Power4sports

Training on the Beach

Do you live near the beach, or are you traveling on vacation and will be near a beach

 I love beach exercises. You get create resistance work and you also get very little impact and stress places on your when training and exercising. 

These are some of the exercises I use beach training 

1) Place four cones in a square pattern, about 5 years apart. Now run short step sprint drills using different routes such as:

• Forward to the first cone and backwards and sideways to the back cone and the forward to the first cones and backwards and sideways to back cone again. Do this four times each
• Now run forward from the left back cone to the front right cone and then backwards to the back right cone and then forward to front left cone and then backwards to the back left cone, thus completing the entire circuit.  Do this four times each.

Make up your own routes but make sure that you go forwards, backwards, and sideways etc.

You want SHORTS STEPS, KEEPING YOUR BALANCE, AND DEVELOPING QUICK FEET ON THESE DRILLS! Do not let FORM GET SLOPPY. When YOU stop and change directions. You must learn how to plant your outside foot, bend your outside leg at the knee, and then push off with your outside foot. This means you were pushing off and powering off your outside leg into the turn while leaning your body towards the turn.  You then shift your weight to the inside leg and foot as you proceed in the opposite direction. They whole body must work together as one unit when doing this.

I use plyometric jumping boxes on the beach for  it is an excellent surface to practice your vertical leap on for the sand will cushion the impact upon landing.  

Any type of hill you can find on the beach will also give you great results.  The extra effort it takes to run uphill in the sand is going to make your body or twice as hard and also get twice the results.  In fact there's a I feel in Manhattan Beach that's so popular that only the residents can run on.  And even they have to make a reservation to run on the hill on their own beach.  So if you can find any form of hill on a beach or sandy area take advantage of it

So incorporate some beach or sand training into your workouts and I guarantee you will see some great results.