You might think that this is what you have to look like to be an endurance athlete.
But more often than not, most endurance athletes actually look like this.
Regular people trying to accomplish things
they never thought possible in endurance races every year.
Why not change your life and make this the year that you tackle that big
challenge that you've always been putting off?
A lot of new runners are starting to wrap
their heads around doing their first half marathon on.
Getting a training plan will be the biggest key to success.
So today, I'm going to give a four workout per week beginner half marathon training
plan that encompasses all the work you'll need to do to reach your goals.
With just four workouts a week, this plan is going to overcome a few
of the biggest hurdles that new runners face being able to run the distance
of a half marathon without stopping, being able to run that half marathon
fairly fast and staying strong and injury free while training.
What's up, Motivators? My name is Taron.
And when ordinary people want to accomplish something extraordinary
in endurance sports, they choose motive training plans.
Let's do it.
To start off, the plan we're going to talk about assumes you will already be able
to run 30 minutes continuously without stopping.
This doesn't mean you have to be running fast at all.
Even a bit of a peppy little shuffle is
enough for our purposes to get you started.
If you can't do this yet, you can watch this video to wrap your head
around what a half marathon training plan will look like.
When you're ready, then we'll link to a video at the end
of this video to our complete beginner's guide to getting started.
Running from scratch.
But for today, the four workouts that we're going
to recommend that you do each week are first, an intense run.
Second, a tempo run.
Third, a strength workout.
And fourth, a long run.
These three runs will make sure that you
can run the race really well, and the strength workout will keep you
strong, injury free, and mobile while you're doing it.
Before we get into those runs,
it's important to start by establishing your heart rate and pace training zone,
because you'll need to be running at the right intensity every minute
of every single run to get the most of the time that you're spending training.
Figuring out your zones will be very easy.
On the screen is the workout we use in our app to figure out pace training zones.
You'll start with an easy jog warm up, go into some drills and strides
to activate your body, then perform a max effort time trial,
which you will take the result of and enter it into a zone pace
calculator that we have linked in the description.
Do this workout in week one, then in week two, you'll need to perform
the max heart rate test that's on the screen again.
You'll start with an easy jog warm up,
then go into a faster paced tempo run to bring your heart rate up.
Then go into 400 meters as fast as you possibly can.
Then end with another 400 meters where you're pushing harder every 100 meters
interval to get that heart rate as high as possible.
Finally, get a measure of your lowest
possible resting heart rate and enter all of those figures into the calculators
we've linked in the description below to get your personalized training zones.
Now, let's get into the workouts.
Tuesday will be an intense run of 40 to 70 minutes.
There's an example intense run workout from our app on the screen now.
But to keep this video from being 60 minutes long, we're going to keep this
basic and say that these workouts should feature intervals of one to eight minutes
long and be in your zone's four and five pace zones.
Between each of the intervals, you should have roughly one to four minutes of rest.
In between, you'll start your training
plan with shorter intervals and longer rest.
Then, as you build each week,
you can add time, reduce rest, increase speed, or do all three.
This run teaches your body how to move fast.
The goal is to go faster than what's comfortable for you.
To elicit a training response that is
going to improve your speed, it's important not to run on back to back
days when you're just starting out, because that can introduce injury.
So that's why the next run is scheduled
for Thursday, which is a tempo run of 40 to 70 minutes.
Again, to keep this video short,
these workouts should feature intervals of ten to 30 minutes and be in your zones
three and four by pace, with five to ten minutes of rest in between.
Much like the intense run, you will start with shorter intervals and longer rest.
Then as you progress, add time, reduce rest, or go faster as you improve.
The goal of this tempo workout is to teach
your body how to run fast for a long period of time.
It's preparing you not just to finish the race, but to finish it well.
It's combining the endurance of completing
the distance with the speed from that intense workout.
You'll take a rest from this workout
on Friday, and then on Saturday you'll do a 30 to 60 minutes strength workout.
We've put some example movements
on the screen from the guided strength video workouts that are in our app.
You can see that we really like mobility
focused kettlebell movements, but really you can do whatever you like.
A lot of strength trainers tend to split hairs, saying that every single method
that they recommend is better than all other methods.
Fact of the matter is though, that different people have different methods.
Some, yes, are better than others, some are more accessible than others.
We really like kettlebell,
mobility focus movements because it's very easy for people to buy one kettlebell
and get excellent training without spending a ton of money on equipment,
but really do whatever strength training feels good for you.
The two big keys to keep in mind
with endurance sports specific strength training are first,
when you're in the middle of a training plan, don't make those strength workouts
much more than an activation of the muscles.
We don't want to break down your muscles
and make them soar for your runs, this invites injury.
Second, stay out of that eight to 15 rep range used for building muscles.
This tends to break down your muscles, making them sore.
And we're looking to build strength and stability, not build muscle growth.
To perform well in endurance sports,
these strength workouts can be as short as 30 minutes, but no longer than 60 to make
sure that we're keeping our stress levels nice and low.
Finally, Sunday is the long run, where you'll train your body to run for so
long that covering the distance of the race will be a complete nonissue.
As we show in this workout on the screen, the long run is fairly simple.
We recommend that you do it on trails to keep the risk of injury low while also
improving your explosive power, which will improve your running economy,
allowing you to run while using less energy.
Here's the big key to this long run, though.
You have to do it with a very low heart rate under your zone.
Two, heart rate cap shouldn't be done by pace.
It should be done by heart rate. For a lot of people,
especially if you're doing this on hills and trails, that will mean that this run
is done really slow with walk breaks, and that's totally okay.
That's the point. Pace has nothing to do with this workout.
It's all about keeping your heart rate in the right zone.
By keeping your heart rate low, you will keep your stress response low so
that you'll stay healthy during the training.
Build it'll.
Also build mitochondria in the muscles so you'll be able to produce more energy
raising the ceiling of what you're capable of.
This run should be 60 minutes to two and a half hours.
Those are the four workouts.
But there are a few things that you need to keep in mind for all of these workouts.
Do two weeks in a row, pushing really hard and building up.
Then every third week, take a lighter week that's rest focused
where you should step down your training by 30% to 40%.
And the final obvious question that a lot of people have is, well,
how long should they build up to be able to reach their goals in a half marathon?
For that, we've created a calculator because everyone is unique.
And you can use this for free on our blog.
It's linked in the description below.
All you have to do is enter your race, your current abilities and your goal,
and it'll tell you roughly how many months it'll take to prepare for the race
to reach those goals and the average hours per week you'll have to spend training.
Our training plans have a lot more nuance
than what we've laid out in this video, and any proper training plan will.
But this outline that we've laid out for you will get anyone,
regardless of where you're starting to the finish line, feeling great.
Whatever your great is, that is amazing and extraordinary.
Thank you for watching. Make sure you hit the subscribe button if
you want more weekly training tips designed specifically to help ordinary
people accomplish something extraordinary in endurance sports,
hit the notification bell to not miss out on videos when they come out.
And finally, click the video on the screen.
If you are a total beginner runner
and want help with how to get started with all the training gear,
technique and nutrition you need to know about to reach your goals,
this video covers all of that and will get you started off on the right foot later.
Motivators.