A great workout that is also suitable for people who are not in good shape – Results will come! – 2024-03-31 18:17:43

Interval running training is suitable for almost everyone. Adobe Stock / AOP

A spring-scented jogging path is revealed under the snow. The running leg wobbles, but you already know that an overly enthusiastic start to the run backfires: in the form of ringworm, creaking in the knees, aching muscles.

Had a similar problem Jeff Galloway in 1973. There was nothing wrong with his own running condition, but Galloway, who worked as a sports equipment salesman, had a bunch of couch potatoes to manage.

Galloway realized that if he could get a diverse group of exercisers excited about running properly, he would also get customers into his shop. And customers were needed, badly.

During the first training session, Galloway also realized that just running won’t get his gang to run 5,000 meters or 10,000 meters at any point – at least not without injury or severe exhaustion.

– When I ran with each group, I focused on breathing. When the runners started to hear rumors and denigration, it was necessary to stop running and switch to a brisk walk, says Galloway in his blog post.

In the weekly training, the amount of running was increased in relation to walking. After a ten-week training period, each member of Galloway’s gang ran – without injury – either 5 or 10 kilometers.

In the following years, Galloway himself noticed that it was precisely the walking breaks during the running break that guaranteed that the trainees did not get injured and their fitness increased dramatically.

After a heart attack

Dubbed a running guru, Jeff Galloway suffered a serious illness in 2021. He first had a heart attack and then his heart stopped. He was resuscitated.

When Galloway, after a slow recovery, was allowed to go jogging, it was quite a shock. A man who used to run marathons without difficulty was able to run 3 seconds on his first run and walk on top of it for 45 seconds. After this, the runs have been lengthened very little and slowly day by day. After recovering, Galloway ran a marathon the very next year.

If you want to follow Galloway’s teachings, you can try how it feels to alternate between walking and running. Galloway’s website advises, for example, to try a 30-second run and a 30-second walk.

After a few weeks of training, you can try how it feels to run for 45 seconds and walk for 30 seconds. You can adjust the total length of the loops yourself.

Researched information

A study published in 2014 investigated whether using a strategy of alternating between running and walking helps to reduce the load on the heart during a marathon.

The study involved both men and women who ran a marathon either running or alternating between running and walking.

The results showed that similar marathon times were achieved with both methods. Levels of certain cardiac biomarkers increased but returned to normal within a few days after the marathon.

Although the alternating strategy did not reduce the workload on the heart, it helped the subjects achieve similar finishing times in the marathon and experience less muscle fatigue and soreness compared to running alone.

Sources: Jeff Galloway’s website, Pubmed