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Andy reached the lead as his feet smacked against the wet concrete. Inhale exhale inhale exhale. The air seemed thick in his lungs from the moisture. The group made its way down the sidewalk in the early morning drizzle, heads bobbing and legs pumping. The swimmers were used to running as a form of cross training to improve their endurance and to keep up with cardio during their breaks. Andy put a burst of speed into his stride that took him a yard ahead of those behind him. He grinned with determination, knowing he would be first in completing the cross training exercise. His left leg slipped abruptly, and he fell hard onto the concrete; his left leg smashed against the sidewalk. “Well shit. That’s embarrassing,” he thought to himself and quickly hopped to his feet. His left leg had a red scrape that began to sting, but Andy shrugged it off. As he tried to sprint again, Andy felt his bones slide together in excruciating pain. He crumbled to the ground, realizing this was more than just a scrape he could walk off.

When playing a sport is a passion, job, or significant commitment, naturally one wants to excel at it. Most athletes ask themselves -- to cross train or not to cross train? Experts differ on the benefits of cross training. Chris Hall, Director of Sports Medicine at Texas Christian University, sees advantages in cross training. “Cross training benefits the body as a whole... by definition (it) is the ability to call upon other groups of muscles and train them in completing specific movements over a period of time.” According to Hall, an athlete’s primary sport does not utilize the entire body because it is specific -- it only accesses certain muscle groups. “Cross training helps to incorporate these muscle groups that may not be utilized.”  For example, the American Orthopedic Society for Sports Medicine stated that cross training can provide a “ ‘total body tune-up,’ something you won’t get if you concentrate on just one type of activity.” In addition, “you may experience fewer overuse injuries.”

“A ballet degree requires at least two years of Pilates training through the dance department,” Sara Paull, a ballet major at TCU, stated as she put on her hard, shiny pointe shoes.  According to Paull, if a dancer is lacking strength in important places like abdominals, legs, and back, the chance of injury is significantly higher than a dancer who does cross training strengthening exercises. “They want you to be able to take care of your body outside of class and doing Pilates is a great way to increase core strength and overall body stability.” While watching her perform jumps, turns and balances, it’s easy to see how a ballet dancer could benefit from strengthening and stretching exercises as a cross-training regimen. Dancers hardly gain upper body strength during class, but without it, their port de bras (movements and positions of the arms) can be stiff or uncoordinated. Lifting weights can easily remedy the problem.

Others argue that diversified training is beneficial for overall physical health but not for sports performance. Hirofumi Tanaka, an exercise physiologist at the University of Texas, wrote, “Cross-training effects never exceed those induced by the sport-specific training mode. The principles of specificity of training tend to have greater significance, especially for highly trained athletes. For the general population, cross-training may be highly beneficial in terms of overall fitness.” Of course, specific training in the desired sport is necessary for gaining improvement and perfection. But ignoring the benefits of cross training, which targets the rest of an athlete’s body, seems a bit illogical to argue with. Nathan Farabee, a former Syracuse University Lacrosse player, claimed he crossed trained with swimming, cycling, and two years of martial arts during his time on the team. “Swimming worked muscles that lacrosse didn’t, which helped my body become stronger as a whole.” In addition, cycling prepared Farabee for sprint tests without compromising the stability of his joints. Martial arts quickened his reflexes and increased both his hand-eye coordination and agility of the lower body.

The benefits of cross training are not only physical but also mental. Dr. Paul Krause, a physician in Tahoe, California offered his thoughts on the subject: “It is the variation of stresses to the athlete's muscles while cross training that tricks both the muscles and brain into believing the body needs to be prepared for all of these sports in the future. These variations trigger new neuro-muscular adaptations or, in other words, new pathways from the brain to the muscles.” According to Krause, the pathways enable the muscles to adapt and strengthen while reacting to stress, therefore creating “more efficient muscle firing patterns and improved overall balance.” As a result, the athlete's body strengthens in ways that improve overall health and optimize performance in his favorite sport. This theory suggests that cross training is necessary for the body to perform at optimum level.

The water’s ripples reflect the florescent lights hanging above. Scotty Smidlein can be seen at the TCU pool stretching as he prepares for practice. The other swimmers meander around the pool’s edge, adjusting their skin-tight Speedos. The team stretches to warm up and is in the pool in no time, weaving in and out of the water, completely in its element. “The better athlete you are out of the water, the better you are in the water,” Smidlein states frankly. The lanky senior has had much experience with cross training on TCU’s swim team and claims with conviction that he would not be the swimmer he is today without incorporating spinning, running, and weight lifting into his training. “Swimming is more like marathon training or cross country where you build your muscles for endurance. It doesn’t build your muscles for short bursts of speed, whereas running can build your muscles to get in that shape a lot faster.” Sprint swimmers need a burst of speed when endurance simply won’t cut it. Smidlein notes that the repetitive motions in swimming can cause over-use injuries, especially in strokes such as butterfly and freestyle when shoulder rotation is extreme. “Imagine someone stabs a screwdriver into the shoulder right at the pinpoint where your collarbone hits your shoulder and imagine that pain for two hours and doing that for a week straight,” the swimmer describes bitterly. In cases such as this, too much stress is put on the joint because the surrounding muscles aren’t strong enough. According to Smidlein, “Cross training makes it possible to stay in the water instead of taking a month off.  By doing strengthening exercises like lifting weights, push ups, pull ups, your body is able to compensate and to mix up the muscles you’re using in your shoulder”.

Since an athlete who trains in a specific sport is accustomed to a specific training regime, some argue that cross training bears its own danger. Because cross training does not access the specific muscles used for that sport, does it provide more opportunity to get injured? Smidlein answers with a strong, but good-natured “no.”  “You just have to be cautious out of the water,” he explains. “Sometimes swimmers go too hard on weights because they’re not familiar with it. With running if you don’t take it easy you can get bad shin splints because swimmer’s bones are less dense from being in the water all the time.” Smidlein chuckles, “We’re really bad at being on land. But when you go about cross training the smart way, you only have everything to gain from it”.  This athlete sure means what he says. Smidlein found out while running he had an extra bone in his foot, a particularly rare occurrence call Os Trigonum Syndrome, found most often in runners and dancers. After an X-ray, the small, extra bone was discovered where the anklebone and heel connect in the back of the foot. Acute pain comes from pointing and flexing the foot against a hard surface. If not for running, Smidlein would have never known he had the syndrome or how to treat the pain. Smidlein is a perfect example of how cross training can potentially make an athlete more aware of parts of the body that aren’t emphasized in his specific sport.

In Andy Hoffmann’s case, the team’s cross training was misled due to a coach’s lack of caution. Running in the rain on concrete is definitely asking for an injury, but luckily Hoffmann was the only swimmer injured that day. Twenty minutes after falling, Andy clenched his teeth while sweat appeared on his brow from the pain in his leg. The ambulance’s wailing sirens came closer and closer until the noise was ear splitting as it pulled up to the curb. The EMTs gently loaded the injured swimmer onto a stretcher, carefully avoiding jostling his leg. Mr. Hoffmann arrived just in time to go with his son to the hospital where he would be put into a thigh high cast for a double spiral fracture of his tibia and fibula. “Injuries are easy to come by when you throw yourself into an exercise or sport that’s not in your element,” Andy says, “especially if you’re not paying attention to what you’re doing.” After breaking his leg, the swimmer was in a hard cast for a month and a half until he could swim with a waterproof cast. Despite the bad experience he had with cross training, Andy doesn’t have a bias: “Cross training has potential, good and bad. It just depends on what you’re doing and how you’re doing it.” Three years later, Andy is still cross training for swimming by lifting weights and running, and is still feeling the benefits it can bring to an athlete’s body.