What Jimwb says is correct
What Jimwb says is correct to a point.
What will ellyptical or cycling do to your running? Bad or Good?
When attempting to perform a sport it up to moment, and the way to improve the performance of his sport, have reduced risk for injuries, and be able to do this for without thinking about it or on autopilot is by developing proper form and technique. In the early 80s I was fascinated by the articles in the Soviet Sports Review
http://store.xlathlete.com/category-s/11.htmwritten by Michael Yessis. In these excerpts of periodicals from the former Soviet Union were cinematography of sports performances such as the hammer throw, discus throw, shot put and other sports. The focus on the videotaping of these sports and watching the performance of the sports frame by frame was to determine the exact technique, the form of the body and sequence and timing that allowed the execution of the sport as close to perfect as humanly possible.
The human brain learns form and technique through repetition. The old saying practice makes perfect is only slightly correct.
Perfect practice makes perfect.
The brain and is an open space or hard drive from which the movement that you perform is stored as the movement the brain thinks you want to perform. The brain cannot distinguish between whether you're goofing off running or your really working on your form and technique to ensure that your impact is on the forefoot, the foot is pointed in the right direction, and your timing is right. It only stores the information that's given.
When you practice a movement other than the movement that you're trying to perfect to have good form and technique each time you practice this movement you are reprogramming the brain and with the new movement pushing the old movement that you striving for out. That's why we train. We trained to push movements that are considered flawed out to replace them with good movement or perfected movements.
But practicing the elliptical would not be what I would recommend as a good alternative to running. During the performance of the elliptical, you are exercising all muscles except the muscles that resist and spring you from the impacts of the landings. So your exercising the takeoff muscles but not exercising the landing muscles. This is a common mistake that athletes make that date increase the speed of their takeoff without increasing the strength of the landing gear.
It's analogous to building any airplane that has the ability to be a fly at 500 mph and land at 200 mph, but only equipping it with a landing gear is capable of withstanding the forces of 160 miles an hour. The result is a crash landing.
Cycling is an activity that I say compares to lifting weights and machines versus lifting dumbbells or free weights. the winner lifting with dumbbells or free weights your ability to position them body and the optimum position to push the weight so that its balance in a three-dimensional space is achieved. The ability to balance the weight in a three-dimensional space is not challenged by a weightlifting machine therefore you lose the balance and coordination skills that you would get from using free weights. The same is true with cycling versus running.
Running involves the placement of the foot in a particular space after launching it into a three-dimensional space where cycling maintains you in a particular path that it decides you should be in. In fact I have noticed many times with myself cycling for an hour or more only to note when I got off the cycle my walking pattern was little wobbly. Even though this only lasted a few minutes when I knew I was experiencing was my one running technique was being pushed out of the memory banks to be replaced by the new memory of the cycling pattern.
You really should consult with a running coach that trains athletes at the highest level.
Early Russian science experiments proved that forming sports or training that develop patterns that were unlike or contrary to the pattern which you are trying to perfect in your main sport. These Russian scientist advised athletes and coaches not to perform these repetitive movement patterns too often as they most definite we will effect the order form and technique of the main sport you're performing.
Cycling absolutely does not demand that you resist impacts therefore it doesn't created positive at a patient responds that will make your impact resistance muscles and spring resistance mechanism of taking up impacts of running stronger. Obviously the same holds true with the lit the cool. If you're muscles can handle more resistance and activity, in other words if they're not overtrained for electrical and cycling then why would they be overtrained for running. Your kinematic chain should be able to adapt equally throughout the entire flooring system for running.
Really there is no perfect answer to this question. We all know that you're trying to improve their cardiovascular capacity to function without putting additional impacts forces or overtraining your muscles, joints and ligaments and scones etc. I can't give you a specific training approach because that must be done by a coach was intimately familiar with your circumstances. I would like to reserve my answer only to caution you not to do so much repetitive movements in training drills that are outside of your normal sports.
One thing I can recommend and I hope you integrate this into your training is more drills such as zigzag runs, circle runs, figure 8 runs, cariocas and side shuffle drills. The reason why say that is that D's drills are not 30 minutes 40 minutes long with repetition is much as he elliptical and cycling however they do a really great job in developing elastic tendon strength in movements outside of the normal poll were running movements. What this will do for you is developed more elastic capacity in attendance or the elastic structures because in reality running relies on elastic recoil or spring mechanisms and less on muscular contractions.
For example if you stood up with equal weight on both feet and did toll raises your capacity would probably be between 100 and 200 total raises before you have to stop from exhaustion's or cramps in the calves. if you were 150 pound person and you did 100 Races with your full body weight that would be 75 pounds on each foot times two 150x100 or 15,000 pounds of force that your body lifted till it reached its old capacity.
If you're able to run a 10K without stopping that is equal to 6000 impacts your resisting, 1000 per mile, with forests you are resisting of 150 times approximately 4 times your body weight or 600 pounds of force or impact. That equals 3.6 million pounds of impacts that you're resisting any 10K. So how is it that you can resist 3.6 million pounds of impacts running in only 15,000 pounds during calf raises. The exercises are not the same at pretty close so why the enormous difference in capacity? What it's because the human body and beliefs during running mostly with elastic recoil or spring mechanisms and would have raises it with somebody with a muscular contractions and. Therefore runners would benefit mostly from developing stronger tendon strengths through drills that develop the foot in it as a three dimensional objects so all tendons can participate in the activity and primarily through these spy on metric or jumping type drills.
Another w
ay to improve efficiency is to make sure your mucsculoskeletal system is void of all internal spring restrictions. These would be muscle spasms and or joint restrictions, locking of the joints in the feet or stiffnesses in muscles surrounding the feet and floors up the chain. You can read more about this in an early forum post from today:
http://barefootrunners.org/forum-topic/plantar-fasciitis-limbic-difference-flat-feet-and-scoliosis#comment-50122
A really great book i would recommend you read is Supertraining by Yuri Verhkoshanski and Siff. This is the table of contents:
http://www.verkhoshansky.com/Portals/0/Book/Supertraining%20index.pdf This is the late Yuri Verhkoshanskis site where you can learn more about his body of work:
http://www.verkhoshansky.com/ The site is maintained by his dauther as he and Siff passed away this year, unfortunately.
I wsnt planning on answering your exact question but to give you a new perspective on how to increase your running efficiency by training to increase the more efficient spring or elastic recoil mechanisms over the muscle capacity and cardio alone. I hope it helps you reduce potential risks and improves your performance.
