Cross-Training For Dummies

Tony Ryan, Martica Heaner

• Publisher: For Dummies
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9780764552373
• eBook ISBN: 9781118069264
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Sport & Exercise Science
• Index: Biological Sciences

Anyone can get into a fitness rut. You could be exercising regularly but feeling unmotivated about your current routine. Or you could be enjoying your workouts but not getting the results you really want. You can even be on health club hiatus and looking for a way to get back into exercise-mode. Whatever your situation, cross-training is a practical solution. Cross-training is a well-rounded way of approaching exercise. It allows you to vary your workouts so you can inject a little excitement into your fitness routine, while you receive better results out of your exercise plan.

If you have a real thirst for fitness knowledge then Cross-Training For Dummies is for you. Whether you just want to use cross-training as a way to spice up a dull workout routine or you're looking to develop specific skills that will enhance your performance in a specific activity or sport, this book can get you on track.

Cross-Training For Dummies will keep you motivated, intere sted, strong, and injury-free as you strive to improve your level of fitness. From savvy tips that'll turbo charge your workouts to great advice on weight lifting, fitness activities, and team sports, this book has just what you need to advance to a higher level of fitness. Cross-Training For Dummies also covers topics hat will help you to:

• Assess your fitness level
• Set personalized exercise goals
• Have fun with individual and team sports
• Incorporate kickboxing, Pilates, spinning, and other cutting-edge workouts into you routine
• Understand the five elements of fitness

Challenging your body to new fitness levels is hard work, but the results are well worth it. Cross-Training For Dummies will help you understand how cross-training works and show you how to put together a well-balanced training program that will keep you happy and healthy.

Part I

Wake Up Your Workouts

In this part . . .

We look at why you need to add pizzazz to your fitness routine. (And we take a sneak peak into the future to guesstimate what will happen if you don’t.) This part introduces the concept of intelligent training — how to plan and balance out your workouts. We’ll show why just aiming for a better butt isn’t enough to get you one or why just running or just doing ab crunches isn’t the most effective way to improve your strength, stamina, and skills for each activity. Striving for total, all-over fitness will get you the best looking, best performing body ever.

Chapter 1

Your Ever-Changing Body

In This Chapter

What you do now may not be enough

Understanding the benefits of cross-training

Creating a cross-training program: the basic steps

In times gone by, chopping, grinding, lugging, pulling, plowing, sowing, and hunting and gathering were activities that the human body had no choice but to perform. This total body living gave the arms, legs, back, abs, and other body parts a real-life cross-training workout every day. Things have changed. Now, tapping the remote control, twisting the ignition, or taking a long stretch to answer the phone are about the extent of the activity that we do. And for all the health reasons that we already know, as this century leaves us with too many opportunities to plant ourselves in increasingly sedentary lives, it’s vitally important that we use exercise as a replacement for the daily chores that we were once required to do.

We know that as a sometime exercise fanatic at least a little bit of your time is spent away from the boob tube and logged off of the Web in pursuit of a workout. It just might not be as often as would like (or need to). Even if you’ve made exercise a habit in your everyday schedule (good), your workouts may have become a habit (bad). No one’s immune to the temptations of slothdom or the trap of boredom. Everybody needs a push, and we mean every body. The human body thrives on being asked to go past its normal comfort zone in terms of how much energy, force, and physical skills it’s required to use. That’s where we come in, your personal cross-trainers at your service, to offer fitness tips, tricks, and advice. We’re here to push you to the next fitness level.

This chapter tells you why what you’re doing now may not be enough. Cross-training has multiple benefits, as you’ll see in this chapter. The last section of the chapter presents the general steps you’ll follow in creating an exercise program that works just for you.

The Pitfalls of Status Quo

Picture a cute little bunny rabbit in the wild. In order to stay alive, he needs to adapt to the changes in the environment. If he doesn’t hop around enough, he won’t find food. He might become slow, weak, and unable to run from the mean fox trying to eat him. We’re like that bunny — all the living, growing organs in our body, from skin to muscles to blood, react to the stressors they are exposed to. So when things get tough, remember that you get more resilient with controlled, challenging doses of stress. To become stronger, longer lasting, or more flexible, the body adapts in its multitude of physiological ways (from releasing tension to growing more muscle or improving nerve signals from brain to body part in order to get stronger).

Any type of exercise you do is a stimulus to get these improvement processes underway. But once you’ve been doing the same routine, or exercising at the same intensity, for a while, your body grows accustomed to the challenge, meets it, and beats it. Soon, what was adequate stimulus for growth becomes a normal level of physical effort. It’s not that the same-old, same-old exercise stops working. It’s that, once you’re capable of handling it, to continue to do the same workout in the same way simply maintains, but doesn’t improve, your level of fitness.

And for some people that’s fine. If you’re simply exercising as a form of stress relief or to improve your long-term health, you’re probably okay just staying active and enjoying what you do. But if you’re trying to lose weight, reshape your body, or dramatically improve your physical performance in a specific activity, you need to approach your training with a plan. And that’s where this book comes in.

Cross-Training Is Intelligent Training

Cross-training is a way to add variety — and constant new challenges — to your workouts, and it targets your whole body. Here are a few of its best benefits:

Less burnout: Because you’ll constantly be incorporating new exercises, sports, and activities into your routine, you’ll be less likely to suffer from burnout and quit.

Fewer injuries: Cross-training is a great way to make your body as efficient as possible, while keeping it almost injury-free. By switching activities, you vary the stresses on your body. This often means less injury risk because most fitness injuries are due to overuse (doing the same thing over and over) and the repetitive strain of a given movement.

Benefits your whole body: Chapter 2 covers the benefits of cross-training on your whole body. Cross-training can improve your cardio stamina, muscle strength, power, flexibility, and sports skills.

Better performance in sports: You also can gain a better all-around fitness because you’re not just developing a specific ability in one activity but in a number of them. For example, rowing may develop your upper body while cycling favors the lower body. Weight training can give you all-over muscular strength that running alone simply cannot.

More calories burned: You may also burn more calories. Since your body responds to exercise by getting more efficient at producing energy for an activity, you ultimately push yourself less and burn fewer calories once your body has adapted. When you cross-train, because your body is always adapting to new forms of stress, it keeps working hard to keep up.

Cross-Training Is Full of Choices

The way you cross-train can vary immensely. It provides you with options on a daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly schedule. To help you get a little background, here’s an outline that can help you wade through by directing you to the areas in the book where you’ll find more information about each decision you must make:

1. Evaluate your level of fitness and your goals.

What do you want to get out of cross-training? Are you wanting to try new ways of working out or looking for ways to hit peak performance? Part II presents you with some goal setting tips of the trade. Then read on to evaluate your level of fitness using the at-home fitness tests we provide. (Remember: You should always get your doctor’s okay before embarking on a new fitness program.)

2. Pick a plan to follow from Part III, or create a plan of your own.

Part III has three plans that are real no-brainers. Just choose one and get moving. You can also create your own plan by following the suggestions in Chapter 12.

3. Mix things up with your daily and weekly workouts.

Just because you’re following one of the plans in Part III doesn’t mean you can’t add variations on your own...

Table of contents

• Title
• Contents
• Introduction
• Part I : Wake Up Your Workouts
• Chapter 1: Your Ever-Changing Body
• Chapter 2: A Rock-Hard Rear Is Not Enough
• Chapter 3: Variety Is the Spice of Life
• Part II : Let’s Get Specific
• Chapter 4: Get A Goal (Be Smart Before You Start)
• Chapter 5: Weak? Who Me? Just Test Me!
• Chapter 6: Huffin’ and Puffin’ Cardio
• Chapter 7: Gruntin’ and Groanin’: Muscle Strength, Stamina, Power, and Flexibility
• Part III : Cross-Training Plans
• Chapter 8: How to Follow the Plans
• Chapter 9: Base Fitness Plan
• Chapter 10: Weight Loss Plan
• Chapter 11: Athletic Plan
• Chapter 12: Mix-n-Match Plan
• Part IV : Fabulous Moves
• Chapter 13: Technique, Technique, Technique
• Chapter 14: Your Weight Lifting Questions Answered
• Chapter 15: Warm-ups and Stretches
• Chapter 16: Basic Moves Revisited
• Chapter 17: Simple Muscle Moves
• Chapter 18: Multimuscle Moves
• Chapter 19: Key Gym Equipment
• Chapter 20: Power Moves
• Chapter 21: Fast, Tricky Moves
• Part V : Move That Body!
• Chapter 22: The Solo Sporting Life
• Chapter 23: Movin’ to the Groove
• Chapter 24: Strutting Your Stuff on the Field
• Part VI : The Part of Tens
• Chapter 25: Ten Things You Should Know about Muscles
• Chapter 26: Ten Ways to Maximize Rest Days
• Chapter 27: Ten Ways to Stick to It
• Chapter 28: Ten Great Bench Stretches
• Part VII : Appendixes
• Appendix A: Glossary
• Appendix B: Resources
• Appendix C: Workout Logs