Month: October 2023

There’s a reason so many novice runners set a 5k running race as their first goal. First, the couch-to-5k promise is a realistic goal for nearly anyone, even if they haven’t run since middle school P.E. class 20 years ago. A 5k — that’s 3.1 miles — is a short running race that usually takes beginners 30 to 40 minutes to complete. Best of all, getting in shape to finish one only requires a minimum of three 20-40 minute runs a week and roughly 7-12 weeks of training.

The beauty of the 5k race goal is that you’re motivated to stick to your running. If you stick to your running, you’re more likely to make running a habit. And once it’s a habit, distances that seem impossible now — a half-marathon or even a full marathon — will be absolutely achievable. 

Want To Run a 5K? You Need a Plan

Couch-to-5K running plans for beginners flood the Internet and lay out similar basic instructions. Start with a run/walk sequence to get through those first couple of weeks of workouts. Give yourself a day off after each run to let your body recover and adapt to the new load on your body. Don’t worry about running hard or fast or long; run at a conversational pace. (If you’re too winded to talk with a running partner, you’re working too hard.) Your body has to learn how to run and find its natural stride before you can turn on the speed and intensity.

Easy enough. But these beginner running plans don’t account for your current fitness level and where you are on your fitness journey. Instead, they serve as a low-risk entry into the sport where, unfortunately, you need to figure out what works through trial and error. Is the workout too easy? Too hard? An athlete who’s spent the last 20 years as a serious road cyclist and mountain biker will respond very differently to novice training than a new mother looking for a productive way to get out of the house and take care of herself. A coach can help each find a training plan that fits their goal — and their current fitness.

How an AI Coach Increases the Odds of Running Success

A coach will set you up with a training plan matched to your fitness level, athletic history, and time constraints. A coach will adjust your training plan to account for an illness, a business trip, or if you’re finding things too easy or hard. A coach removes a mountain of doubt from the process, letting you focus on each workout and nothing else. A coach can also be expensive.

Humango’s AI coaching app does everything above but for much less. Plus, it can adjust your next workout. Was it too easy? Too hard? Hit “replan” and it’ll modify your next workouts accordingly. As such, you know that every run is the very best one you should be doing. It won’t elevate your risk of injury by giving you a workout that’s too hard, and it won’t give you one that’s so easy you won’t see an increase in your endurance.

Best of all, after you finish your first 5k (which you will), an AI app can take that data from your couch-to-5k journey and show you how that half-marathon is now possible. 

Running Tips for Beginners

Running Shoes: There’s only one simple rule for your first pair of running shoes: Buy shoes that fit comfortably. A dedicated running shoe store can show you what to look for in a well-fitting running shoe and help you find a comfortable pair you want to run in.

Nutrition: Eat a snack at least one hour before you run to fuel up for your workout and give your body enough time to digest it. Afterward, eat a small snack within 15 minutes of finishing your run. This timely nutrition will speed up your recovery.

Warm-up: Skip stretching before you start running. Instead, try a range-of-motion, dynamic warm-up to get the blood flowing through your joints and muscles. Stretch afterward to aid recovery and help reduce muscle soreness.

Everyone hits a fitness and strength training plateau. You know you hit yours when you stop climbing your benchmark hill quicker or your 50-yard swim splits stop dropping. You feel like you can’t get any better as an athlete. Frustration sets in, and your athletic goals look suddenly impossible to reach. But it’s not all bad. A plateau signals that your body has become hyper-efficient and optimized to complete whatever workout you’re doing. Consider it a backhanded biological compliment. 

A 2022 study published in the International Journal of Environmental Health & Public Health found that endurance athletes will generally hit a plateau after the first four weeks of training. The study further states that athletes only reached 75 percent of their capacity at the plateau. Put another way, you think you’re stuck at completing 15 pushups successfully, and you swear you can’t do anymore. Science says you have five more reps in you.

Most athletes first try a simple solution. They do even more of the same in a misguided effort to break through. They run seven miles instead of five. Bike 30 miles instead of 25, or do more barbell squat reps with the same weight on the bar. Science shows this only makes you better at running or biking at the same speed or lifting the same weight. The real solution is variability and change. Throw your body a curveball, and force it to adapt — and grow — all over again. Here’s how.

Check Your Data

In many cases, training plateaus because effort and intensity start to wane. For example, if your workouts have transitioned from “work” to enjoyable runs or rides, you have a problem. It’s time to push yourself outside of your comfort zone again if you want to improve performance. Your data will tell the tale: Has your average heart rate during training dropped even though you go your usual pace? Are you following the same route(s) for every workout to the point that your body isn’t challenged anymore? Congrats on making your workout easy, but that’s not the point. Easy won’t make you better.

Time to change things up and choose new routes that include some hills that leave you breathing hard. Instead of running at the same pace, split your runs between slower, longer jogs and shorter, faster sprints. Progress comes from increasing your intensity. Humango’s AI-powered training app does just that. It will spot a change in your threshold power based on your workout data and adjust the intensity of the workouts accordingly. All you have to do is keep at it.

Additional Plateau Busters

Nutrition plays a valuable role in overcoming a performance flatline. Check to see if your weight has changed thanks to your new baseline fitness. If it has, adjust your food intake to match your new optimized body. You should see performance improve.

Take an extra day or two off. The human body needs recovery time — especially sleep — to build muscle and neural pathways that lead to better performance. When you’re doing nothing, your body has the time and energy to adapt to your workouts and grow stronger. 

Add a dynamic warm-up to your daily workout. Go through a full-body range-of-motion routine to loosen up your joints and muscles and then a short, easy cardio session long enough to break a sweat. Priming your cardiovascular system and muscles for work should pave the way for a better, next-level workout. 10-15 minutes is all it takes.

Successful athletes do the work. They log the hours in the gym, on the road, in the pool — whatever it takes to become the best athlete they can, they do it. Sounds simple, right? On paper, it is easy. In real life, it never is. While a conditioned body is essential, it takes an equally well-trained mind to succeed. And that’s where so many of us fall short of our true athletic potential.

Whether you call it mental toughness training or mental health training, developing your mindset is just as critical as an interval workout. And it does take work. The good news? Like your muscles, your mental game grows stronger and more reliable the more you work it. And like endurance training, mental training benefits from a coach that guides you to optimum performance.

The National Academy of Sports Medicine (NASM) believes so strongly in coaches learning how to develop mental toughness that they offer a class on it. In the course, they identified four keys to a successful mindset for competitors: motivation, performance under pressure, confidence, and focus. Below, we show how Humango’s AI coach can help you develop all four aspects of toughness.

Motivation

Motivation is the first and easiest step to build a tougher you. Motivation is the desire to do hard things outside your comfort zone. Set ambitious goals for yourself and use them to fuel your pursuit. Too often, athletes fall short of their potential because they play it safe, setting goals that take work but are most definitely achievable. Elite athletes don’t want safe. They want to be the best, even if that means failing multiple times in different ways on their way to the top.

Humango helps by showing you a structured, progressive path to achieve your ultimate goal. All training plans and coaches do this, but Humango’s AI designs its plan to suit you — and only you. Once you see it, you can do it. And if you can do it, you’re motivated to do it, and your chances of success grow exponentially.  

Performance Under Pressure

Illness, weather, work, family, equipment issues — all these factors can and will conspire to derail your endurance training. But elite athletes won’t let them. Instead, top performers adapt, adjust, and stay consistent. They keep control. And that same mental agility allows them to keep going on race day no matter what happens. By overcoming adversity in training, they prepare for it in competition.

Humango helps by automatically adjusting a training program to compensate for a missed workout (or a poor one — it happens) so you can stay on track. No need to worry when the pressure of life starts messing with your workouts. Humango’s got it handled.

Confidence

Studies have repeatedly shown that confidence will separate two athletes with similar physical traits. The one lacking it might be a respectable college-level performer. The one with it can be an Olympian. But here’s a cool secret: Confidence is learned and earned. Through years of training and competition, you develop confidence in yourself. You know what works and what doesn’t. With confidence, you can realistically fake it ’til you make it. How? By believing in yourself and trusting that you will achieve what you set out to do. 

Humango helps by providing you with a training plan you can trust. Trust instills confidence. When you’re on track to your best performance, you have the confidence to push yourself to reach it.

Focus

Focus is a more difficult attribute to develop, but it comes with the biggest payoff. That’s why it forms the backbone of your mental game. Focus is the narrowing of your mental energy to the task at hand, whether your goal event or a series of intervals. Focus also means discipline, and this is where mental toughness comes into play. Top athletes apply discipline to their nutrition choices, sleep habits, and commitment to each workout. In short, focus involves making constructive decisions, not destructive ones that make your goals harder to achieve. Like confidence, focus takes practice, and anything you can practice, you can improve. 

Humango helps through its customized training program built for your athletic goal and lifestyle. You’ll have an easier time staying focused if you break up your goals into one workout at a time. All you need to do is put your attention on your effort. Plus, Humango’s feedback data will reassure you that you’re on track, leaving you committed to the task at hand rather than wondering how you’re doing. Let Humango’s AI process the results and adjust your next workout accordingly. 

Everyone hits a fitness and strength training plateau. You know you hit yours when you stop climbing your benchmark hill quicker or your 50-yard swim splits stop dropping. You feel like you can’t get any better as an athlete. Frustration sets in, and your athletic goals look suddenly impossible to reach. But it’s not all bad. A plateau signals that your body has become hyper-efficient and optimized to complete whatever workout you’re doing. Consider it a backhanded biological compliment. 

A 2022 study published in the International Journal of Environmental Health & Public Health found that endurance athletes will generally hit a plateau after the first four weeks of training. The study further states that athletes only reached 75 percent of their capacity at the plateau. Put another way, you think you’re stuck at completing 15 pushups successfully, and you swear you can’t do anymore. Science says you have five more reps in you.

Most athletes first try a simple solution. They do even more of the same in a misguided effort to break through. They run seven miles instead of five. Bike 30 miles instead of 25, or do more barbell squat reps with the same weight on the bar. Science shows this only makes you better at running or biking at the same speed or lifting the same weight. The real solution is variability and change. Throw your body a curveball, and force it to adapt — and grow — all over again. Here’s how.

Check Your Data

In many cases, training plateaus because effort and intensity start to wane. For example, if your workouts have transitioned from “work” to enjoyable runs or rides, you have a problem. It’s time to push yourself outside of your comfort zone again if you want to improve performance. Your data will tell the tale: Has your average heart rate during training dropped even though you go your usual pace? Are you following the same route(s) for every workout to the point that your body isn’t challenged anymore? Congrats on making your workout easy, but that’s not the point. Easy won’t make you better.

Time to change things up and choose new routes that include some hills that leave you breathing hard. Instead of running at the same pace, split your runs between slower, longer jogs and shorter, faster sprints. Progress comes from increasing your intensity. Humango’s AI-powered training app does just that. It will spot a change in your threshold power based on your workout data and adjust the intensity of the workouts accordingly. All you have to do is keep at it.

Additional Plateau Busters

Nutrition plays a valuable role in overcoming a performance flatline. Check to see if your weight has changed thanks to your new baseline fitness. If it has, adjust your food intake to match your new optimized body. You should see performance improve.

Take an extra day or two off. The human body needs recovery time — especially sleep — to build muscle and neural pathways that lead to better performance. When you’re doing nothing, your body has the time and energy to adapt to your workouts and grow stronger. 

Add a dynamic warm-up to your daily workout. Go through a full-body range-of-motion routine to loosen up your joints and muscles and then a short, easy cardio session long enough to break a sweat. Priming your cardiovascular system and muscles for work should pave the way for a better, next-level workout. 10-15 minutes is all it takes.