Recovery mode’s when magic happens
Personal trainer Alison Storey’s weekly column, Storey on Sport, answers your questions on fitness and wellbeing.
Q: If I want to get stronger legs and bulk them up a bit, should I stop running? A:
Not exactly. As with any training, it’s when you’re recovering that the magic happens – it’s when you’re resting that your body repairs and grows the muscle that you’ve just fatigued with weights, so recovery is an important part of the training process. If you don’t let them recover and run on them instead you may not completely undo that work but may not get the best value out of the weights work. In saying that, cardiovascular fitness is a part of staying healthy so you need to include some form of it in your training. Just probably not on legs day. Do you have a question for Alison? You can contact her via her website, Storeysport.co.nz or email her on: alison@storeysport.co.nz
Q: Everyone talks about body weight training and throwing tyres around and climbing ropes being the way to supreme fitness, how is this better than the gym? A:
Since it first appeared in 2012, body weight training has featured in the top three on the American College of Sports Medicine annual fitness trends list. It’s just been surpassed by wearable tech to push it fourth in 2018. Tudor Bompa, one of the most prominent proponents of athletic training has long recommended things like jumping, sprinting, throwing, and using free weights along with other modalities (medicine balls, high bars, bounding, body weight etc.) since ‘‘the training effect is more complex.’’ It could be argued it’s how our bodies were meant to move so the body perhaps adapts better to this kind of training.
-Alison Storey is a personal trainer from the Waikato who has represented New Zealand in beach volleyball, rowing and rhythmic gymnastics. She has been awarded New Zealand Personal Trainer of the Year twice and runs Storey Sport, a mobile personal and sports training business which provides a range of services that optimise the fitness and wellbeing of its clients.