I’m beginning my training for xc. The football trainer generously offered all athletes to participate in their spring “offseason” conditioning drills. Should I do them and supplement running? An example workout would be hurdle mobility drills, stretching, then football-style conditioning sprints such as 12x150 and 20x40 yards with little rest. We will also lift weights afterwards. Any input is appreciated.
Did you ask your coach?
seattle prattle wrote:
Did you ask your coach?
He recommended the workouts w/ football players but I’m not sure if they’re the best for me.
Well, that's a good thing to be thinking about. You could do a more targeted approach towards building up on your weaknesses. WIth that in mind, i'd start with the football plan since that will give you a little structure and tweak it to fill in for what you specifically need work on or want to really build up.
I think it's an excellent idea esp. if it emphesizes core and is broad based.
You know, playing most sports even for fun really conditions you as well. Touch football, ultimate frisbee, soccer, biking, all those things work large groups of muscles and will help avoid injuries when you get into the running. I would just think about getting general conditioning until your XC season starts.
Good for you!
The football trainer generously offered all athletes to participate in their spring “offseason” conditioning drills.
if someone offers you something for nothing, then you are the product. his "generous" offer is intended to convert runners into football players. he wants more folks turning up at practice so that he can turn them into running backs.
supplementary conditioning work is a generally good thing to do, but it is always worth remembering that your sport is a football coach's idea of punishment. football players who mess up or step out of line are punished by being made to run laps of the school field, which is what you do for fun. and this should be enough to tell you that their idea of fitness is going to be markedly different to what you need to run x-country.
also, take a look at their sport. they repeatedly stand around for five or six minutes at a time, then they have three nano-seconds of "action" during which they push each other over and a guy runs twenty yards while looking over his shoulder. the "star player," the quarter back, recites some numbers, stands perfectly still, and throws a ball.
wherever you stand on the idea of this being a sport, training to do that is not going to help you run x-country.
football-style conditioning sprints such as 12x150 and 20x40 yards with little rest.
it isn't obvious to me what football players are going to get out of these drills but they are not the best for a track athlete or for someone contemplating running 5km x-country.
for off-season conditioning, you need to run a variety of distances from around 50m up to around 200m, at speeds ranging from your best 400m speed up to your best 200m speed, with long, slow, walk back recoveries.
you could also benefit from sessions of 20 x 200m at your best 5km pace, with a short jog recovery or sprint the straights and jog the bends, that sort of thing. and fartlek. anyone racing more than 400m will benefit from doing some fartlek work in their off-season.
football coaches probably think fartlek is something Germans put on their hot dogs.
cheers.
There are worse ideas.
You're talking about work that is non specific.....geared toward general athleticism. In April, that is a good idea. If we were in September, not so much.
Also important is how much experience you already have and what you're doing with track season. The more experienced you are, the less general stuff you need. Finish track season first, also.