Exercising efficient (training for 5k)
Exercising efficient (training for 5k) by Kenji
There are many reasons for exercising; mostly related to getting a better health, but also some might exercise to lose weight.
Most people do social exercising, which most of the time consist of going to the gym, doing some exercises on some of the equipment and use lots of time talking or watching others. Mostly you will be using lots of time gaining only little.
By efficient exercising I refer to exercising for something specific, in this example I will be using 5k running as an example. 5k is a good example as it could be used as additional exercising for other sports like martial arts, football, basket ball, etc, as it let you exercise both speed and endurance. It is also a good example for those wanting to lose weight as running is one of the most efficient ways to burn calories from the body.
The normal way starting to run is building up your endurance, meaning you start by jogging maybe 5-10 minutes, and walks for the next 5-10 minutes, and repeat jogging again. Another, more discussed variation is to start up working with speed work, meaning you start with intervals of 1 minute running, and relax for 3-5 minutes before you again run 1 minute fast. Recent research seems to indicate the last method is great to build up both speed and endurance rapidly. I of course is the old school who prefer building endurance before speed, but you make your choice of what suits you best. Just make sure you don’t push yourself to hard, as you will most likely give up all exercising if you don’t enjoy it. And it’s important to enjoy your exercising.
I assume it will take 3-4 weeks with 3-4 exercises each week to build up endurance enough to run 4-5 kilometers without needing to rest.
After these 3-4 weeks you should have a variation of exercises in your schedule, most importantly endurance, which you will use to run further than normal days, maybe 7-8 kilometers long. You will also start including speed work as intervals and or fartslek. Another exercise that is good for stomach and back is running hills fast upwards, and slowly jog or walk downwards to regain strength.
As a last not on 5k training , I would advice to either run with someone in order to motivate each other, or to get a heart monitor capable of recording heart rate, speed, distance etc so you are able to check your progress as you are getting better and better. Some of these heart monitors also let you enter your schedule based on heart rate, which is much more beneficial than running for speed or time.
About the Author
A happy writer from Norway
