A Good Running Program for Beginners

Physical fitness is very crucial nowadays, especially with the rampage of many health diseases and risks. Sedentary lifestyles and unhealthy diets of many people give way to higher morbidity rates of cardiovascular diseases. Obesity (linked with cardiovascular diseases) has been found to also be a precipitating factor for several chronic diseases like cancer and diabetes. Government and non-government organizations uphold programs that promote the importance of physical exercise, such as running, to people for disease prevention. Bear in mind though that it is important to know the appropriate running program for beginners before starting to run.

Running is a very good sport to engage in since it offers both physical and mental wellness. It relieves stress, burns fat, and promotes healthy heart and lungs. A running program for beginners is designed to help people adjust to running in a gradual manner and avoid injuries. The 8-week, 10-week, and 12-week running programs are some examples of programs that are good for newbies. In this article, we will discuss the running program that can be done within 8 weeks.

An 8-week running program for beginners is done with 4 days of running and walking plus 2 days of walking only. Sundays are rest days. The schedule is running and walking on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays from week 1 up to week 6, with exclusive easy walking on Tuesdays and Thursdays for 30 minutes.

In the first week, the running to walking ratio is 1:2 and repeated 10 times. For the 2nd week, the running time and walking time ratio is adjusted. For Monday it is 2:1 (repeated 10x), Wednesday 3:1 done 7x with a 2-minute run at the end, on Friday and Saturday it is 4:1 repeated 6x. Week 3 has a 5:1 ratio done 5x on Monday and Wednesday, and 6:1 ratio on a 4x repetition for the rest of the running days, ending it with another 2 minutes of running.

Week 4 has an increase of 1 minute in the running time in all running days (walking remains at 1 minute). Monday has an 8:1 ratio, repeated 3 times, adding 3 minutes of running alone in the end. Wednesday is 9:1 repeated thrice, Friday 10:1 for 2 cycles with 8 minutes of running, Saturday would be 11:1 repeated 2x plus 6 min of end run. Week 5 continues the increase starting at 12:1 done twice with 4 min of running in the end. Wednesday is 13:1 (2x) with a 2-min finishing run. Friday 14:1 repeated twice and Saturday is 15:1 plus 14 minutes end run.

The sixth week goes with 16:1 plus a 13min run, 17:1 plus 12 minutes run, 18:1 with an end run of 11 min, and 19:1 with 10 min of running, respectively. Week 7 and 8 involves running for 5 days and with longer running time. Week 7 starts with 20:1 ratio plus 9 min of end runs for Monday and Tuesday, 22:1 plus 7 min of finishing run for Wednesday, 24:1 for Friday with 5 min of running in the end, and finally 26:1 with 3 min end run for Saturday. Thursday remains to be an easy walking day of 30 minutes for week 7 and 8. The final week has the following schedule: Monday, 27:1 plus 2 min run, 20:1 plus 9min run for Tuesday, 28:1 plus 1min end run for Wednesday, 29:1 plus 1min run for Friday, and 30 minutes of running for Saturday as the culminating session.

For more information about this article, please check out Running For Beginners, and Run to Finish.