PACIFIC MAGAZINE
January 21, 1996
BY MOLLY MARTIN
| RELATIVELY SPEAKING, The Puget Sound region isn't such a bad place for year-round out- door exercise. It's rarely so cold or hot that workouts are dangerous or terribly unpleasant. To some even the rain isn't a bother, once they build up enough heat to stay warm and are wet anyhow with sweat. Still, sometimes dark, gray, wet days aren't all that inviting. Many people feel forced indoors for their workouts, to face what is for some a fate worse than chronic stress fractures: exercise equipment. Some make it through the winter months by setting up exercise programs with their fair-weather sports in mind. That way the incentive becomes not only better overall fitness but also a loftier softball bat- ting average, a longer drive off the tee in golf, or a tennis serve without shoulder pain. Here's what a few local personal trainers have to say about tailoring winter training to spring and summer sports: Jill Pagano suggests starting with a look at your specific sport and your performance last season. "I really think the offseason is a great time to focus on weaknesses and injuries that they may have felt the year before," says Pagano, who teaches at Pro-Robics and also has her own company, Iron & Oxygen Personal Training. Bicyclists training on stationary bikes could try to simulate hills and incorporate interval training, Pagano says. Two variables to control are intensity and duration: You could work at 90 percent of your maximum heart rate for 30 seconds, then 50 percent for 5 minutes, and repeat. That would correspond to high-burst sports, such as volleyball. Or you could exercise at 70 percent of your maximum heart rate for 3 minutes, then go down to 60 percent for one minute, and repeat. That might be more in line with the continuous movement of, say, soccer. For endurance athletes such as runners, Pagano recommends the rather technical book, "Serious Training for Serious Athletes," by Rob Sleamaker (Human Kinetics). |
Kim Williams-Brinck of Physically Focused in Seattle says one common area she emphasizes in strength training is the rotator cuff, the small muscles around the shoulder. They're used in throwing movements such as in softball and serving in tennis, for pulling or overhead movements like sailing, even when leaning on the handlebars of a mountain bike. She directs attention especially to internal and external rotation exercises, where you hold a weight (or stretchy band) at the stomach, and then rotate the forearm to your side, like an opening door. (For details on many such exercises, she recommends Bill Pearl's "Getting Stronger.") Out at Harbor Square Athletic Club in Edmonds, fitness director Julie Williams thinks we all could benefit from attention toward the torso. "If people want to get in shape, they should really try to focus on trunk stabilization and abdominal and trunk strengthening," Williams says. "I find that really important in any sport." Since many of us still are doing exercises we half-remember from high-school gym classes, she recommends calling on a personal trainer for help, even if it's just for one session to set up a custom program. (Local fitness clubs can also recommend personal trainers.) In the winter Harbor Square offers one-time classes - available to non-members - specializing in torso workouts. For do-it yourselfers, Williams recommends videos over books, to teach the movements more precisely; she likes "Karen Voight's Firm Arms and Abs". I was reminded that all these strategies are indeed relative when I got a call from Gordon Stewart. He's a personal trainer at Gold's Gym in Anchorage, where among others he works with Olympic skier Tommy Moe. Stewart was visiting Seattle last month during those relentlessly soggy weeks. The perfect person, I thought, for advice on indoor training. But he'd just escaped 20-below temperatures in Alaska and was mountain biking like crazy. So what did he have to say about our incessant rain? "I'm really enjoying the weather." |