home	noticeboard	kilbarchan history	training	fixture list	results
SAIL	reports	photos & videos	club records	members pages	local information
coaching clinic	links to other sites	anti-doping	forum

Exercises at home

by Jason Pender

Level 3 Hurdles Coach

These are a few suggestions for improving your general strength using exercises at home. You should always discuss the appropriateness of any of these exercises with your coach before including it in your routine. Try two or three sets of each exercise and build up to five sets. Twice per week is a good target. Write down how many you want to do of each exercise, a suggested starting quantity is included in the left column. Try and build up on these. At first, perform one set of all exercises before doing the second set of the each exercise. Try sometimes also doing one set followed immediately by the second set of the same exercise. Is that harder? Never allow any more than one minute between exercises and sets. Ideally you should aim for 10 to 20 seconds between each exercise but listen to your body, don't kill yourself. Train sensibly. If in doubt about a session, ask a coach.

QTY	Exercise	Illustration / Ideas	You
	Warm-up	Jog on the spot gently, jog up/down stairs, or stick on some energetic music and shake those hips for 5 minutes
	Loosen Up. Arm circles, shoulder hunches, side bends, hip circles, lunge stretch, calf stretch, touching floor with straight legs.
10	Press-ups. Keep body straight and just hold the trunk from touching the floor and back up. Alternative is to pivot from your knees on the floor but ensure you are lowing your body towards the floor. You might need to towel as padding for your knees.
10	Sit-ups. Legs bent, hands reaching up onto knees and back down again.
20	Squats. Keep the chin up and eyes looking forward. Feet shoulder width apart and heels kept on the ground. Try and touch the ground. If you can't then touch the calves at the backs of your legs. As you get more flexible you will be able to touch the ground.
30	Dumb-bells. Light weight dumb bells can be used as a running action or both hands going forward and backwards together.	Take care if you have heavier dumb-bells. Running action exercises should use 0.5kg to 2kg maximum depending on the ability of the athlete. TIP: If you don't have dumb-bells the plastic 500ml cola bottles could be a useful alternative.
20	Back extension. Lie on your tummy, hands to side of head, raise your shoulders and straight legs off the ground momentarily and back down again.	You can do this as repetition or just hold your body off the ground and count for a period.
20	Step-ups. Find some stairs you don't mind wearing the carpet! Running one or two steps and down.	Or one large step 30 cm off the ground step up and down again. Perform a quantity or time leading with right leg and then a quantity leading up with left leg.