Plyometrics etc (Read 863 times)

I used to run stairs. I did it to train for stair climbs up several buildings here in Chicago. It probably helped with my hill running since I run on all flat land otherwise. If you have hills to train on I would just run them instead. I stopped because it was hard on my feet but I have feet problems in general.

Plyometrics are very intense very short duration exercise. They are meant to improve your muscle nerve interaction. More so than endurance or strength. They are meant to take strength you already have and turn it into power. You can have two people with very similar muscle build up. Everything about them looks similar. One though can have a huge advantage if his nerve/muscles are set up to fire very quickly. Steps could be a form, you would want to run up 5-10 and max speed. rest, then repeat. Some people do squats-jumps. Others do box jumps (jump up and down onto a 12" or higher box). For a more running related way you could go to a basketball court and run full sprints between the lines, turn and run back full speed. Plyometrics are beneficial for all around fitness and for sports. Sprinters could defiantly benefit from them but it is debatable how much help a distance runner would get.

Chris: Your description is correct but you seem to have mixed up actual workout a bit. If you want to perform plyometrics exercise, you don't want to run uphill/steps max speed. Plyometrics is a balistic resistance exercise so the action itself would have to be quick but the overall activity does not necessarily have to be "fast". In fact, if you run up the hills/steps at max speed, you will get into highly anaerobic state too quickly and the workout itself would have to stop prematurely. You don't want that. In fact, the slower the forward momentum, the more resistance will be felt and you'll gain better result. Don't mix up anaerobic exercise and resistance exercise together. Of course, you WILL get anaerobic, diong plyometrics exercise but you don't need to, and shouldn't, enhanse that process. One of the best form of plyometrics exercise for distance runner would be hill workout. We have the visual here: http://www.lydiardfoundation.org/training/hilltrainingdvd.aspx You can perform these exercises on the steps but I personally like the first one (Steep Hill Running) on steps best. One time, I was supposed to do the hill workout with the girl I coach; it started to down-pour with gusting wind. We moved to a tall building (8 stories) near-by instead and went up and down the steps for 55 minutes. In this occasion, we alternated 1 step running and 2 steps running (skip one step; kind of trying to simulate "bounding"). It turned out that was one of the best workouts we did that season.