A short guide to help you start running

Running a 10km, half marathon or marathon is not an impossible feat designed just for elite runners.

But if you’re new to running, the thought of taking on those distances can feel daunting, especially if you’re starting from absolute scratch.

This is a short guide to help you get started, with the goal of eventually running for 30 continuous minutes - which will be around 5km - which I hope will give you the confidence to tackle some longer distances. Even if today you can’t even run to the end of your street.

First things first - get yourself a reasonably decent pair of running shoes.

When looking for your first pair of running shoes, you’ll hear lots about things like overpronation, supination, gel insoles and carbon plates.

But don’t fall for the marketing hype. And don’t spend hundreds of pounds.

The best pair of running shoes for a beginner are the ones that allow you to move in accordance with your natural range of motion because that will allow your feet to develop the strength and durability they need for running.

So you want to be looking for neutral shoes, with 200g - 285g (7-10 ounces) of weight and around 8-10mm of heel to toe drop. Under the assumption that you’ll be running mostly on roads, look for road shoes. If you’ll be running offroad, on grass or soft ground, look for trail shoes.

Simple as that.

There are lots of web sites out there such as sportsshoes.com, runningshoes.co.uk or runnersneed.com. Search ‘running shoes’ on Google or just pop into your local running store.

Next you need to learn to run program.

For this, you could use something like Couch to 5k but in my experience those programs tend to create runners that slog through races, often painfully, and I think there are better options.

So try this.

Commit to going out three times a week for 30 minutes each time.

This will make sure you have rest days in between every single run. If you want something to do on those rest days, you can do some basic strength training, which I'll talk about later in this article.

On your run days, keep the same simple structure.

Like Couch to 5k, we’ll use walk run, but instead of prescribing an arbitrary duration of running 30 seconds and then walking 60 seconds, you should run for however long you're capable of.

If that's 10 seconds, great. If it's 30 seconds, amazing. Two minutes, awesome. Whatever it is, run that duration.

Then walk two times that duration.

So if you run 1-minute continuously, you'll then walk for two minutes, then run for 1-minute again. Do this for run walk combo for 30 minutes, three times per week, and you're done.

But every third run, I want you to try to increase the amount of running that you do by a little bit - say 20 seconds - and decrease the amount of walking that you do by the same margin.

So if you managed to run for 1-minute intervals during your first and second runs, on your third, try running for 1 minute and 20 seconds. Then walking for 1 minute 40 seconds, then run for 1 minute 20 seconds again.

By gradually changing the amount you run and walk every third workout, within a few weeks you'll be running more than you're walking and you can build up from there.

There are a couple of other things you can do to really build the ability to run well.

Once a week, start your run intervals with 10 seconds of really fast running, pushing as fast as you possibly can. Then, for the rest of that run interval, do it at a very easy jog.

So if you’re running 1-minute at a time, you'll start with 10 seconds of fast running, then an easy jog for the remaining 50 seconds, before walking for two minutes. Then repeat that for the rest of the session.

This will teach your running muscles to activate, recruiting a lot more muscle fibres and building the neuromuscular connection between your brain and your running muscles.

Then, think about shortening your stride.

One of the most common injuries for new runners is caused by overstriding.

A long stride may feel like you’re really going for it, but overstriding - landing with your foot in front of your knee - actually slows you down. It also increases your risk of injury because an overstriding leg is straight and stiff, which reduces your ability to absorb the force of your landing.

So during your run intervals, try to run with ‘quick feet’ by counting 123-123 alongside every foot strike. This will keep your strides quick and short, reducing your risk of injury and helping to stop you slogging through your runs.

Next, we need to build up some of the muscles used in running to avoid the common injuries many new runners get such as shin splints, foot pain, knee pain and lower back pain.

The risk of shin splints and foot pain can be reduced by making everything below your knee stronger and more flexible.

Do this by stretching the calf muscles, side-to-side and up-and-down, so that you're getting complete mobility in your entire lower leg and your ankle.

Then strengthen your lower leg by walking on the inside, the outside, the toes and the heels of your feet, going 20 steps forward and 20 steps back each time.

Finally, to help strengthen your shins, loop one end of a resistance band around something that's fixed like a table leg and the other end around your toes. Then with a straight leg, pull the band back and forwards 20 times with each foot.

Next, remember when I said that you can add in any strength workouts that you want to do on the days that you aren't running well.

This is where we address lower back pain and knee pain, which often comes up because of an unstable core.

And the best answer I've found for strengthening the glutes and abdominals and the connecting muscles in and around the hips and the pelvis is to do strength training with kettlebells.

That’s because the centre of mass of a kettlebell is away from the handle, not in the centre of your hand where you're grabbing it. So this pulls you off balance, requiring you to activate your core to stay stable.

Just about every single movement that you can do with a kettlebell is going to force you to be a little bit more stable, activating your core and reducing the likelihood of those lower back pains and knee pains that happen to so many new runners.

After doing all these things, after about 10-12 weeks, you’ll have developed the ability to run in your natural range of motion, continuously for 30 minutes or more.

You’ll also have begun to strengthen the areas that most new runners have problems which prevent them from running. And you’ll have built the foundation you need to enable you to train for longer distances.