Running

Benefits of Running-

There are many benefits of beginning to run, or jog. First, is the obvious, that you are getting your cardiovascular exercise in and this in turn strengthens your heart. The federal guideline for cardiovascular exercise is moderate intensity exercise at least a half hour for five days a week. Running is one of the best ways to increase your heart rate, challenging your heart AND creating a caloric deficit. For an average woman, for instance, 30 minutes of walking burns about 150 calories. 30 minutes of jogging burns about 300 calories. That is double the amount!

Another benefit of running is that it strengthens the ligaments around your joints. The impact on your joints caused by running can help prevent osteoarthritis as well!

Running is also a huge stress reliever. Whether on the treadmill, or outside, you can either problem solve while you are running, or completely zone out and ONLY concentrate on your running, clearing your other stressful thoughts.

Starting a Running Program-

Progression is key when beginning a running program. Start from the basics and work your way up. It is great to have an end goal in mind so you stay focused and accountable, however, you can take as much time as you need. Interval training is good way to naturally build up your endurance and allow your body to adjust to the new exercise. Interval training is basically splitting your time up between running and walking. For instance, to start, you can run for 30 seconds and walk for 2 minutes. After a few runs, you would increase the time that you run by 15 seconds. Then continue with that pattern. When you reach 2 minutes running, 2 minutes walking, reverse it and slowly lower the amount of time walking by 15 seconds. It does not seem like much at first. As a matter of fact, you may even feel like you want and can do more. This is normal. However, I highly recommend that you do not do too much, too soon. Although you may feel ok during the run or you may even feel ok for weeks, your body really needs time to get used to running and you do not want to have any setbacks by getting injured. I actually recommend doing this interval training when recovering from an injury or a sickness as well. I ran for years and after any injury or my pregnancy, I used interval training to get back into running shape.