Today, I’m going to walk you through interval training for beginners. Let’s say you’re not comfortable running for a long period of time, but you like working out on the treadmill. Maybe you just need a little more guidance. You may want to push yourself a little harder to go from a walk to a light jog. I’m going to give you a sample of one of my workouts.
Start on the treadmill with a nice, light walk. Just warm up the body and get those muscles nice and springy. You can walk at this pace for 3-4 minutes. What we want to do instead of walking or running for a long period of time is break it up into intervals. Intervals signify recurring episodes of different intensity levels. Your low intensity will be a walking pace. At a walking pace, also known as a pace or talk test zone, you can carry on a conversation.
Walking is great, but after a while you may want to enter a zone that is a bit more challenging. If you can’t run for 10-15 minutes straight, that’s okay! What we are going to do is slice it. For example, from a walk, take her to a very light jog. Go for just 30 seconds. There are many different protocols you can follow when doing intervals. A very basic one for a beginner would be to do 30 seconds of a good light jog followed by a minute and a half of walking. The ratio here is 3:1. You are resting for 90 seconds and working for 30 seconds. As you get fitter, those ratios will change.
Once you’ve walked for 90 seconds, pick up the pace again for another 30 seconds. Go back to an area where you are doing a good light jog, nothing too crazy. You want to get to a point where it becomes a little more challenging to hold a conversation. If you can hear your breathing, a little huff and puff, that’s where you want to be for that 30-second jog. That means you’re out of your conversation test zone and that’s where you want to be. Once again, when the 30 seconds are up, slow down to a minute and a half walk.
So that’s a simple interval that you can follow on the treadmill. You can repeat that for 10, 15, or 20 minutes, however long you like. The beautiful thing is that you can build some confidence and allow your body to experience running more consistently because we’re dividing up the work. Instead of running for 5 minutes and finishing, we can break it up over time by walking. In the end, you can run longer and get fitter than you otherwise would!