A message to all our team members…
Gyms may be closed but firstly…don’t panic! Hopefully by now you have a good training regime in place with a mixture of endurance, strength and mobility work.
Your endurance work should be mostly outside so that you can use these sessions to get used to dealing with a mix of weather conditions.
Come March you’ll be hiking whatever the weather, so it’s good to prepare for those miserable days too.
For the strength sessions some of you may be training at home (well done if you have found some equipment), which is great, but for those who usually go to a gym which have obviously closed (let’s hope it is just until December) don’t worry, we can still keep good training going.
Whilst gyms are shut I recommend switching up your gym sessions for some different training which will keep you on good tracks until the doors open again.
Interval sessions/hill sessions.
Parts of your climbs will be on steeper terrain. By adding in some shorter interval or hill repeats for 20-25 minutes you are developing the strength of the body still as you need a lot more strength to get uphill rather than flat. Plus pushing the heart rate to adapt to these more intense sections of the climb.
Plyometrics and core work.
Focus on strengthening your core which doesn’t involve just sit ups! Your core is everything but your arms and legs. So work on the back, sides, glutes and abdominals.
Plyometric work includes exercises like Counter Movement Jumps, Box jumps, Lateral Bounds etc. These should be performed with max intent to develop the rate of force produced. Therefore you are getting stronger, with just using your body weight until you can get back to the squat rack.
Trail running
Add an additional endurance sessions on uneven ground such as a trail run. EIA is an endurance event and whilst strength is vitally important to go along with this, sometimes plans have to be changed due to circumstances out of our control.
Running on trails does require much more stability of your joints due to the uneven ground than running on the road. Plus these locations do tend to be much more up and down which adds another challenge too.
Hopefully these add a few ideas as to how to adapt your training whilst the gyms are closed. Let’s hope that they do open again in December when you’ll have plenty of months left to get back on track.
Any questions, don’t hesitate to get in touch: becky@rsperformancetraining or call 07854662794.
Becky Scott
