Cross Training Tango
A runner's search for the perfect cross-training By Bob McCray | In an evening of dancing, tango partners can cover three or four miles. (Photo of Erica Sutton and Douglas Rivera. Photo taken at Chicago Summer Dance, July 4th by Bob McCray.) Running the Lake Michigan lakefront is hard to match, but a compatible system of cross training, for example tango dancing, can come close. |
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F. Scott Fitzgerald called
Chicago the indoor city. As a runner, I couldn't agree more. Although I've run on those waffle scorching, ozone alert summer days, and January days when the wind freezes your mustache to your lower lip in Chicago, the name of the game is cross training.
And, as a recreational runner, I've searched for years for a personal "Best System" of indoor cross training. I read the Evanston Running Club
Newsletter articles on cross training. My daughter, a runner in college (who cross trained in the pool), gives me tips. Friends, who already have programs that work for them, give me lots of advice. I've tried treadmills, rope skipping and weightlifting. Unfortunately, over the years, I've learned mostly what doesn't work for me. For years I tried pumping away on a stationary bike in a chilly upstairs
bedroom, watching TV talk shows trying anything to grind out 15 minutes on the bike without going crazy. I couldn't do it. We gave the bike to cycling friends. They've already ridden it around the world five times in equivalent mileage. I also joined a fitness club. It had all the shiny equipment, a view of Lake Michigan, an Olympic size pool, and an eight lap mile indoor track. My
wife and her friends have thrived on water aerobics there for years. I lasted eight months. It reminded me of my high school locker room.
Then I retro'd to my old Canadian Air Force exercise program. I ran in place in the bathroom in my shorts and bare feet, banging out a relentless "pit, pit, pit" sound like someone with slippers on taking the garbage out in the rain. I interspersed that with jumping jacks and dead hang chins
from a bar mounted in our closet door. But when my wife's book club met, someone commented, "What is that thumping upstairs?" They were going to get me a T shirt "Stationary runners are going nowhere." That ended it.
Then one day, it struck me. Lately, my wife and I had taken up tango dancing at a local club on Saturday nights, and when I ran Saturday morning and we danced Saturday night, I was burned out. So I had to give up my Saturday morning runs.
Then, I wondered maybe I had finally found my cross training. Maybe it was dance.
They all laughed when I got out on the dance floor with a pedometer. It seemed silly to me, too, but I wanted to know how far we danced. Square dancers travel five miles a night. If you square danced three nights a week, in a year you could square dance from Chicago to Fargo, North Dakota and I wondered about tango.
I'm a fun runner not a kinesiologist, or exercise physiologist. And, like
most runners I know, I run to lift my spirits. But I'm also a casual reader on the topic, and an article quoting a Boston neurologist on the exercise value of tango caught my attention. He said that Argentine tango uses the same steps as walking without the pressure on joints, and that when he dances with his wife, it raises his heart beat.
I don't know what exercise physiologists look for in cross training. I
know what I want. First, it has to feel like a "workout." I'm a "no pain, no gain" guy. Medicine has to taste bad (like cod liver oil) or it doesn't work. Second, cross training has to give me something like a runner's high enough of the feel good hormones (endorphins) to be an "upper." Third, it has to be different. I can't do the same thing seven days a week. Nobody can. Finally, cross training has to be plain fun.
Remember those old "compare and contrast" essays we had to write in high school or college? Here's one on running and tango
.
First of all, running gives me a "workout feeling." When I've done four miles, I feel I've earned some couch potato units. But Argentine tango can also be a workout. During the faster tunes, your knees churn like pistons of steam locomotives (depending on the music and your dance
style). We fast forward around the dance floor during up tempo tangos (milongas).
When I run, I can always count on a runner's high. A friend told me he read that runners get the same high as a shot of morphine, and that running to music increases the endorphins. I'm a believer. Let me give you an example: We used to let our small terrier out in the back yard to run her laps. When we let her back in, she would chase our big dog,
Grizzly, and our attack cat around the house for 20 minutes.
When I come in after a tempo run with a few intervals, I'm pumped. The high lasts a while. For tango, the high isn't as intense, but it also lasts a good while.
In my opinion, cross training should be different from running. Although the tango steps are like walking, you dance with a partner, and take turns dancing backwards. (Backwards walking and running may have special
exercise benefits but I'll leave that to the kinesiologists.)
Finally, running is fun. It lifts the spirits. The summer running scene (and scenery) along Lake Michigan is great. Stopping to shoot the breeze with friends out inline skating, biking, or launching kayaks and sailboats is like belonging to a country club. And, the Evanston Running Club has a full social calendar.
But tango is also fun. The dance salon where we go (Tango Nada Mas in
Chicago, www.tangonadamas.com) offers free lessons before the Saturday night dances. (People come from Milwaukee, St. Louis, Detroit, Madison and outside the U.S.) Learning the basic tango step was one of the funnest nights of our lives. The tango scenery (a/k/a costumes) is also eye catching. Men sometimes wear spats, pinstriped pants, black silk shirts, black ties, and fedoras. Woman can wear fur, feathers, boas and slinky dresses. Yippee!
The tango community is also clubby. We hug and kiss when we come and go. It raises the heartbeat. James Brown said, "Any problem in the world can be solved by dancing."
As for endurance: I run 20 miles a week. In a year that would take me from Chicago to Denver. At Tango Nada Mas, my pedometer read three miles for an evening of dancing. Dancing once a week would take us from Chicago to Madison. Not as far, but still a great trip.
In conclusion, I discovered everyone has to find his or her own personal best cross training system to listen to the beat of a different drummer (or Walkman). I think I've found mine.
By the way, my jogging pulse is about 120. My dancing pulse during a tango is actually a little higher but then, I'm dancing with my wife.
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