The Case Against the 5K Sofa (and What to Try Instead)
The 5K Sofa program made a lot of people start running. It starts out in the light, has a structure that’s easy to adhere to, and you end school with the ability to finish the normal race distance. But this plan has drawbacks, and it’s not the only way to get started. If you’ve tried the C25K and it doesn’t work for you, you might want to try something else.
What is a 5K sofa?
Originally published on the now defunct coolrunning.com website, the best place to read about the Couch to 5K right now is the NHS website . You can download an app or a set of audio tracks that will accompany you during every workout.
Basically, that’s nine weeks of walking training. In the first week, “you will start with a quick 5 minute walk. After that, you will alternate between 1 minute of running and 1.5 minutes of walking, for a total of 20 minutes. ” By week 4, some of your runs are five minutes long. By week 6, you will have done 25 minutes of jogging with no walking breaks.
The last week is a 30-minute run, which is enough for a beginner to cover about three miles or five kilometers. If you start slower, 5K will take you a few minutes longer, but by the time you can run 30 minutes, you can bet you can do 5K just fine.
Nice sofa parts up to 5K
I started by running a walk and run program for a while; it was up to the days of Divan before 5K, but the idea was very similar. The best thing about the Couch to 5K is that it’s available. If you’ve tried running before and popped out after a minute or two, don’t worry! The first week of workouts requires only one minute of running. You can do it.
Timed rest intervals also help. You will quickly realize that you cannot sprint with all your might within a minute, and will be ready for the next stage in a minute and a half. This will teach you how to slow down. Ideally, this program will teach you the correct stimulation. (This isn’t always the case, but we’ll leave this criticism for the next section.)
The gradual acceleration will also train your body to run. Running is harder on certain tissues, including tendons, than walking, and novice runners often experience lower leg or knee pain if they increase mileage too quickly. A jog / walk plan is a smart way to increase your jogging volume while developing a consistent running habit (each session lasts about 30 minutes, three times a week).
Another big plus is that when you participate in the program, you switch from the question “How fast am I?” or “Am I really a runner?” to “Okay, just have to go through this next run.” You have to trust the process if you want to make progress on anything, and participating in a program – any good program – gives you a concrete way to do it.
Cons of the Sofa up to 5K
Now let’s talk about some of the common pitfalls.
You can turn your runs into interval training
When you have to run and then walk, it’s easy enough to sprint and recover from a walk. People often assume that the program is aimed at boosting your cardio fitness so that your sprint pace on the first day becomes your long run pace at the end.
But this is not the case! Your cardiovascular system doesn’t adapt as quickly. At the end of your 30-minute run, you run slower than during these one-minute spurts. And if you don’t learn how to slow down ( every beginner runner has to slow down, damn it ), you’re just banging your head against a metaphorical wall.
Browse any C25K forum and you will find people talking about how they had to repeat certain weeks or how they “couldn’t” do all of the running intervals for a given week, even the first week. This is what happens when you don’t learn to slow down.
If you truly sprinted your first one-minute run on W1D1, you may not be able to recover in time to complete the next. It’s not that you can’t , it’s just that you were in a hurry. And you may have gone through the first three to four weeks running at intervals, but this strategy stops working as your runs get longer. If you keep failing or giving up on the C25K, this is probably the reason.
You may think of walking as a failure.
Since the C25K aims to get you to run more and walk less, people start to pay attention to whether they are walking while running and how much. And they judge themselves for it.
In real life, no one stops people crossing the finish line of a marathon to ask how many minutes they have passed. If you have covered the distance by running or jogging, you have run the distance, even if you had to stop to walk when you got to a large hill or when you took a sip of water.
You cannot tell the difference between a race and a training run.
Thus, the program allows you to go from completely untrained – sitting on the couch – to running 5K, or about three miles. Chill. But the concept, which is overlooked by many adherents C25K, lies in the fact that when the runners talk about “5 kilometers”, they are referring to the race. And a race is different from a training race.
This is the difference. Let’s say you’re a casual runner. You can do an easy training run of five kilometers any time you like. Let’s say it usually takes you about 35 minutes. Once you’ve made a bunch of them, you can sign up for a local 5K race. You pay an entry fee, you get a T-shirt, maybe you raise money for charity. You line up at the start, and since this is a race and not a training day, you force yourself to go faster than your regular training run. Your heart rate rises, you breathe hard, and your legs burn as you pick up the pace to cross the finish line. Time: 30 minutes. Damn it! What a good race you had.
That is, the mileage is 5K. This is what a runner means when they say they run 30 minutes for 5 km. This does not mean that they usually cover five kilometers in 30 minutes each time they go to workout.
But C25K runners (and many newbies, to be honest!) Often focus on 5K distance and 5K time as a measure of their fitness. You don’t have to treat training like racing . It’s like trying to get the best grade on a test by simply passing the tests over and over. Students need to open a book and start learning; runners should do training runs at a training pace.
If you don’t like the Couch to 5K, you’ll think you don’t like running.
This is probably my biggest problem with the popularity of the C25K: it has become synonymous with running training and even running.
The sense of progress many C25K runners experience is related to the app, not running in general. If you’ve tried the C25K and haven’t been able to get through a certain week, or if you’ve graduated and are sad that you are still a slow runner, you might think that you just hate running or that you are not destined to be good. on him.
But C25K is just one of many programs that work. You can start differently. (More on that in a second.) Also, when you’re done, you can opt-out .
I see too many people end up with C25K and then figure the next step is to start C25K again, but faster, or find a similar running and walking program that will bring them up to 10K. But progressively longer running-walking intervals aren’t the only way to exercise! And bridging ever greater and greater distances is not the only path to progress.
Of course, it’s cool if you run 5 km and then decide you want to run 10 km, half marathon and full marathon. This is a great way if you like to run long distances. But what if I told you that you can stick to short runs and just gain 5K? There are many runners, including student and professional runners, who specialize in short and medium distances. They don’t run the C25K over and over again; they use other training programs that better suit their goals.
Alternatives to Couch for 5K
So what else can you do?
First, while the programs are great, it’s okay not to jump into one at first. You can just go out for half an hour (or whatever period of time you like) and run and walk depending on your mood. We have a post explaining this as “intuitive running,” but a lot of runners started out with something similar without ever giving it a name.
You can run on your own, read a little about running, and decide what you want to do next. Hopefully, you’re bumping into the idea that the key to running steady is to slow down enough not to stop breathing . Remember when I said I started out on a program like C25K? After about a month – and I assure you that at this point in my life I was out of shape and not athletic – I realized that I was running slower and slower, and wondered if I could do my normal running route without stopping to go if I ran slow enough. I did this and shocked myself by running for 20 or 30 minutes straight, although I had never run for more than five minutes or so before.
Once you unlock this little insight, you can work on any schedule you like. And if you need a walk break from time to time, just take it. My first race was 10 km and I had many small 30-second walking breaks just to catch my breath when I realized I was going too fast. I did finish at a decent (for me) time.
Okay, are you ready for the program? The good news is, there are a lot of them, and you can choose the ones that fit your schedule and your goals. Hal Higdon’s plans are free (or available in a paid app if you like). Here is his plan to build a beginner base that would be a great alternative to the C25K. The first week consists of two 1.5-mile runs, one 30-minute walk, and two three-mile runs. This is where our editor-in-chief Megan Walbert started when she wanted to learn to run . You can add as many breaks to your races as you like.
Or maybe you finished C25K and want to take the next step. This 5K interim plan adds some speed work (fast laps on the track with rest breaks in between) while making most of the runs short and easy and lengthening one weekend run (it reaches 7 miles by the end.)
There are countless other programs out there. If you have a fitness tracker like Garmin or Fitbit, it probably has custom running plans that you can follow. Apps like Runkeeper and Nike Run Club also have virtual trainers and one-time workouts.
And don’t forget the local running clubs. Your local Road Runners club or running store probably has a group working out together. They can introduce you to a trainer or provide you with a written program that you can follow. Spending time with other runners is also a great way to learn the ins and outs of training as a runner, rather than having to figure it out on your own when you start from scratch.