by Stephen Conca

While distance running may seem like a good way to improve body composition and cardiovascular endurance for sports performance, in sports dominated by short bursts, stops, and frequent changes of direction, long-distance running actually impedes your ability to develop strength, power, and dynamic flexibility which directly increases your risk of injury on the field, ice, and court. Let me explain.

In most sports, the events are dynamic and unpredictable, and athletes must be prepared to and able to react to the continuously changing external environment. This ability to accelerate, decelerate, stop and accelerate again as quickly as possible (and perhaps in a different direction) is a huge characteristic for success in these sports. When you go for a long-distance run, you repeat the same, shortened range of movement through the hips, knees, and ankles in only one direction or plane of motion - forward. What happens in soccer, lacrosse, or hockey when you are head to head with a defender?What about in baseball and softball once you have made the outfield catch and must quickly transition into a long throw for the final out? You have to slow down (decelerate), quickly change your direction, and immediately explode past the opponent or into a very powerful throw. Your muscles have to be primed to be able to execute these movements. The muscles of your hips and legs must be strong enough to slow the forward motion of your body and powerful enough to quickly produce enough force into the ground to move in the new direction.

In power or explosive movements, the movement is predominantly initiated in the trunk and hips, even in throwing. By preceding the muscular contraction with a pre-stretch or quick muscle lengthening, you can effectively improve the amount of power can produce because of the contribution of elastic rebound. In long-distance running, the ability to access this elastic rebound greatly diminishes with the length of the run. When training a "work-recover-repeat" athlete, one that must be strong and powerful in short bursts, aerobic steady state exercise will do nothing to increase your ability to work at high intensities, recover quickly, and be able to reproduce that effort. Instead, training using high intensity intervals will be much more effective than steady state aerobic work for increasing your cardiovascular endurance, improving your body composition, and preparing you for the specific metabolic demands of your sport without negatively affecting your strength and power.