I’ve mentioned in other posts how important it is to improve your cardiovascular endurance. To really maximize your speed endurance, you need to do intense training.
This is fine, but it isn’t something that your body will be able to do everyday, which is why you need to train the body in a way that will allow it to recover, but still do exercises that will allow you to train effectively.
Additionally, if you are suffering from an injury or strain, you want to do some other forms of exercises that will allow you to improve your body’s conditioning without causing additional impact to any pains or strains that you may be suffering from.
Here are a few low impact training options that you can use to help boost your cardiovascular endurance.
Skipping
Skipping is a great way to increase your explosiveness and to improve your cardiovascular endurance. You want to prolong the time that you are doing the skips, rather than focusing on completing a set number.
For example, 5 minutes of skipping rather than 100 skips.
You also want to increase the intensity based on the type of skipping that you do. So you may do single-unders, double-unders, triple-unders, knee-to chest, or single-leg skips to increase the intensity.
You will find that your heart rate will increase and it will have a low-impact on your muscles when exercising.
Incline walk on the treadmill
This is great if you need to give your muscles a break. Find a treadmill and simply walk on an incline. Increase the pace until you notice your heart rate reaches at least 60% of your maximum heart rate. Continue at that pace for 20-40 minutes.
Stair machine (Stair climb)
Another fantastic machine, but it is slightly more intense than the treadmill. Find a pace that allows your heart rate to reach 60% of your maximum heart rate and continue on the machine for 10, 20, 30, or 40 minutes. You will fatigue your glutes and hamstrings, which will force you to activate the deeper and surrounding muscles.
You should find that you can activate power from your glutes more easily.
Farmer’s carry
Have weights to hand and ideally go on a treadmill (incline for more intensity) and carry dumbbells in each hand for 1 minute on and then one minute off. Continue for up to 30 minutes.
Make sure your heart rate reaches at least 60% of your maximum heart rate.
Treadmill run
This is effective if the treadmill that you are running on is low-impact. The main focus should be on your heart rate, since you want to get it to the burning rate zone of 60% or more of your maximum heart rate.
It’s likely that you will need to run on an incline to improve the intensity without the running motion becoming too impactful.
You can opt to increase the intensity like a ladder once every 1-5 minutes.
You can maintain a flat pace once you reach your target heart rate.
You can do interval training sprints for 45-60 second splits with 30 seconds recovery. You can do 10-20 of these.
