- Morning Trainiacs, as we do the standard wait
for GPS to connect,
we're gonna introduce today's video
which is going to talk about five of the biggest mistakes
that new triathletes make when they start running
and these are mistakes that are going to lead to injury
and just running a whole lot,
and not actually getting any faster.
Gonna have to work with that stuff.
(upbeat music)
So first thing that people get started
on the wrong foot with is
literally getting started on the wrong foot.
Start running in junky shoes now,
this makes sense people
they end up,
coming into triathlon from
maybe some sort of other sports background,
whether it's weightlifting or
in the gym or ultimate Frisbee or something like that,
so they've got general fitness shoes,
but
one of the issues is that those shoes,
aren't built for running so the foam is probably collapsed.
So that means you're gonna have no cushion on your shoes.
This is gonna lead to a higher likelihood of injury,
you're gonna feel beat up, really, really quickly
and then what also might happen
is you might go to a running shoe store
and running shoe big box stores are really known for giving
big heel-to-toe drop kind of shoes, but
studies show that
newer runners need a lower heel-to-toe drop,
under eight millimeters.
So what you want, the proper running shoe,
low heel-to-toe drop,
neutral running shoe,
so your foot can get stronger and adapt
and it's got that nice cushion,
to be able to keep running without injury,
without pain without feeling beat up.
That's the first thing you gotta get right.
Now if you've taken care of that,
you've got good running shoes,
this next issue is gonna be less likely.
But then what people often do,
is they start running with a technique
that they're landing with their foot
out front to the center of mass in front of them.
Now,
I don't care about whether you land, heel first,
fore-foot or on your toe,
there's a lot of talk about how
you should never heel stride,
that's not right.
What is correct, is that you don't wanna land out front.
It's actually been shown
that at paces, slower than a six minute a mile,
it's actually more efficient to run
landing with your heel first.
Doesn't mean that you should try to do that,
just means you shouldn't stress about
what part of your foot you're landing on.
What you should stress about
is landing,
dog!
What you should stress about, is if you're landing
out front of your body.
And how you can address this, is by starting your runs,
just by hopping up and down in place,
and then starting to lean forward.
That's gonna give you the feeling
of where you need to land
underneath your body.
Now, the next thing, is that when people start running,
they don't
run fast enough, when they're doing their fast runs.
Now, when I say fast,
I mean fast.
But what happens is,
at the start running is really hard, it's,
it's uncomfortable, it's painful.
You feel clunky, takes a long time to warm up.
So people end up going,
ooh, kinda,
you know, that feels a little bit challenging,
a little uncomfortable.
But what you should be doing early on is, really fast,
really intense, eight-second burst, 12-second burst,
200 meter repeats.
These short, really intense efforts
with lots of rest between
and it's that's hard stuff, that really hard stuff
that ends up making you faster,
especially at the start,
when you're training your neuromuscular system to learn
how to turn over really fast,
you've gotta push that really fast,
into an uncomfortable area.
Now how fast is fast enough?
Anywhere from
an eight second to a
eight minute hard interval
is good and do a series of these
cars!
Okay.
And do a series of these, such that
you aren't fading
by the end of the interval so if it's a
two minute hard interval,
you wanna finish as fast as when you started.
And, let's say you're doing
eight of those two minute intervals,
you don't want the eighth two-minute interval
to be any slower than the first one.
So it's,
and then what's more,
you wanna end feeling like you could've done
one or two more.
And that's gonna be your sweet spot for
how hard is hard enough.
And that's really gonna push up that top end is.
Now, the fourth thing that people get wrong,
is that, just like they don't run hard enough,
when it's time to run hard,
they don't run long enough, when it's time to run long.
This doesn't mean go out and just start smashing yourself.
No, no, no, no, no.
What you do is
start with wherever you are whatever is comfortable.
If that's a mile,
you start with a mile, if it's half a mile,
you start with a half a mile, it's cool.
But what you do is, every week,
build up by about 10% from the week before,
take a rest week every third week.
And then,
what you do is build your way up
till you got an over distance,
you can run longer than the actual distance of your race.
So if you are a sprinter athlete,
this means that you are
building up to being able to run around nine kilometers,
around five and a half miles.
If you're an Olympic, 15 to 16 kilometers,
nine to 10 miles.
If you're a half Ironman athlete,
building up to around 22 to 24 kilometers,
14 to 15 miles.
For Ironman athletes,
you don't have to worry about that over distance,
but you gotta build up to being able to do
a three and a half hour run for sure.
So you've got to be able to run
longer than the distance of your race
in a standalone run,
so when you get into the race,
the distance is a non-issue.
Because you know what?
It's gonna be even harder to run that distance in the race,
than it is to run it
just normally
'Cause you're starting in the triathlon really fatigued.
So make the distance a non-issue,
build up that endurance.
(upbeat music)
Now the final thing that's required
to make all of this work,
is that when you're not running hard,
your easy has to be easy.
Notice that, this' an easy run for me,
and here I am, shooting a video, talking in a video.
It's gotta be really, really easy.
But the good thing about that is that,
you're not gonna feel as beat up.
You're gonna be able to build
mitochondrial density, mitochondria are
the energy producers in the muscles
and that low-intensity running really builds it up.
So what's gonna happen is,
your easy efforts are gonna get faster,
your fast efforts are gonna feel easier.
And then the fast efforts, when you add them in,
they're gonna make all that more
dense mitochondria much more effective.
If all you do is hard stuff,
you are going to be doing that
hard stuff with your mitochondria.
So you're just gonna have less energy, you're
gonna peak out very quickly
and you're gonna get injured
because you're training too hard.
Now how easy is easy enough?
You can use the Maffetone Method calculation
and then I would even say,
use your heart rate
and go five to 10 beats lower than that
to makes sure that you're completely fine.
If you don't have a heart rate monitor,
you have to be able to talk really easily,
very conversational
almost the same as if you're just sitting on a couch.
Now this is gonna mean
that you're gonna run really slow,
but that's okay, you'll get faster
and your body doesn't understand pace,
your body understands the physiological effect,
and running or walking or hiking at that low intensity
has the right physiological effect
to improve your mitochondrial density.
So when you run easy,
make it easy and everyone always messages me,
"It feels like I'm just going way too easy."
Doesn't matter, that's the point.
When I started out with easy running,
I was running almost a seven minute kilometer.
Now, I can do a five minute kilometer
or even sometimes, a little faster
and keep my heart rate even lower
than that old seven minute kilometer.
And guess what?
Even though I'm running easier,
all of my run race splits are faster.
(upbeat music)
So, Trainiacs those are
the five things that I most commonly see
new triathletes start doing when they take up running,
that's really gonna hold them back.
It's gonna make it harder for them to push hard,
when they need to push hard,
it's gonna make it more likely that they get injured.
And all of these things together
are part of a system that we've put
in a new book that we've just released,
it's on Amazon, it's on triathlonrunningfoundations.com.
You can go check that out, the people that we had
pre-review this really, really liked it because what we do
is we put everything into a system, a structured,
if you're here, do this,
if you're doing this, do this,
so that newer triathletes,
and that's who it's written for,
understand how to progress in running
really quickly instead of just
running in circles and not making any progress.
So with that said,
I still have a minute and 48 seconds left to make up,
anyone else feel like they've got to
run exactly the amount of prescribed time that they run?
I do.
All right, triathlonrunningfoundations.com or on Amazon.
Later Trainiacs.