Yury's Corner

Using Exercises In The Right Order

In high performance sports there is a term called periodization of training,  which means that a training process should be divided into certain phases or time periods. The biggest one is the 4 year long Olympic cycle, then there's an annual period, smaller 2-4 month long (off season, pre-season, peak of season, post peak) cycles, and weekly. Combining small ones into bigger one allows an athlete to have better control of his/her program, and also helps the athlete adjust and peak at the right time. All of the periods have different goals, value, and intensity, and use different tools and exercises.

In fitness it is slightly different, as people don't compete and don't have to peak at certain times. Conditioning training for sports, on the other hand, is only one part of the annual cycle and is usually done off season or at the beginning of the season. But there is something important to consider - to get the best results in training you must have a particular schedule (or order of exercises) used in the weekly cycle and daily routine. In the other words, it is very important to know how to connect different types of exercises in one program.

There are five major types of exercises used in training: flexibility or mobility, skills training, quickness or speed, strength, and endurance.

 

1. Flexibility, or joint mobility, allows us to increase the range of motion, which generates stronger forces needed in both sports and everyday life.

 

2. Skills training is a program where you are learning/improving/polishing some new exercise technique.

 

3. Quickness, or speed training, is about doing something faster, including reaction time to the signal, visual or auditory, and frequency of the movement.

 

4. Strength training encompasses a few different types, such as maximal strength (ability of produce maximal muscle force), power or explosiveness (maximal afford in the shortest period of time), and muscular endurance.

 

5. Endurance (muscular and aerobic) is the ability to sustain fatigue without losing proper form.

During a single workout or weekly program you would follow the order mentioned above. Structuring your program in this manner works with your physiology and is more efficient. You don't necessary need all of them in one session or even in one week. It this case, just skip things you aren't focusing on. As an example, if you don't do skill and speed work, go from flexibility to strength and then to endurance. Never start your routine a long cardiovascular session. You still need a warm-up, but don't do it for more than 10-15 min. If you do double sessions, you should do cardio at the end of the day or right after the other parts (depending on the intensity of the session).

 

Best of luck!

 

~Yury

If The Shoe Fits: Stability Features

  

These days athletic shoes run the gamut from no support at all (minimalist shoes) to shoes that sport an array of features aimed at tightly controlling the movement of your foot (motion control shoes). Figuring out what level of support you need can be tricky at times, but knowing how the different features work can help you sleuth out which shoe is best for you.

Before we talk about any specific features I want to first say that you should not be using the footprint method to decide how much support you need in a shoe! I know, it sounds like heresy, and I might get banned from certain running shoe stores for saying so, but that old method of looking at a foot print to determine arch height (and thus shoe type) is exactly that - old. The height of your arch is only one small factor in the way your foot functions, and it can't reliably tell you if you overpronate or not. Real life is far more complicated, and when you're dynamically moving your body has surprising ways of compensating for problems you may not be aware you have. You might look at your foot print and see that you have a high arched foot, but that does not automatically mean you will be a underpronator (rolling on the outside of your foot). If you'd like to delve deeper into science, Gretchen Reynolds wrote a great piece on the NYTimes Well Blog about this very issue.

The support features in a shoe are theoretically aimed at helping your foot move through (what some people consider) the ideal foot motion from heel strike to toe off; which is a landing with more weight to the outside of your foot, then transferring your weight toward the inside before the final movement through the big toe...there's been some controversy on this issue as well, but we'll save that for another post. Conventional wisdom has been that people who overpronated (or roll to far to the inside) need a shoe that will help push them back towards the middle, so most stability features center around this idea. Here are some of the common stability features you'll find in a running shoe:

Duel Density Midsole: The gray section of midsole you sometimes see in a shoe indicated that it is a denser material than the white foam. The idea is that the harder material will slow down some of the foot's pronation during your stride. Some shoes will have different amounts of the higher density material - generally speaking, the more gray area there is the higher the level of support. This area may also be called a "medial post."

Shank: This is the hard plastic piece seen in the middle of the shoe. The shank prevents the shoe from flexing under the area of your arch.

Midsole and Outsole Flare: If you look at a shoe from the top down you'll notice that some shoes have a midsole that extends further out than the upper; sometimes you'll see this more in one section than another. This is called midsole flare and is another method to try to help guide your foot towards an ideal pattern.
 





Heel Counter: No matter where a shoe falls on the stability continuum all shoes have a heel counter, what varies is how stiff it is. An inflexible heal counter will help prevent your heel from pronating too far one way or the other at heel strike. You can easily determine how stiff a heel counter is by trying to bend the cloth portion of the shoe that wraps around your heel and Achilles tendon - the harder it is to move, the more stability it affords.



When trying to decide how much stability you need in a shoe the best thing to do is try the shoe on and go for a run. Most good running stores will let you do this, and some even have a treadmill inside the store to test out their wares. Don't relay on your foot print shape or standing arch height to determine the level of stability you need. Go by comfort - if you feel like you're going to twist an ankle just walking in a shoe, try one with a bit more stability...but don't go so far that you feel like your running in a brick. A good shoe should work with your foot and feel quite natural without a lengthy break in period.

~Nicki