Well, nowadays that’s just a warm up for the ultra-marathoners who are running 50 - 100 miles races in extremely challenging terrains and conditions.  Like the Marathon des Sables, a six-day, 154-mile trek through the Sahara, or the Jungle Ultra in Peru, where you run mostly downhill, dropping 10,500 feet from the cloud forest down into the Amazon over a distance of 142.6-mile or the Spartathalon which covers the 153-mile course from Athens to Sparta that Greek messenger Pheidippedes ran in 490 BC and you have 35 hours to finish the course.

And if you’re an avid cyclist, doing 100 miles is just a nice weekend with your riding buddies.  But if you’re really into some endurance challenges, there are several epic endurance bike races like the Leadville trail 100 mile MTB race in Colorado, or the Cape Epic, a 9 day 500 mile MTB race in the Safari, or the Everest Challenge where you cycle 205 miles with 29,035 feet of climbing in 2 days in the Sierra Mountains.

Whatever your choice of endurance sport, the one nasty side effect that comes along with doing these types of challenging activities is injury.  Whether you’re a casual runner or cyclist that do moderate to long distances or you’re one of those endurance junkies that love to to push the boundaries… injuries are difficult to avoid simply because you’re doing excessive amounts of repetitive motion, which almost always leads to muscle imbalance.

But mitigating these injuries caused by repetitive movement isn’t as hard as you may think.  In fact, the concept is quite simple…it’s about making sure that you’re strengthening the muscles that aren’t being utilized.  And in the case of endurance runners and cyclists, it’s about paying attention to your neglected muscles which are your glutes and hamstrings (...also known as the posterior chain muscles).

So in the video below, I’m going to show you a simple exercise you can do to help strengthen your glutes and hamstrings, so you can fix your muscle imbalance and avoid having to suffer more than you need to:)

BTW, if you’ve been hampered by chronic injuries from doing endurance activities… and strengthening your weakened muscles don’t help… you may need to modify your training.  The repetitive pounding or grinding day, in and day out will eventually wear out your body.  And this is precisely why many endurance athletes have started doing polarized training.  Without getting too technical, polarized training is based on doing 2 very different types of workouts.  One is short high intensity workouts like my MAX Workouts program.  And the other is doing long training session but performed at 50 - 65% your max effort… basically long and easy.  The short high intensity workouts will help build up your power and endurance while the long slow training helps build up the muscles and ligaments that support your joints.

So unlike traditional endurance training, majority of your fitness is going to be gained through doing short high intensity workouts.  Keep in mind that doing long training, even though the effort is easy, can still wear out your body… especially your joints… so you only want to do it 1 - 3 times a week.  I think for most people 2 times a week a nice sweet spot.  And as for the high intensity workouts, it can be done 2 - 3 times week.  So a sample schedule may look something like this…

• Monday: HIIT (and/or MAX Workouts)

• Tuesday:  Long & Easy

• Wednesday: HIIT (and/or MAX Workouts)

• Thursday: Rest

• Friday: HIIT (and/or MAX Workouts)

• Saturday: Long and Easy

• Sunday: Rest

This is why we have thousands of people that use the MAX Workouts program as part of their polarized training… especially during the off season. It’s a great way to boost your power and endurance while strengthening your body.  The MAX Workouts program can be combined into your weekly training routine by switching out one of the HIIT sessions with the MAX Workouts session or by combining both HIIT and MAX Workouts on the same day. If you’re doing two sessions a day, I recommend at least 3 hours between the 2 sessions.