Quote:
Originally Posted by Salami
That's the other aspect of this I suppose, playing a sport in general like softball isn't really so much long distance endurance as short bursts, which in itself must help.
The difference is that by training you can supposedly increase the distance you are able to run for, but with sprinting it is harder because you're relying a lot more on your physiology, which is not very easily changed by training.
|
I'm not sure if I'm completely wrong on this, but I played sports aside from softball; basketball and volleyball certainly required a lot of running for distance and conditioning, whereas softball did distance running as more of a punishment, preferring sprint exercises. For all of those sports, we spent a lot of time doing body weight exercises - push-ups, crunches, chair sits, etc. - and after a period of time, you can plateau using just your body weight as resistance. With push-ups, you can graduate to push-ups with one arm, as with pull-ups when the endurance has been built up, but you can plateau with body weight exercises. At that point, we would be given resistance bands, weighted vests (those are apparently a go-to around here), and all of that. The point being that you have to work harder with added resistance to your body, and don't peak based on your body weight alone...hence a lot of not getting any better with certain exercises.
While cardiovascular endurance is certainly one of the most important things for endurance running, doing so with added resistance really makes your body work a lot harder. That way, your endurance for running sans weight and whatnot will be much higher.