On The Water

I am sure you have heard over and over again how yoga can benefit your endurance sports ambitions. I was myself among those who were reading and hearing about the power of yoga but never really wanted to give it a shot. I was kind of feeling a little out of the whole yoga-spiritual-relaxation kind of attitude. Up until I was suggested to try it by my doctor. I finally have a sort of diagnosis about my chronic injury and an action plan. I have a soft-tissue injury in the connective tissue between my psoas and my illiacus (something that apparently is not detectable with any current visualization methods: MRI, CT scans, Ultrasounds, etc). Lots of reasons may have caused that over the years: office-work lifestyle (I have been reading, writing and working at a desk for as long as I remember myself-from my elementary school years till now), trauma, accidents, etc. Over the years, the lifestyle or an accident or a trauma (which I had so many as a cyclist) had created imbalances that favo...

Touching upon one of the most controversial topics on the training of the endurance athlete was not an easy decision but I thought I would do it anyway and share with you all my own experience. Weight lifting: some coaches believe it is necessary and key to success while some others avoid it at all costs. I am not a certified trainer or a coach or someone with education deep enough to explain the physiological benefits of weight lifting. However, I am a competitive athlete, who has experienced the tremendous impact that a well planned weight training program may have in my athletic career. Let me first be clear on a couple of things: Weight training for endurance athletes is not the same as for body-builders. It is not heavy-lifting (!) and it is not always targeting specific muscle groups isolated from the rest of the body. More importantly, it follows training cycles similar and in parallel to the main-sport training cycles. Here is an example in my case of training for tri...