Hopscotch your way through summer

Over the past few weeks I’ve been writing about a few key principles to enjoying an injury free, fun, and worthwhile summer training program:

- Try new routes, including trails
- Pace yourself
- Train with friends
- Have fun!
- Don’t limit yourself to running

I’ve described in detail the benefits of trail running and pacing your summer training regiment. I already know that you, young athletes, are experts at two of the other principles: having fun and hanging with friends. That leaves us to the last principle: ‘don’t limit yourself to running’.

These activities (and others) can improve your running and decrease injury risk:
- Soccer
- Cycling
- Hopscotch

In reality I don’t expect you to play hopscotch this summer, but if you do, the benefit listed below is very real. What exactly are the rules of that game anyway? I do care that you get out and try some other sports this summer. Working new muscle groups will be good for you, and can break up the monotony, or prevent burnout. Lets take three very different activities such as soccer, cycling, and even hopscotch, and prove why they could be good for your running. Don’t forget…you still have to run! If all you do is play soccer this summer, in the fall you will be really good at….soccer, not cross-country running.

Soccer
- The short bouts of sprinting can help make you faster.
- Cutting and twisting
o Will make you more efficient on cross-country trails
o May strengthen ankle region, decreasing likelihood of twisting an ankle on the trails
- Builds endurance
o Some soccer players log 5 miles in a game.

Cycling
- Builds endurance
o Works major leg muscle groups in a slightly different manner.
 Quads, Hamstrings, calves, hips
o Allows you to spend much more time training without the impact on your joints that running causes.
 Example: you can ride for 2 hours, and still move the next day.

Hopscotch – more specifically I’m talking about plyometric (hopping/jumping) training
- Makes you faster
- Trains you to run more efficiently
Still can’t believe that hopscotch is good for running? Get it from the source, RW Spurrs; you can find the online abstract at:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12627298?ordinalpos=1&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum