A few months back I created a new habit in my life. I made working out twice a day “my thing.” I did the daily workout from the WOWs (Weekly Online Workouts) each mornig then either added a light run, some time on the stair stepper or some other workout.
I’ve had a couple people ask me if, now that I’m on an official training schedule for the LA Marathon, whether I will keep that two-workouts-a-day habit going? Or if the marathon training will be enough to give me a total workout.
The running parts of the marathon training plan, which I posted for all to see a few days ago, isn’t really all that tough for the most part. And the runnning alone is not enough for me to just do that and nothing else. It will not provide me a full-body workout. It won’t keep me in tip-top condition and it keep me feeling like I do now – in the best shape of my fricken life. So here’s what I’ve added to my marathon training.
On the days with the shorter runs of 3 and 4 miles, I follow up my run with some strength work. This week, for example, I had two 3 mile runs. I was done with those in about 26 minutes. Is that enough of a workout for my morning? No way. Not even close. Is it enough to make up for the two workouts I usually do in a day? Absolutely not. In fact, 3 mile runs are pretty much no-biggies for me. They don’t take much time or effort.
So when my workout buddies and I finished those 3 miles, one day we did some dumbbell activities, and the other day we did exercises using resistance bands. That way we were doing a good hour’s worth of exercise which is the bare minimum I’ll allow for my mornings! On the 4 mile day, we just spent extra time cooling down and getting in some good stretching.
Then . . . later on during all of those days, I did my second workouts. On my three running days, my second workouts were all about strength training. Not all heavy-duty or intense, but enough to get me to sweat and to get my heart beating a bit. I used ;ight dumbbells a couple of nights, and did some bodyweight exercises on my Bosu ball one night.
What about Tuesdays and Fridays, when I don’t do training runs? On Tuesday I pulled activities from the WOWs and from my own head, and my workout buddies and I did a Musical Workout. I made five groups of exercise, each set had three exercises (one for the upper body, one for the lower, and one for the core). We focused on one set of exercises for one song. (I had our stereo blasting into my backyard). We each spent however long we wanted to on each activity and just kept rotating through the three activities of a set until the song was over. Then we moved on to the next set for the next song. I got through all 5 sets a total of two times by the time the hour was up and we were pushing it and working our butts off.
That night, I treated myself to 15 minutes on our new treadmill for my second workout of the day. I kept it light, but with the training runs being so short right now, I wasn’t too worried about overtraining.
Friday’s workout was a light beach workout. Again I took ideas from the WOW for Friday, tweaked them to make them work with a group of three and a football and had a blast. My second workout that day was playing with my dumbbells again for a good 30 minutes. I was so tempted to get on my treadmill or my stairclimber since the morning’s workout was so light, but I knew I had an 8 mile run waiting for me in the morning.
So, as you can see, marathon training is just not enough to replace what I was already doing. All that running is good, but it’s only 4 days a week and much of it is ever so short. I want full-body fitness. I want to keep my body moving, and strong, and fully-fit, and healthy. So I believe in mixing the run training for the marathon with full-body workouts that keep my whole body strong and fit.
I’m not over-training. I’m just getting in two good workouts a day. I know when to back off and go light, and I know when it’s time to push hard. We need a mixture and we need to do what it takes to be fully fit. I can’t get behind any marathon, half-marathon, 10k, or 5k training plan that has you doing nothing but running and resting. If you want to be fully fit, ready for anything in life, truly strong and in truly great shape, you gotta do more than just run.
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