Performance and prepare for wipeouts: Now the idea of the training programmes was to help our sportsmen and women perform better at their chosen sports, and we'll look at the specific demands of some of these activities as we get to them. They should all improve on at least one component (and probably more) in our exercise test, although this was not the main aim. A healthy by-product of all this is that they are also likely to be a little bit safer. Not suffering from the effects of fatigue so much means that they are less likely to crash, fall over or generally do something stupid through a loss of concentration. It also means that their bodies become a bit more flexible (through stretching), so when they do crash, fall over and do something stupid (which is gonna' happen sooner or later) they are more able to bend and contort into unnatural positions before anything "gives" (and breaks, OUCH!!).

Most of the activities that our crew choose to take part in requires a combination of reasonable aerobic condition along with some upper body and/or abdominal muscle endurance. None of them needs to be built like Arnold Schwarzneggar's outhouse, so the real heavy weights can stay in the unopened boxes that they arrived in.

Aerobic training: Standard aerobic training advice goes along the lines of… "a warm-up, followed by 20-60 minutes of activity using large muscle groups, 3-5 times per week and a warm-down". Now that is sound advice, and everyone would benefit if they just got out there and did it. However, those folks out there who already have a pretty good aerobic base to work upon (i.e. the regular runners, cyclists, etc.) are probably gonna' need to move away from the "steady-state" regular pace stuff, and start incorporating some "Interval" and/or "Fartlek" work (yes it is a real word, ask any Scandinavian). One simple way of doing this is to build in some short sharp bursts of faster work into the steady-state runs. In practice, this means the runner picks some landmarks along the route (lamp post, trees, road signs, etc.) that are spaced somewhere around 100 - 300 metres apart. After the first mile (effectively an active warm-up) up the pace in between them, not to a sprint, but enough to really get the heart and lungs working hard. Then have an active recovery phase of a minute or two (i.e. back to regular pace) before the next burst. This is hard work (and has been known to cause many a vomiting session) but should improve our maximal capacity and ability to cope with those annoying hills.

Circuit training: Now we all hate it, but Circuit Training really is one of the best ways of improving muscular power and endurance. What's more, we don't need any fancy expensive equipment to set up a really effective exercise package at home. Most of the exercises outlined below require no equipment at all (apart from willing muscles!). A cheap set of dumbbells (or anything else that you can find around the house or garage to lift up) and possibly a chin-up bar (for the climbers) is really the only extra stuff we might require.

We are starting by doing 1-2, but build up to 3 circuits of the exercises as described in our individual programs. We are giving ourselves 1-2 minutes between each circuit for recovery. We really need to do this 2-3 times per week to get the most benefit, preferably on alternate days between other stuff (or we could try it after some aerobic work if we still feel up to it!).