Cross training, a critical part of any thorough regimen, helps an athlete to avoid injuries from over-use. Over-use injuries can occur when an athlete trains the same muscles repetitively to the point of straining them. Such injuries are especially common in runners but can happen to any athlete if she does not improve the fortitude of the musculature that supports and surrounds the muscles most used.
Swimming
Swimming, often overlooked as a cross-training activity, is useful because it is a noncontact exercise. Athletes whose joints are repeatedly stressed from impact with the ground find swimming a refreshing way to work muscles without exposing joints to their usual stress. When swimming, you utilize muscles not often used in activities on land; this can help improve coordination. Because of the way you must control your breathing while swimming, it can help improve lung capacity and, accordingly, endurance.
Jumping Rope
Jumping rope helps to strengthen crucial muscle tissue in your feet, ankles and lower legs. As a short-duration, intense exercise, it puts a lot of focus on breathing, which can build endurance and benefit your heart rate.
Calisthenics
Calisthenics exercises do not greatly improve heart rate; rather, they build core muscles, especially in the abs and lower back. These muscles provide a supportive platform for the rest of the body. Calisthenics can improve posture, which in turn contributes to the avoidance of injuries by breaking the bad postural habits that runners often develop over time.
Team Sports
Team sports, such as soccer, football and basketball, provide unpredictable outbursts of movement that endurance-sport athletes often do not encounter in training. These outbursts push underused muscles and help to develop a wider set of supportive muscles. The social element of exercising with other people in a competitive fashion can break the monotony of training alone, which refreshes endurance-sport athletes for their own training.
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