What is base training?
If you read enough sports magazines, or fitness publications for that matter, you run across the term “base training” a lot.
No, it isn’t like running from first to second on a baseball diamond, or running from the baselines on basketball courts. It has to do with determining what limits you may have in a particular sport in a particular season.
There are movies out there with characters who go out for a sport at the last minute and magically become dominant athletes because they were so talented. I called it magical because there isn’t any way for out-of-shape untrained athletes to step onto the field of athletic endeavors and succeed unless they got some kind of magic potion from Hogwarts.
The training athletes do in those periods between their athletic seasons determines to a large extent, how successful a student is going to be by the end of that season.
The base of base training, is all the work you put in, the sweat equity, and the mental dedication you bring to bear on what goals you have decided to pursue. The more you work, the wider your base. The wider your base, the higher will be the peak.
The sport of cross country was begun in the beginning as a way to provide basic training for track athletes. Track seasons are several months apart, and athletes who neglect to widen their base, will put a cap, or limit, to how high they can go.
Base training molds bodies in three different ways, all serving to boost future success.
First of all, base training increases athletes’ endurance levels. What does that mean? Speaking plainly, it means being able to compete at a higher level for longer amounts of time. Hearts have arteries that take blood to the muscles, and veins back to the heart. Those two important avenues of blood are connected by capillaries.
The number of capillaries our bodies have is not finite. You can actually grow more of them if your body needs them. The addition of capillaries increases the volume of blood that can be moved about your body, bringing oxygen to muscles in need of replenishing. Runners who have been idle for a significant amount of time will report muscle itches when getting back in shape. That is just the body increasing the cardio-vascular system potential.
Coach Heather Wade remarked to me about good runners like recently graduated Kamree Dye, having terrific improvement after putting in a season of cross country. Dye was and is a sprinter (she is competing for John Brown University this year) but after running at an All-State pace in the 5,000 last fall, she parlayed the extra strength and endurance into incredible marks in the sprints at state.
Besides endurance, base training will also increase your strength for obvious reasons, but it also does wonders for the nervous system. The human body is like automobiles in some sense. Cars that are rarely driven, tend to run poorly. Cars, like humans, are electrical. The more in shape we are, the better we can think, focus and solve problems.
Base training is not just for track, but for any sport where cardio-vascular health is a part of success.
For any sport that involves running, those athletes who do that best tend to succeed the most.
The old term “You get what you pay for” is especially true for athletics.
Nolan Richardson, the Hall of Fame basketball coach for the University of Arkansas, once said “You have to be lucky to win — and the harder you work, the luckier you get.”
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Editor’s note: John McGee, an award-winning columnist, sports writer and art teacher at Pea Ridge elementary schools, writes a regular sports column for The TIMES. The opinions expressed are those of the writer. He can be contacted through The TIMES at prtnews@nwaonline.com.