Enlightened Individual

During the 10 week program we have developed a great foundation to continue. Since my brothers went on holiday we agreed on a simple schedule we would follow. But before I write it I will take on a couple of lessons I learned during the schedule I designed.

The first exercises were really hard; I really felt the taste of blood, and the heart going crazy when we ran up hills. This was fortunately only for the first and second exercise. It was also a good thing we mixed lots of walking with 5-10 minutes jogging. For a while I doubted I would be able to run the entire track within five weeks as I had scheduled, but it seems I had no reason to worry. Within three weeks I and my 12 yrs old brother were able to run it without having to stop for catching a breath a recover our muscles. Within four weeks my 9 yrs old brother was able to run without a break as well.

This made us able to redesign the schedule, and start the intervals in week 5 (planned to start weeks 6), we also modified running up hills to start in week 6 if I remember correctly, and had 4 of those instead of planned 2 weeks. This was due to our monitoring and modifying our plan; just as we would if we managed a project. I just finished a paper on project management which I will include to the selfdevelopment blog I have here at enlightenedindividual.com.

I have also taken part of a course in mastering anxiety which I am unsure if I should create a new blog for, or to have it here on healthdevelopment. I will also attend some course in stress management this fall. The problem is simple: stress and anxiety is mental problems, but in strong dosages they are also a physical problem which might cause a reduced life quality, hence it is health related. So most likely I will add it to this page.

Anyway, let’s continue a bit on the schedule I designed for the summer; it’s close to what we exercised at the end of our exercise schedule:

Monday: we run 4-6km, and include 5-10 intervals where we have 25 seconds of running with maximal speed. Then we rest for 60 seconds, and repeating running.

Wednesday: We run about 5-6 km, we first warm up for 5 minutes, and start running the rest with intervals, we have faster jogging for 2 minutes, and relax walking for a minute, and relaxed jogging for about 3 minutes (about 4 minutes total of relaxing), and repeat the cycle with jogging 2 minutes faster again.

Friday: We run for about 4 km, and include hill running. We find a nice hill which is about 1-200 metres, and run fast up the hills, while walking or jogging slowly down to build strength again.

Saturday: We have a long jogging route Saturdays, preferably about 8-10 km.

-Kentaki-

For beginners-

This is a schedule I have been using for 5 weeks now. I will claim it works well as my 9 year old brother is capable of jogging about 4k without breaks, and my 12 years old brother is capable of jogging 8k without breaks.

As you can see shortly, we modified some of the original schedule to start interval exercises and hill running a bit earlier, the reason is we were capable of jogging our route within 3 weeks for me and the oldest brother, and 4 weeks for the youngest, you might need only 2 weeks, or as much as 5 weeks. It’s no  answer to how long time we need to be able running, therefore we need to modify the schedule as we progress, but we make sure we don’t make to big steps at once.

It might also be a problem for some that they don’t know how long distance they are running, if that is the case: start jogging/walking for about an hour, and when you are able to jogging without breaks you start running for 35-45 minutes.

If you look at the schedule there are parentheses with an x inside, these x is the location where you are running, we are running on the roads, inside woods and mountains, and they get to refresh themselves with water after running, either in lakes or rivers. I think it makes it a bit more fun for my brothers with variation of location, and looking at the schedule of all the places they have been running.

As for the red you find in the example, he didn’t really get a red day first week, but I put it as example to illustrate the color codes.

5k-beginners-xls

5k-beginners-ods

-Kentaki-

Before we present the exercise schedule we should discuss a bit on the methods we will be using.

The first weeks will be running / slow jogging. This is rather simple, you try jogging for 5-10 minutes, and if you get exhausted or the taste of blood in your mouth get to strong you simply start walking for a while. When you have regained some strength you try jogging for another 5-10 minutes. For each day you try jog a bit more, and walk a bit less. But please; enjoy it; don’t be too hard with yourself. I don’t expect anyone being able to jog for 30-40 minutes before you have walked/jogged for 5 weeks. I think the largest mistake people makes is to exercise to hard and creating a dislike for exercising. It’s much better to enjoy the process of achieving better endurance, than suffer and hate the days of exercising. Exercising is for one thing, to create a happy body and feeling happy during the days. For those who have some additional money; you could get a good heart monitor and make sure you run with something as 130-140 in heart rate. This will control you not to run to fast or to slow. You could be walking till you have reduced the heart rate to be about 90-100, or feeling able to jog a bit more. If you are really interested in running you could invest in a polar heart monitor. I think the newest models also include a GPS plotting where you are running to Google Earth; it will also give altitude, speed you are running, how long distance you have been running and your heart beat. It might be motivating to see how much faster you run and how much calmer your heart rate get as your endurance and speed improve.

Relaxed jogging; this is the next step, you should by now be capable of running 5-6 km, or 30-40 minutes without needing a break, but still try not to push yourself to hard. You are exercising endurance, and shouldn’t use more energy than you have. I will also advice you to run a bit faster the last couple of hundred meters of your laps, and maybe some of the hills.

Interval; this one is rather simple; you start by 5-10 minutes relaxed jogging to warm up. After that you run with everything you have for 20-25 seconds, and a rest with slow jogging/walking for 45-50 seconds to calm down, one good to go we run for 20-25 seconds again

Fartslek; its closely related to interval, except we often don’t run fast for a certain time and running for a certain time, instead we mix relaxed jogging, walking and fast running as we wish too. An example could be 5 minutes relaxed jogging to warm up, 3 minutes jogging a bit faster, 1 minute a bit faster, a bit slower for 3 minutes and relaxed jogging for another 5 minutes. The time limits are of course just as examples; you could have as a goal to run full speed up every hill, and relax when running down, and bit faster when flat.

Hill running; this one will exercise speed, but you will also exercise stomach and back muscles as you will be running everything you can up a hill, and walk down again, run up etc.  (Please note; you should have warm muscles before starting to run uphill for full speed. You warm up your body by 5-10 minutes relaxed jogging)

-Kentaki-