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How to Train in Uncertain Times

I started thinking about writing this after most of the spring marathons were cancelled and I was asked by my clients how they can keep going between now and when they would normally start to train for their events.

Don’t Overtrain!

I am usually in the ‘cautious’ corner when it comes to possibly overtraining (some of my clients find it very frustrating when I have to remind them that sometimes less is better) as I have been guilty of that myself with my own running in previous years and believe me, it is no fun at all. In the current climate of Covid-19, overtraining needs to be avoided at all costs (more about that later).

Therefore, this is a great time to re-evaluate your running goals. A 16 week marathon training plan for an October marathon, assuming that they will still go ahead, would start at some point in June. That means that we have at least April and May to do something different and still have loads of time to build back up the distances again.

The next couple of months will afford you the luxury of mixing up your running a bit. Whether you want to change your possible marathon finishing time, get faster, just enjoy running, or change your focus on to shorter distances, now is the best time to do this.

So, for most of my clients, we have dropped their longer runs from 16-20 miles, if they were marathon training, down to between 8-14 miles a week (less for some), depending on their targets.  I am asking them not to overdo the mileage and instead, enjoy some runs that they would not do during a marathon training cycle.   That could mean going for runs off-road, it could mean doing some shorter more creative sessions that will help to get back some speed into their legs (shorter faster intervals, mixture of fartleks and tempo sessions, etc)

Fatigue and Immune System

At this point it is important to remember that marathon training is tough, both mentally and physically and sometimes you need a bit of a break from the longer runs and hard, long tempo sessions. You also need to reduce the amount of fatigue that you put through your body, especially at a time like this where we might need our immune system to fight Covid-19 (or more generally cold and flu viruses).

There are some great articles about running too hard or far suppressing and reducing your immune system, but this article written by American coach Steve Magness (famous not only for his coaching but also because he was a main whistle-blower in the Nike Oregan Project/Alberto Salazar doping scandal) sums it up very concisely.

https://www.facebook.com/stephenmagness/posts/10101115712420191

We cannot boost or increase our immune system through exercising (I have been guilty of using those words in the past, I admit), but you can make it less easy to damage by being sensible with the amount of exercise you do. Too much and you can damage and suppress it.

This is a key part of the article:

-Regular exercise practiced over time is beneficial to the immune system. It will make it more robust.
– But like with performance, if you push into or near over-training, your risk of infection likely goes up. It’s not rocket science. It’s stress and adaptation.
– Rather than defining hard/moderate/easy for your training, think of it as drastic changes which alter your risk of infection. If ‘normal’ for you is running 10 miles per day and you continue doing that, you’re likely fine. If normal for you is running 2 miles per day and you try to run 6 miles per day, your risk of infection likely goes up.

My message on the back of this is don’t keep pushing for more and more miles or more and more speed each week. It is fine to do some hard workouts if you usually do and if you know that you are not at your physical limit (they may feel hard at the time, that is fine, but you should not feel destroyed afterwards). So, make sure that you keep your easy runs really easy. If you feel tired then take a day (or extra day) off from exercise, not just running.

You can improve slightly in this period but remember that if you do not currently have a plan in place, you reduce your mileage if you increase your intensity and don’t do anything to really trash yourself. Shorter speedwork is fine if you take your recovery seriously and don’t push yourself in to the red.  For those I have written plans for, I know their running history and can dial it down a few notches, but still allow them to try some runs that they wouldn’t normally do.

Here are a few concepts that will help maintain your immune system. *taken from the Steve Magness article again https://www.facebook.com/stephenmagness/posts/10101115712420191

-Sleep!
-Maintain exercise routines.
-Eat quality food as best you can.
-Don’t fall into a chronically slightly stressed state. Meaning don’t watch or scroll through coronavirus tweets all day.
-Give structure to your day and time spent working on things you enjoy.
-Don’t go to the well in training.
-For the most part, ignore all of the advice on supplements, magic pills, etc. that are “immune-boosting.”
-Manage psychological stress: Find activities you can do to give yourself a mental break: Yoga, reading, meditation, walks in nature, etc.
-Don’t train yourself (or diet yourself) into glycogen depletion.
-If you do decide to a slightly harder or longer workout, replenish with food and water soon after.
-Remember to exercise solo 

Looking Forwards – What Next?

I know that as I write this on Wednesday 25th March things have changed a lot in the last week, with further rumours that more measures in the UK will be forced upon us. That means that as runners we are pointing in a few different directions.

-panic, I want to run as much as possible while we can

-a complete lack of motivation as I don’t know what is going to happen and there is plenty of time before my next race

-carry on as normal and continuing to do what I can

At least with currently only being allowed to run once a day it takes away the urge to run twice a day to get in more and more runs. Double days are likely to suppress your immune system at a time we need it most (yes even you fit and healthy youngsters, this is not going to be nice if you do contract Covid-19).

I can understand those with a lack of motivation at the moment. They have got up to almost peak mileage in their marathon training, or were getting to a peak ready for spring league races and then had it all taken away from them. However, habits form. When we run regularly that becomes a habit. When we stop running, that will also become a habit.  If we stop for too long, then it is tough to then reform the motivation and habit to continue again. Also, and the thing I find hardest to watch from a coaching point of view, is the loss of fitness that had been built up in what has been horrible weather this winter.

This is where having access to a coach can help.  I have amended the training plans of all of my runners who were planning spring races, writing maintenance plans with a bit more speed work for most but less mileage and less distance in their longer runs so as not to fatigue them.  I have also had coaching calls with people I don’t write ongoing plans for. These have been focused on how to construct their own maintenance plan, tips on how to keep going, strength training to minimise injuries and how to keep your motivation when you don’t know what will happen next.

My biggest goal is to keep people active and running whenever we can.  

Do you want structured training to keep you running after your marathon?

Want to know more about running or personal training?

Do you want a personalised training plan?

Contact me today to ask any questions or to book your FREE consultation

Call me on 07815 044521 or email me at martinhulbertpt@gmail.com

Martin Hulbert

Personal Trainer & Running Coach Leicestershire

MH Health and Fitness Online Community

www.facebook.com/mhhealthandfitness.co.uk

#MHrunners

Exercise Snacking

Snacking. Is It Any Good?

Exercise Snacking! Please get that in the right order; it is not snacking as an exercise!

 

Exercise snacking as a concept isn’t a new idea. It is basically a different way of getting in your required amount of exercise (the NHS recommends 150 minutes of moderate intensity exercise plus some strength training per week).  Gyms have both the equipment (aerobic and weight training) and the convenience (if you can fit a session in around your working life) to make them seem like the obvious choice for reaching that NHS target. What many people don’t realise is that taking one or two sessions of exercise a week can’t make up for the damage done by sitting down a lot in between.

 

The idea that joining a gym is the best way to get fit has been challenged by scientists for many years who have studied the benefits of a range of non-traditional exercise regimes. A well-known is high-intensity interval training (HIIT), which may offer similar or even superior effects on health as traditional endurance-based training but in much shorter exercise times.  But what if you are unable to do the really intense workouts that the HIIT requires to be beneficial? High intensity isn’t high intensity if you cannot get yourself to work hard enough.

 

Another form or exercise that has emerged in to the public domain is exercise snacking. This form of multiple bouts of brief, “snack-sized” portions of exercise has been shown to control blood sugar better than a single, continuous workout. In a study examining the benefits of exercise snacking, researchers compared blood sugar in participants who exercised for 30 continuous minutes and, in the same group, when they broke their exercise up into three small portions performed shortly before breakfast, lunch and dinner. This “exercise snacking” lowered blood sugar for about 24 hours and did so much better than the 30-minute exercise.

 

Exercising around mealtimes also appears to be beneficial for people with diabetes. A study showed taking a 10-minute walk after each meal can significantly improve the control of blood sugar in people with type 2 diabetes compared with a single 30-minute walk each day. These studies collectively highlight the importance of making sure we keep active throughout the day and increasing the amount of energy we use up in non-exercise activities that we normally do during everyday life, from walking up stairs to cleaning the house.

 

I believe that exercise snacking can be the way forward for people who sit down a lot during their normal daily life. I remember when I worked in an office but ran for an hour a day plus I did about 30 minutes a day in the gym. That meant I was exercising for 90 minutes a day on average. It sounds a lot (and to most people it is), but when you work out that it was only 6.25% of my day, meaning that usually 93.75% of my day was spent sitting or lying down; suddenly it doesn’t seem much.

 

Now I am a Personal Trainer I am constantly on my feet, but rarely actually exercising (apart from my one hour of running per day which I still maintain).  What I do differently now is that after each client I train, I try to do between 5-10 minutes of lifting weights or doing some other form of exercises (bodyweight squats, single leg balancing, some core exercises, etc) and when I am in my ‘admin time’ I try to get up as much as possible for 5 minutes at a time, even if that is just to make a coffee.

 

When I train clients, I know that most are inherently lazy when it comes to their time away from our training sessions. Now that isn’t that they don’t want to do anything, it is that their time is precious and they cannot all afford to spend 30-60 minutes at a time working out. Instead, I give them workouts that they can do at home with minimal or no weights (whatever they have available to them). These workouts can be done in whole if they can, or in part so that they make up the 30-minute workouts over the course of the day.

 

Invariably, a fair few end up doing more than 30 minutes a day once it is broken up into small chunks as they enjoy the little and often approach, meaning they don’t notice the time spent exercising (plus the non-exercise exercise such as gardening, dog-walking, shopping, cleaning, moving things, etc).

 

So, if you want to improve your fitness and think that you don’t have the time, you do! You just need to enjoy the benefits of snacking!

Do you want structured training to keep you running after your marathon?

Want to know more about running or personal training?

Do you want a personalised training plan?

Contact me today to ask any questions or to book your FREE consultation

Call me on 07815 044521 or email me at martinhulbertpt@gmail.com

Martin Hulbert

Personal Trainer & Running Coach Leicestershire

MH Health and Fitness Online Community

www.facebook.com/mhhealthandfitness.co.uk

#MHrunners

Need Motivation to Run?

If anyone is struggling for motivation, or finding marathon training tough, this is the last 800m of 2017 London Marathon videoed by myself.

It WILL all be worth it when you finish. There are still some more tough runs ahead, but when you cross the finish line in London, or at any other marathon your are running, you will realise you have achieved so much more than most other people and you should be so proud of your achievement.

 

Do you want structured training to keep you running after your marathon?

Want to know more about running or personal training?

Do you want a personalised training plan?

Contact me today to ask any questions or to book your FREE consultation

Call me on 07815 044521 or email me at martinhulbertpt@gmail.com

Martin Hulbert

Personal Trainer & Running Coach Leicestershire

MH Health and Fitness Online Community

www.facebook.com/mhhealthandfitness.co.uk

#MHrunners

 

How To Run Easy

One of the most common questions people new to running ask me is how they can get their breathing right. They may have been following one of the many plans out there or have been going out by themselves and enjoying their running but finding the breathing bit hard.   If you’ve experienced this, then you are not alone. Below I’ve put some tips that may help you.

The first thing I would say is that it sounds like you’re running too fast. Even if you think that you’re slow, the intensity/effort is probably too much at this stage. What we’re commonly taught in the various programs online is how long to run for rather than how it should feel. If you work on how it should feel (effort), then you’ll likely progress more quickly. However, this is one of the hardest things for newer runners (and some experienced ones) to get their heads around.

So, if all this in mind, here are my top 5 tips for mastering your easy effort level:

  1. The talk test – you should be able to talk in sentences between breaths. If you run with others, then you should be able to hold down a conversation without struggling.
  2. Sing a song in your head – you don’t have to do this out loud, although if you do nobody is going to want to kidnap you! Try to sing a song to yourself and aim to be able to sing a line of a verse of your favourite song between breaths.
  3. Focus on feeling comfortable – this is one of the big ones. Try to relax and focus on feeling comfortable when you run. Sometimes you can overthink things. Just try to feel comfortable.
  4. Feel like you can just keep running – instead of looking at your watch and checking your pace.  Try running at a pace that you feel you could keep running at for much longer than you need to.
  5. Run easy – don’t concentrate on your pace, just focus on effort and it feeling easy. If it feels too hard then it is not easy. If it doesn’t feel easy, slow down until it does feel easy. Don’t look at your watch, other than the time or distance you are running.

Different runs require different effort levels.  If you are doing an interval or hill session, you are going to want (or need) to run at a faster pace (harder effort) than normal. However, when you do not have a specific session to do, or if you are a new/inexperienced runner, you will want to keep the effort level easy.  This should be the case for about 75-80% of all of the miles you complete (this goes for elite athletes as well).

If you feel that you can follow the 5 steps above, you will be surprised how easy and comfortable your running will feel (it may take a couple of weeks of practice).  You will then be able to run further than you thought you ever could.

Try it and see what happens. You might feel that you’re reducing your pace, however you won’t be there for long and you’ll likely be able to run for longer and recover better.

Let me know how you get on!

 

Do you want structured training to keep you running after your marathon?

Want to know more about running or personal training?

Do you want a personalised training plan?

Contact me today to ask any questions or to book your FREE consultation

Call me on 07815 044521 or email me at martinhulbertpt@gmail.com

Martin Hulbert

Personal Trainer & Running Coach Leicestershire

MH Health and Fitness Online Community

www.facebook.com/mhhealthandfitness.co.uk

#MHrunners