How to Learn to Love Running With Jason Fitzgerald From Strength Running
This week, we’ll put our asses into action and build a solid running habit with the help of Strength Running founder Jason Fitzgerald. And just in time, because Megan Walbert, Lifehacker herself, co-host of The Upgrade, has been working on learning how to enjoy training for this month’s Lifehacker Fitness Challenge .
Jason is not only a seasoned marathon runner, but also a US Certified Athletics Coach and host of The Strength Running Podcast . (He’s also a frequent contributor to Lifehacker !)
Hear Jason’s expert advice on how to start running, how to make running less boring, and what we can do to improve our fitness and avoid injury.
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Highlights from this week’s series
From an interview with Jason Fitzgerald
On the rapid progress that accompanies the usual running:
[E] Ven in a couple of weeks you will start to experience progress. You will start to get better. The metrics we track as runners will start to improve for you. And what I’ve always loved about running is that no matter what, if you put in the effort, you’ll get better … it’s up to you. You have control over your progress in sports. And I just think it’s so exciting.
What to focus on when you first start running:
I think it’s helpful to always have a goal for whatever run you’re going to do. And for beginners, almost all runs will be easy. This is literally a definition of the type of run they do … and indeed, your light runs are not really running at a set pace. They really put in some effort. These are easy runs. It should be easy. How do we define simply? I love to tell runners that if you meet the three criteria for an easy run, then that run is likely to be a light effort. So let’s make the run feel conversational. So if we run together, we can basically have a full conversation … running needs to be controlled too. Sometimes, when you become an intermediate to advanced runner, you do a hard workout. You don’t necessarily feel like you’re in control all the time while you’re on this track … So let’s make sure our runs are controlled so that our runs should be comfortable as well. Are you comfortable now? For beginners, this is a little more difficult because when you first start running, none of your runs may feel very comfortable to you. So it will take a couple of weeks.
On the benefits of making a sandwich on the run to prevent injury:
[A] A really useful strategy that I promote all the time is a concept called “making a sandwich.” We always want to pre-split your run between dynamic warm-ups to make sure you’re really ready to run. And then we’re going to finish the run at the very end of maybe 10 to 20 minutes of strength training, mostly body weight. And so this sandwich method is good for many reasons: you will develop coordination, athleticism, flexibility, mobility through a dynamic warm-up, it will reduce the risk of injury, you are going to run, you will feel better too, especially for beginner runners. You know, doing this dynamic warm-up beforehand really helps you move from a sedentary lifestyle, like sitting at your desk at work, to running. It serves as that bridge, that crossing point. And then when we follow our 10-20 minute core or strength training run, we do a couple of things: First, we get stronger. Number two, we help ourselves to cool down. We go through a bunch of different ranges of motion and it really helps us feel better for the rest of the day because I think anyone who has gone for a longer run or maybe does a hard workout and you come back home you are tired. sit on a chair, pick up the phone, get distracted for half an hour, and then get up from that chair. You know how you feel. You feel tense. You just feel at the age of 50. And that’s because at the end of the workout, we need to move away from higher intensity running. And this 10-20 minute bodyweight program can bridge the gap between running and a sedentary lifestyle.
Watch the entire episode for more of Jason’s advice on how to run more efficiently and happily.
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