Modern Athlete Magazine Issue 57, April 2014 | Page 27

Training

for the big ones
Join me in a quick experiment: Start with a short warm-up – a few star jumps and a
couple of walking lunges – then with stop watch in hand, stand with your back against
a wall, feet shoulder-width apart, and then slowly slide down the wall into a ‘seated’
position, keeping your knees bent at a ninety degree angle. Now lift and hold your right
foot up and start the stopwatch, hold for as long as possible and make a note of the
time, then reset and repeat the process by lifting the left leg.
In most cases, the first thing you will notice is that you were able to hold one of your
legs up longer than the other. This indicates a muscles imbalance between your left
and right side. Ideally, you want your muscles balanced, so that you’re working both
sides equally and don’t have one side over-compensating for the weaker side, which
often results in an injury or strain on the stronger side, because it’s doing the bulk of
the work. More importantly, however, is looking at the number of seconds that you were
able to hold this position. Compare your times with the table below.

START SLOW
When introducing strength training, start
off using light weights and focus on
doing the exercise correctly, slowly and
controlled – that’s far more important
than how much you can lift. In the first
three to four weeks, use the lightest
weight possible and perform two to three
sets of 15 repetitions each per exercise.
After the initial three to four weeks, you
can start increasing the weight slowly
over the coming weeks while decreasing
the number of repetitions as you increase
the weight.
Images: iStock

With Two Oceans upon us, it’s too late to start introducing
strength work into your programme, but if you’re running
Comrad