Best way to Cross Train while injured

The staple of my cross-training was always deep-water running, which stresses the "lifting" muscles, such as the iliopsoas. I supplemented that with stationary cycling, which allows you to work at a higher cadence and heart rate than you can typically achieve with deep-water running, and also stresses the quads more. These days, I would certainly consider elliptical machines (which weren't available during my peak years). Cross-country ski simulators can provide an excellent substitute as well, and probably have been greatly underutilized by injured runners. If you're really serious about it, you'll mix and match the various options to stress the different muscles. Obviously, you'll need to figure out which exercises you can do without aggravating your foot injury.

To add to oldguy, stairmasters are also excellent for crosstraining. They will really work your quads. I split 50/50 between running and stairmaster and have improved my times this year as well as staying injury free.

Rather than running 100 mile weeks and struggling with injuries, you may run faster and stay injury free by running 70 mile weeks and cross training the equivelant of another 70 miles a week. You can run at a harder intensity, increase your aerobic volume by 40% and have 30% less pounding on your feet and legs.

Thanks for the advice, but what I am looking for (which I wasn't that direct about) was how many minutes/miles/etc do I need to put down to get close to 100mpw doing cross training.

Thanks again.

Have you tried cycling and/or aquajogging?

I was into duathlon a few years ago and found you could maintain a good level of aerobic fitness with cycling.

As my 10 mile run and 25 mile cycle time trial times are similar I always reckoned 1 mile of running is worth 2.5 miles cycling.

If you are in a snowy environment I understand cross country skiing is excellent but never tried it - never snows much in London (fortunately)!

I guess though whatever you do you are in damage limitation mode.

After allowing some transition time to get used to the new activity, you should probably be spending at least as much time on cross-training as you were spending on running -- that is, not less than 10-12 hours per week. That assumes, however, that you weren't overtrained to begin with. Sometimes, an injury is a sign that you need some rest, not more stress. (Although, in my book, most injured runners rest too much -- and also eat too much.)

By the way, I generally did my cross-training at a much higher average level of perceived intensity than I did my running on land. The great thing about deep-water running, cross-country skiing, stationary cycling, etc., is that you can do some really brutal workouts -- that is, very high metabolic stress -- with relatively low stress to connective tissue and bones, because the peak loading forces are much lower than they are in running on hard surfaces. Whenever I returned to running on land after cross-training, I generally continued some amount of deep-water running to maintain the intensity of the overall program.

How good are/were you. What was your progression once you started adding cross training into your regime. This thread has helped me as I am looking to cross train through some minor bugs.

Again, oldguy gave you some excellent info. My advice is to work out 1 1/2 times more than running using time as a guide. If your 100 miles are at 6 a mile, that is 10 hours a week. Crosstrain 15 hours a week.

If you are not used to doing the cross training exercise, you will need to start out at a lesser level and build up. I have found that about 4 weeks is needed and you will be doing peek crosstraining workouts.

If you can find a couple things you enjoy, split them up and do an hour a day on each one.

Thanks for all the input guys. No matter how terrible this board gets, I can always depend on quality answers when I can't answer something myself.

the dream police wrote:

How good are/were you. What was your progression once you started adding cross training into your regime. This thread has helped me as I am looking to cross train through some minor bugs.

When I started deep-water running, my PRs were 2:30:03 in the marathon, and 31+ for 10k. With a combination of long slow mileage and intense deep-water running, my PRs quickly dropped to 2:23:36 and sub-30. In later years, still incorporating intense deep-water running into my training, my marathon PR dropped to 2:20+, then 2:19:31 (three weeks later), then 2:18:54.5. I think that my cross-training was an important part of my overall training program.

That's a pretty good selling point.

pete pfitz had a pretty good looking pool running schedule outlined - but i can\'t remember where I saw it ... hafta look (9 wk pgm as I recall)