RTTC #224 Cross Training What It Is and Why Every Slow Runner Needs It

In this episode of Running to the Castle, Dr. Ali redefines what cross training actually means for slow runners, and it goes way beyond strength training. 

She makes the case that true cross training is any cardiovascular activity that challenges your heart and lungs the same way a run would, from stationary bikes and ellipticals to paced walking. 

She also digs into how to use cross training to train to replace overloaded run days, and stop letting your breathing be the thing that slows you down on race day. 

If you've ever felt like your legs were ready but your lungs weren't, this episode is your answer.

Learn more about Stronger. Faster. Finisher. !

Ready to cross the finish line stronger, faster, and prouder at your next runDisney race? 

Get personalized support, smarter training, and strategies designed specifically for slow, back-of-the-pack runners who want to build a bigger buffer ahead of the balloon ladies, have time for character photos and energy to enjoy the Disney Parks. Learn more about the Stronger. Faster. Finisher. Program today and be the first to know when doors open!

Free Resources

• Follow me on Instagram @rundisneydpt
• Join the Facebook Community to get training support
• Check out FREE training plans for injury-prone runDisney runners on my website. 
• Book a Free 30 minute Call with me if you're wondering how you should train and if working together makes sense.
  
  Hi, I'm Dr. Ali
  I've been running for 15+ years and been in the rehab space since 2012 when I earned my Doctor of Physical Therapy Degree. I get injury prone runDisney runners across the finish line without feeling broken.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey, how's it going? Today I'm talking about cross-training, what it is, and why all slow runners need it. This is Running to the Castle, a podcast for injury-prone Run Disney runners on a journey to running magical miles. Join me, Dr. Alley, as I share the secrets I've gathered as a runner, doctor of physical therapy, and coach. You'll learn the exact ways I get my clients to the castle strong without feeling broken or held together with KT tape as they cross the finish line. I got a question earlier this week that said, when you say cross-training, what does that mean? Their understanding of cross-training is just making sure they're doing strength training in addition to running. So that is often what many coaches say and mean. So cross-training as an official definition, Merriam-Webster says cross-training is to train in various sports or exercises, especially for well-rounded health and muscular development. So some coaches think of cross-training as strictly strength training because they are doing a mixture of other activities to balance out the running. I agree with that. Like I agree that strength training has a purpose and has a place. It is important if you want to have just an absolutely well-rounded routine. When it comes to cross-training, I actually take the definition just a little bit further. And I do that too so that we can categorize different training elements differently, which then helps us to determine what should be in our training schedule, in our training program. So I take cross-training as another activity that will work your heart and your lungs the same way that your run would. So what does that mean? So cardiovascular means like the heart and the lung system that includes your circulation, your blood flow, your heartbeat, your breathing rate, things like that. Cardiovascular fitness is what we, the general population, typically think of as being fit, right? Like, let me let me back up a little bit because some people think of being fit as being skinny, but you can be skinny fat and not be fit in the slightest. But what I mean by fit is like when you don't have a hard time breathing when you go and run. Like, you know, Royal's watching basketball right now. So like we see these NBA, these basketball players where they're sprinting up and down the court. And yeah, they're, you know, challenging themselves. They're running really fast, but they're not over on the sidelines, absolutely, you know, huffing and puffing like crazy, crazy, crazy. And they can take a few minutes' rest and they can get back out there because they are fit, right? They are fit for their sport. So cross-training is a way to make sure your heart and your lungs are getting exercised, but not running for it. So this could be any cardiovascular exercise, any exercise, any activity that makes your breathing harder, makes you breathe faster, makes your heart pump harder, faster, gets your heart rate and your breathing up, but it's not running. So that could be paced walking. So walking fast. I use the term paced walking, meaning it's a purposeful pace. You remember I talk about running with purpose. Each workout should have a purpose. Well, if I say go for a walk, the next question is always well, is it a leisurely walk? Is it snifari? Is it like the fastest mall walking I can do? So I use the word paced walking or the phrase paced walking. When you're paced walking, you have a purpose. You are picking a pace that is fast and trying to maintain it. So I just did a paced walk as my cross-training the other day, and I am doing three-minute run intervals, one-minute walk intervals for my running. So I'm doing that on my paced walking. So for my three minutes, I am aiming to maintain a pace that is challenging for me to maintain, but not impossible. And then that one minute of walking, I bring it down as kind of a recovery, kind of a change up. And I do that. Other people will just at other times actually, I have just tried to maintain a specific pace. So let's say I want to try and maintain a 15 minute per mile walking pace. I would just go for 25 minutes and aim to keep on average that 15 minute per mile walking pace. And that has done done me very well. And I was able to walk the entire 10 miler at different points. I was walking a 14 minute per mile pace, then slowed it down to 16 minute per mile pace. And I was able to vary that because I had practiced it in my cross-training. Other types of cross-training are things like riding a stationary bike or a Peloton or a spin class, going for a bike ride outside, using an elliptical, using an arc trainer, using a rower or an erg, using a stair stepper, swimming, playing another sport. Maybe in the winter you like ice skating. Maybe in the summer you play basketball. Maybe you do other activities with your kids. I'm not sure. But it as long as it makes you huff and puff to a degree of what you would have been doing on a run. And you might say, well, what kind of run? Any kind of run. It doesn't have to be crazy intense like a speed workout. It could be kind of leisurely, like an easy long run, or it could be somewhere in between. The goal is to challenge your heart and your lung function so that when you go to do a speed workout, or when you go to do a 20-mile long run, now it's just battling your mind for those seven hours that you're out on that 20-mile long run, or battling your legs going that fast for a 45-minute progression run, but you're not also battling how quickly you get out of breath or how high your heart rate goes. Because you have also been working on that in other ways. You've been working on that by doing the swimming or doing a stationary bike. And so now you can focus on the other aspects. Like, have you ever had a situation where you were like, oh, I feel like my legs could have gone forever if I could only have caught my breath? Right. Like that's where cross-training comes in because your legs are strong enough to keep up. Your mind is strong enough to keep up. You aren't battling, you know, can I actually do this? Confidence issues or, you know, boredom being out there for seven hours on a 20-mile long run. It's, it's the breathing and the heart rate that is catching you up that, you know, is making it so that you feel like you have to stop sooner. Well, that can, you can, you can go and do another kind of activity. Cross-training is also great if you can't do all of the mileage because you've had a recent injury and you aren't cleared to do all of that mileage yet. Or, you know, you still have a, you know, a form problem at mile 10, but oh, dopey's coming up fast and you can't just only train to 10 miles. Well, you can use cross-training to train your heart and your lungs while you also work on whatever the reason that you can't get past 10 miles because of the injury is. Maybe you're not cleared to it. You and you have to wait until, you know, another month or six weeks before your doctor says, okay, now you can go run past 10 miles. It's usually not 10 miles that the doctor limits you at. It's like you, you know, you have to keep it under 30 minutes or something like that. But that's an example. So if if we're using that 30-minute example and the doctor says, well, you can only run for 30 minutes, okay, but dopey training is coming up and you can't just train for 30 minutes when a marathon is going to take you seven hours. But you are cleared to go ride a bike, you are cleared to go swim. So you run for your 30 minutes, and then you ride a bike for an hour, and then you go swim for an hour. And so now when you are cleared to go and run more than 30 minutes, now it's not a heart and a lung issue. It's not your breathing holds you back because you've been keeping up with that by doing the bike, by doing the swimming or the elliptical or playing basketball or whatever option you have chosen is. I love cross-training in general for all slow runners, but I especially like it for runners who hit a certain mileage and they have pain and cannot keep going. So typically, when I see a runner who has aches and pains that limit their running, it's usually happening two months into training, and it's usually around the eight, nine, or 10 mile mark. It could be somebody who's doing a 10 mileer, it could be somebody who's doing a half marathon, it could be somebody who's doing a full marathon. And you got to keep training, right? But what happens if you keep pushing through? Are you going to injure yourself even more? Probably. So what can you do instead? Because training can't stop. We can't get a refund. We can't transfer the bib. We can't defer to another year. Cross-train. So you go and run, let's say your pain starts at mile eight. Well, then you go and run six and a half miles because you're stopping early because you don't want to induce that pain. So you stop at six and a half, maybe seven miles. And let's say you're supposed to have a 10-mile long run. So that's three miles left. You run a 16 minute per mile pace. Now you go and ride your bike at the same intensity. Make your heart rate and your breathing be just as hard as it would have for those last three miles, but you do the bike for 48 minutes because that's how long it would have taken you to do those next three miles. So now you've run seven miles at a 16 minute per mile pace, and you still have three more to go. So you go get on the Peloton, you do that for 48 minutes at the same intensity, making your heart rate be the same, make your breathing be just as heavy. And you do that. So now you've worked your heart and your lungs for the full amount of time that that 10 miles would have taken you. But you did it without the pain or whatever. It, I mean, maybe it just rained and you don't have a treadmill. Well, what can you do? You go and cross-train. And that's how you make cross-training work for you on a long run day, but also doing it throughout the week. Because so many people, so many runners, when I first start working with them in Stronger Faster Finisher, I ask lots and lots of questions. Lots and lots of questions. If you're in Stronger Faster, you're like, yes, that questionnaire is intense. But there's a reason for it. There is a method to my madness. But I ask all these questions to get an understanding of what is going on and what you have done in the past. And so many runners tell me, well, in order to get better, in order to get faster, in order to run longer, I just need to run more. I practice like you play. So instead of running three days a week, well, I run six days a week. Because if I can run six days a week, well, then I can run four days for dopey. And I understand where you're coming from and why you think that way. And also, if you have aches and pains or you're always exhausted, it you're only going to get slower and you're only going to get more exhausted. But if you take away some of those running days and A, make most weeks be two rest days included, occasionally one rest day, because there are some dopey sim weekends that you need to do. But instead of running six days a week, what if you ran four days a week? And when you run four days a week, what if to make up those other two days that you want to do, which I'm not telling you you have to do, but let's say you want to. Well, let's go and ride the bike for two days, 45 minutes at the same intensity you would have been running. Make your heart rate go just as high, make your breathing just as hard, make you sweat just as much, but do it not running. You will come out so much better by race day, even well before race day, but definitely by race day. You will feel so much fitter. You will feel like race day was much easier than had you been pushing six running days. Now let's go back to the beginning where some coaches say that cross-training is strength training. And back to this original question where this runner said, Well, I've always heard of cross-training as strength training. I do not think of them as the same. I do recommend if you're going to have a well-rounded routine, that you include strength training, but it's not cross-training for the majority of runners. There is the occasional time that I will have a runner just not do typical cross training in my mind. It's not the elliptical, it's not the walking and things like that. But that's a really, really rare case. I recommend strength training at least two days a week, but you could do three or four depending on how you have your strength training structured. If you're new to strength training, start with two days and do a whole body workout. Hit all major muscle groups and do it on the same day that you're either doing speed workouts or you're doing cross training. Don't do it on your rest days because rest days are not just non-running days. They are rest. You are not exercising. The purpose is rest from athletic activity. Strength training is not cross training in my world because the goal of strength training is to be able to lift heavy things. You are building your muscle strength, not your muscle endurance, not your cardiovascular endurance either. You are trying to lift heavy dumbbells, pull heavy weights, move heavy machines to make your skeletal muscles stronger, to better support your running. But strength training in itself won't get you across the finish line. In a pinch, cross training itself could get you across the finish line. I don't recommend it, but in a pinch, I have had clients who could not run. They had injuries in the past. Um, this was mainly when I was working in the physical therapy clinic. But I have had clients where they're like, I'm just not cleared to run. I'm like, okay, what do you have access to? Are you allowed to swim? Are you allowed to ride a bike? Do you have access to those things? And we have gotten them trained up cardiovascular fitness-wise to be able to do it, it was half marathon distance for the one that I have in my mind right now. And we made it so that they trained. And so cardiovascularly, they were good. And once we got clearance to start training with running, off we went and we did, but we did not get the training up to the typical amount. Now they were seasoned, um, half marathoners. And um, this was before run, walk, run was a big thing, but we used that and it worked. In a pinch, it can work. But in a pinch, just strict strength training is not going to get you across the finish line because you bodybuilders could lift really heavy weights, but they can't run a half marathon unless they've trained cardiovascularly. But uh a cyclist could potentially go run a half marathon. I mean, they probably wouldn't enjoy it, but cardiovascularly, they could be fit enough. That's why it's so easy for so many athletes to transition from one sport to another. Or you might hear, like a couple of years ago, an NBA player went and ran um, I think it was a full marathon. I think it was New York City marathon. You know, people were all like, oh my God, I can't believe it. And I'm not surprised. Now, is basketball like a short sprinting sport? Absolutely. But they have cardiovascular fitness to be able to sprint for, you know, 48 minutes, 60 minutes. You know, at this point, I should really know how long basketball quarters are. I think they're 12 minutes a quarter, which mean would mean 48 basketball minutes. And we do talk in basketball minutes in my house when we're watching TV and well, mainly watching a basketball game. It's not how much time left, it's how many basketball minutes are left, because three basketball minutes are not three minutes. It's like football minutes too, right? Like three football minutes or two football minutes. Oh my God, that's another half hour. Basketball minutes aren't that bad, but they are not strict 60 seconds to a minute. Like you ask how many minutes left in a soccer game? Well, there's that many minutes left in a soccer game because there's only so much stoppage time. And unless it's going into overtime, you're like, yeah, well, the it keeps rolling. Basketball and football, they stop every five seconds. So, anyway, cross-training is a cardiovascular activity. Think other athletics that make you breathe heavy and make your heart rate go fast. That's cross-training. I recommend every slow runner incorporate it into their training and 45 minutes, 60 minutes, make it useful, make it worth it. I just had a uh conversation with a client um the other day, and she was saying that, you know, to make it work for her life, she didn't go back to the gym to use her typical cross-training uh pieces of equipment, but she had to clean her house. So she set a timer and she said to herself, okay, I'm gonna keep moving. I'm not gonna stop for this whole hour. It's gonna be my cross-training. Maybe, maybe she's not going as fast as she would on a long run, but she said she broke a sweat and she got her heart rate up and got moving and she got her house cleaned. Now, you don't necessarily do that every single week. And I wouldn't swap house cleaning for a speed workout because they definitely aren't going to work the heart and the lungs the exact same way. But doing that instead of going on the stair stepper that day, absolutely, that's an incredible use of your time and making it work for you. Absolutely do that.