I know you don't want to hear this. You'll delay healing and create scar tissue that will eventually impact your preparation and performance for year. Take a full rest, then you'll come back quicker.
You already have overuse injuries, that a high school kid shouldn't have.
I spent ~2 years in a state of nearly constant (different) injury. IMHO, if you're not going to be off running very long, the elliptical is the best for maintaining fitness. As someone else said, you can maintain a very high HR (I was able to go >190 during one particularly grinding interval session).
Try to pick an elliptical that allows you to adjust the ramp (set it low so as to mimic a running stride) and/or allows you to go between 180-200 RPM. The ET I used would gave me RPM, so for intervals I would set the resistance higher while trying to maintain an RPM in this range.
A word of caution: you will come back fit, but your muscular/skeletal system will still be relatively weak. I underestimated this, leading me to the cycle of 2 year of constant injury. Do lots of running relevant strength exercises (lunges, squats, side plank) as the ET doesn't really train these groups in the same way that running does. In some cases, it can contribute to issues that might have caused your injury (stabilizer muscle weakness, certain imbalances etc.).
In some cases, I would recommend doing less/no cross-training because of the danger of your cardiovascular fitness getting out of sync with your running specific soft tissue/skeletal strength.
Swimming (if you have a background in competitive swimming) can be good also.