Running form is the way you move your body when you run: your posture, your arms, where your foot lands and how long your steps are. There is no perfect running form for everyone, and every runner has their own style. But there are some very common mistakes that make you use more energy and…
Strength training for runners is probably what improves a recreational runner most for every minute invested, and also the first thing that gets skipped when time is short. With two short sessions a week you run with less risk of injury, hold your form better when fatigue arrives and use less energy at the same…
How many days a week to run is one of the first questions every runner asks, and the answer depends less on what others do and more on your goal, your experience and the time you have. Running more days isn’t always better: what makes you improve is consistency and spreading the effort well. In…
Treadmill running has a bad reputation among many runners, but it is a very useful tool when it is raining, very hot, dark or you simply want to control your pace to the second. Is it the same as running outside? Not quite, although the differences are smaller than they seem and you can compensate…
Hill training is one of the most effective ways to build strength, power and endurance without setting foot in a gym. Running uphill makes your legs push harder with every stride, and it does so with less impact than running fast on the flat. Running downhill, on the other hand, is a different kind of…
VO2 max is probably the most famous number in sports physiology, and ever since GPS watches started estimating it every day, many runners look at it as if it were their grade. It is a useful measure of aerobic capacity, but it doesn’t explain everything: two runners with the same value can have very different…
Max heart rate is the highest number of beats per minute your heart can reach during an all-out effort. It is the reference on which almost all heart rate training zones are based, so if it is estimated wrong, all your zones will be off. The problem is that the best-known formula, 220 minus your…
Resting heart rate is the number of beats per minute your heart makes when you are completely relaxed. It is one of the simplest indicators of your fitness and recovery: it drops as you train and rises when you are tired, ill or stressed. Together with heart rate variability (HRV), which almost every watch now…
Overtraining is what happens when your training load exceeds your ability to recover for too long. It goes well beyond a bad day or a hard week: it is a state in which you perform worse even when you rest, you feel exhausted and it takes weeks or months to feel well again. Luckily, it…