Six weeks ago, I decided to get my arse into gear and start doing some proper strength and conditioning to help me with my running. As it happens, I'm not actually running at all at the minute due to my foot injury but no harm in doing the S&C anyway as this way the hops is that I'll come back much stronger.
The assessment is conducted by Dave Bell at Sportesse PT in Chorley and consists of a number of different exercises to see where I'm at in terms of my strengths and weaknesses. Dave then sets a strength and conditioning programme for me to follow for six weeks (I personally have two sessions per week, which are both different) then tests me again at the end of that to see my progress.
The improvement between my first session six weeks ago and my session today is astonishing. I can't believe that in only six weeks I have become so much stronger. The exercises undertaken in the assessment are as follows:
Holding a bar over my head and squatting down - this is to see the angle that I can get down to. I got down much lower today than last time whilst still keeping my chest up and not rounding in the back.
Striding - for this exercise, I had to stand with my foot against a measuring bar and, with my other foot, stride out as far as I could. I managed to stride a lot further than six weeks ago (sorry, I'm not being very scientific here but I've already forgotten the exact figures I managed to get to, I'll try to get them and do a proper comparison table at some point).
Stepping over a bar - all I had to do on this one was step over a bar whilst Dave assessed the movement of my hips. Last time I had the bar on the lowest setting but as soon as I went to step over it with one foot, my opposite hip jutted out. This time, I got the bar much higher. Again, I can't remember what it was but it was to a point where it was too high to step over and instead I had to just touch it with my foot so it will have been around six or seven as opposed to the pitiful one which it was last time.
Standing on one leg - No change in this one because Dave only times this for a minute and both times I have managed to last that long.
Standing on one leg with eyes closed - For this one, there is no time limit and you just do it for as long as you can. I managed to last 37 seconds longer on my left leg. If you have never tried standing on one leg with your eyes closed, give it a go, it's really hard!
Sit to Stand - This is the one I saw the most improvement on. It was absolutely astounding! You sit on a bench and take one foot, say the left, off the floor and then have to stand up on the right foot without putting your left foot down. You then do it on the other foot. You get three goes at this to be able to stand all the way up and sit back down again. Each time you complete it on both feet, the bar gets lower. Sounds easy but give it a go, it's not! Last time I got to three from the bottom but this time I not only got all the way to the bottom level but I then had to keep going, holding heavier weights each time. I gave up when I was up to a stone in weight.
Push ups - I doubled the amount of push ups I could do!
Plank and side planks - Now the next couple are the ones where there wasn't a huge improvement but I put that down to the fact that I was, by now, incredibly fatigued from the earlier exercises. I lasted just slightly longer than I had done last time.
VO2 max - This bit is horrible and I have to row for 2000 metres and see how quickly I can do it. I only improved on this by 18 seconds from last time but, again, I was feeling incredibly fatigued from the 'sit to stands' and the push ups.
I might have missed some other exercises but can't remember now (seriously, my memory is getting worse!) but there's more than enough there to show the massive improvement in just six weeks.
I can't wait to start running again to see how this will be affected but I know not to expect too much to begin with given that I'll have lost some of my fitness in the meantime due to having so much time off from running.
Huge thanks to Dave and Barry at Sportesse PT!
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