Fitness

Functional Strength Training

Enhancing Performance for Endurance Athletes

by Judith Torel

Do you consider yourself to be an endurance athlete? If you do then you probably are one of the growing numbers of individuals who participates in cardiovascular endeavors lasting 90 minutes or more. This would include cyclists, runners, triathletes, hikers, cross-country skiers and snowshoers! Developing your cardio-respiratory system so that you can maintain a steady output is the number one priority for these activities and most endurance athletes spend hours upon hours working on just that!

In my experience in working on the development of well-rounded, comprehensive exercise programs for endurance athletes, I have noticed several trends. Certain personality characteristics lend the endurance athlete to the enjoyment of dedicating many hours of training to relatively high levels of target heart-rate work. Where most individuals are not amenable to long hours of maintaining a workload of 75 percent or more, the endurance athlete thrives. Something about the activity lending itself to long periods of “mind freedom” while the body is riveted on the rhythmic movement of the activity, is tremendously appealing to the endurance athlete.

Good! However, it is also my observation that the endurance athlete tends to dedicate little to no time on the development of the core muscles involved in the stabilization and functional movement patterns of the body while performing these endeavors. Something in the personality profile of the average endurance athlete seems to lend itself to an aversion of any activity involving resistance workouts. If you see yourself in this description then read on. You will be happy to know that the newer wave of functional movement patterns and stabilization workouts is rapidly replacing, if not enhancing, the more traditional overload principles previously used in the design of muscular development programs.

There is little debate that to be at your personal peak you must dedicate time to cardiovascular workouts, flexibility exercises, and muscular enhancement routines in some type of comprehensive program. In the recent past, the muscular routines typically involved using machines and free-weights, usually in open-chained body positions, with an emphasis on one particular muscle or muscle group. Endurance athletes tended to avoid these types of workouts; even though stronger muscles enhance the ability to perform just shy of lactate threshold for extended periods of time.

Functional movement patterns and core stabilization exercises are changing the foundation upon which weight workouts have been based and this is good news for the endurance athlete who avoids the gym or weight room. What we have learned through the study of exercise and sports physiology is that brute strength in a muscle does not necessarily correlate with improved performance in an activity. The reasons for this include the fact that our bodies function as comprehensive units and not as individual parts. When we ride a bicycle, it is not that our quadriceps are engaged in isolation. They are part of a team of muscles working in unison in particular firing patterns.

All endurance sports involve specific muscles firing in patterns while synergistic muscles are working to stabilize the body. Most often endurance activities are performed in an upright position requiring certain muscles to support the weight of the body as they work in combination with other muscles which are engaging in particular firing patterns while performing your activity.

Functional strength routines target the enhancement of bio-motor ability. The exercises in a functional strength program look very different from the traditional weight machine exercises performed in sets and reps at particular overload percentages of your one rep maximum.

In a functional strength routine you start with stabilization exercises. These involve supporting the weight of your body in a variety of positions using your body weight and gravity. You progress from performing these exercises on a stable surface, like the floor, to a dynamic surface that may be a stability ball or a wobble board. My experience in working with fitness enthusiasts and endurance athletes has demonstrated that the most cardiovascularly conditioned athletes are often prone to injuries due to the fact that their ability to stabilize their body in a variety of positions necessary for their sport is extremely compromised and underdeveloped.

And if you think you do not fall into this category, guess again! The endurance athletes I have worked with most often are extremely humbled and frustrated by their inability to perform the most basic of stabilization exercises! But once these are instituted into a routine, the decrease in aggravating muscular discomfort and the increased performance output is measurable!

Once basic stability is established, functional movement patterns become the focus of the second phase of the muscular enhancement program. In this phase, stability has been established and now the exercises performed are patterns that are involved in the primary endurance activity.

So for instance, if you are a runner, muscular firing patterns involving the anterior and posterior oblique subsystems become the focus. Movement patterns may involve forward lunges onto a raised platform with an opposing forward flexion at the shoulder. Or, if cycling is your event, using a cable machine or an exercise tube while standing and performing a hip extension movement pattern would be an example of an exercise engaging a functional movement pattern.

Once the endurance athlete has mastered the second phase of the functional strength program, the final phase is addressed. In this phase, additional overload forces are added to the functional movement patterns. If we return to the forward lunge onto a raised platform with an opposing forward flexion at the shoulder as our example, the addition of a weight in the hand of the moving arm, or attaching a tube to the leg moving forward into the lunge, adds overload to the firing pattern. The overload is generally not enough to cause hypertrophy of the muscles but is enough to develop increased muscular strength and endurance. This translates into an increased ability to perform the movement pattern repetitiously before fatiguing during the endurance activity.

The endurance athlete will be happy to know that functional movement programs have little to no risk of adding additional weight to the body while providing exceptional enhancement to endurance performance!

Judith Torel (jtorel2263@yahoo.com) is owner of Judy Torel’s Sweat Shop in Albany. She is a certified personal trainer through ACSM, and is engaged in doctorate work in cultural anthropology at UAlbany.

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