How to Run Fast with a Low Heart Rate
running fast with a low heart rate sounds way
too good to be true right especially if right now simply looking at your running shoes spikes your
heart rate but by the end of this video you're going to see how it's not only possible but really
holds the key to you running faster for longer painfree imagine this you've been running regular
5Ks and 10ks maybe your first half marathon and you found it harder than expected particularly
the second half of the race where your pace slowed your legs felt really heavy and you realize that
your base endurance isn't quite where it needs to be to maintain your Target Pace following that
experience after a bit of research you discover low heart rate training and running slow to run
faster but it feels really unnatural just running at a snail's pace has your heart rate way up above
your target Zone it feels slow ploty and wooden a whole load of effort spent going nowhere fast in
fact a lot of the time the only way you can get your heart rate back under control is to stop
and walk for a while it's super frustrating I know cuz what I just described that was me but
with some patience and a lot of perseverance low heart rate training really works in fact
it's how I took half an hour off my Marathon finish time in 6 months the thing is there are 10
fairly counterintuitive things I learned in that process and once you know what they are you'll
be able to start training more effici eff L and effectively to run faster at a low heart rate so
the first thing that made a massive difference for me was understanding that my heart and
your heart they don't know the difference between running walking cycling any other form
of exercise it's all about intensity from a point of view of your physiology okay so whatever
it is Pace wise that gets your heart rate up into zone two but no higher it's where you need to
be okay so that could be a steady state easy paced run or if you're just if you're just starting
out with this that could be a power walk you you're just getting out there and you're getting
moving and even just walking briskly gets you up into the right Zone and there's nothing wrong
with that whatsoever you'll find with a bit of consistency though you're actually able especially
if you start with a run walk process a run walk program you're able to quite quickly transition
from needing to walk to stay in zone 2 to be able to run slowly in zone 2 I mean this is this is
the goal of the whole thing to be able to run faster whilst maintaining the same low heart rate
that's what happens as we get trained in this as we get better and we improve our aerobic capacity
we improve our endurance now it's not just about when you're starting out it's also about as you're
running as you're getting into the program and you start running different terrains you start finding
that you're addressing more Hills you might need to walk the hills to keep your heart rate where
it needs to be again we're going to talk later on about Pace but just when we looking at staying
in zone two and not spiking your heart rate that's where we need to be really really disciplined and
that's what a lot of people it's where a lot of people really struggle okay the discipline
and the patience and the ego quite frankly you know if you're used to pushing yourself hard
with every run overtaking people running people down feeling like you're really you're doing a
really great job all of a sudden being the person who is holding back who's letting all the runners
come past you on a Sunday morning that takes some pride to be swallowed and there's that that's
a challenge for a lot of us but there's there's nothing wrong with doing that you're doing this
with purpose so if normally you run up that long hill but you'd be a bit gassed at the top just
walk it walk it knowing that your heart rate and you can watch your heart rate is still staying
in the zone you want it to work at and as I said right at the top of this point your heart does
not know the difference you're still working at that appropriate effort level to be getting those
true aerobic training benefits what if your heart rate does Spike what if you do suddenly look at
your watch and find that you've been running too hard and you you you've jumped well out of that
zone two bracket and again in terms of zone two obviously you need to actually have set your
heart rate zones and there's a video which I'll link down in the description which will walk
you through the process of figuring out what your max heart rate is and bit of a spoiler it's
got nothing to do with your age again A lot of people are using these age-based heart rate
um heart rate calculations and they're just anyway zone two if you jump out of that and you
spike your heart rate because you've suddenly been running too fast or like I said you ran up that
hill you probably should have walked up at this point all is not lost your run is not ruined and
the misconception is that I've blown it I've all of a sudden I've gone too hard my heart rate's up
here it's going to take forever to come back down again it's an exercise in discipline in fact as
Runners as we're working on our endurance we're working on building that aerobic capacity one of
the big skills is learning to manage your heart rate and allow it to drop back down whilst still
moving I'll say still moving rather than still running because chances are you're going to want
to actually back off to a walk let everything calm down and then gently build back into the run but
ultimately as you then progress and become fitter become more capable in this kind of aerobic
realm you'll find that you're able just just to ease back on the pace of the Run ease back on
the effort of the run and see your heart rate drop back down to where it needs to be if you started
there and you spiked up here you might find yourself here you see not necessarily exactly
where you previously were but you're not just simply seeing that very well initial quick Spike
just turn into a a much higher plateau of harder work and higher heart rate for the rest of the run
it's easy to do in terms of allowing yourself just to keep pushing once you're up there but that's
not the goal allowing yourself to drop back down and get used to trying to work on managing your
heart rate is such an important skill and you'll notice that I've been talking about watching your
heart rate on your watch not watching your pace on your watch now there's a number of reasons
I say it like that none less none less none more I suppose than because pace is dictated by
all sorts of different things of course terrain but also heat okay so the the just the ambient
temperature and the ambient kind of humidity and those sorts of things they all will impact the
ability for you to run out of certain pace for a certain heart rate so for me what I do is I hide
Pace on my watch I take it off the activity screen on my watch I can go and review it when I download
my data later on that's fine it's in the the chus app but when I'm looking on my watch mid-run I
just see my heart rate data and my time that's all I'm really interested in because that allows me
just to Simply focus on the one thing that matters which is the intensity I am running at if all of a
sudden I'm looking at PACE I know what I'm like I know that the ego will creep in and with the ego
creeping in yes I know that the goal is is heart rate but I also want to run you know mentally I'm
thinking I want to run at sub this pace and blah blah blah it's hard to manage those two things
take one off your plate just focus on what matters now a common frustration I often hear about low
heart rate training is that it's dull it's boring it's doing lots of long slow running and to be
fair it is a lot of long slow running but that's not to say needs to be boring okay I mentioned
earlier about not wanting to to spike your heart rate and that's that's really true but of course
you can still work on going through the gears in fact I think there's a massive massive massively
important role in going through the gears and by going through the gears I mean just starting to
work on some neuromuscular training you may have heard me talk about this before on the channel but
we are so hard up on thinking about the heart and lungs okay so the the Aerobic System but actually
that's just one piece of the puzzle what about the link between your brain and the muscles what about
working those muscles through the kinds of range of motion that you need to be working through to
allow your legs to kind of remember how to run faster when you put the put the pedal down when
you actually ask them to run faster you've got to practice that if you expect it to be there when
you want to push I've met lots of runners in the past who have done lots of low heart rate training
they've focused on lots of long slow easy running and don't get me wrong they got quicker over those
those sorts of distances those longer distances simply because their aerobic systems that much
better but they've lost top end Pace CU it's been goodness Only Knows since they really opened
up and started turning their legs over quicker so what you can do is a couple of things you can be
a bit playful with this within a long slow run and this isn't something you do lots of so let's say
you're doing a 12m run within that four or five times spread out you can just do a few kind of 15
20 second little surges just go up take yourself up to 5K race pace and Beyond it's only short okay
if we're suddenly turning that into 30 seconds 60 seconds 90 seconds you're just going to blow a
gasket and find yourself constantly working what I said said earlier in terms of trying to bring
your heart rate down but if it's just a very short burst then you're just going to be working
on turning the legs over that a little bit quicker reminding your body how that feels and it should
feel good it should feel really good it should feel light it should feel springy it should feel
athletic but not in such a way that's going to really start to mess with the the aerobic side
of the run that you're doing the other side as well is at the end of the run and I I love this
at the end of long St runs finishing off not at my door but finishing off mile half a mile from
home and just doing a few sets of strides short acceleration runs you know 50 80 yards something
like that where you're just again going through the gears up to kind mile rep type Pace again
whatever you want to think of it as about F fast let's at least say faster than 5K race paace
again it doesn't need to be super prescriptive but basically we're saying go through the gears
a little bit of faster running really focusing on form almost exaggerated form there's a couple
of things that go on there firstly it's allowing you to remember how to run well or to teach your
body how to run well technically well run with good form under fatigue and secondly it's just
reinforcing those neuromuscular links between your brain and the muscles again under fatigue
okay so don't do lots of these because you are fatigued so volume won't do you any favors at
all we're looking at maybe doing four to six reps with a long walking break in between should
be fully recovered this think of this as weirdly a kind of a part of your cool down you should be
fully recovered in between these reps it's not a it's not an interval you know a short super
short interval session it's not that at all recover go again it should feel light it should
feel sprightly and it should finish a long run feeling a lot more of a buzz than you would do
normally a lot of the time you finish a long run you get home it's like okay that was that was
hard that feels that feels good that feels kind of virtuous to have done that but I feel like
I've done a long run whereas these you kind of come home of course you've done the long run
but you come home and it just feels like there's a more zip in the leg feels a little more I like
think of it as kind a bit more Buzz I don't know I hope that that comes across right now here's a
big misconception when it comes to running slow to run faster low heart rate training because
it comes with the kind of secondary benefit or the the the associated benefit people talk about
in terms of becoming better at burning fat for fuel fat oxidization it's true you are at those
easier Paces far better set up to be burning fat as a fuel source to be able to maintain that easy
pace for longer in fact even the most lean of us have ample amounts of body fat to be able to power
that long slow easy running for a very very long time in terms of um or in comparison rather to the
muscle glycogen that is relied upon when you're simply burning burning carbohydrate the fuel which
that will deplete in I think it's about 90 minutes it's all good burning fat for fuel but that does
not equate to weight loss that does not equate to Fat Loss specifically I think that's where a lot
of people get a bit confused they're thinking I'm running in the fat burning Zone yeah fat burning
Zone low intensity low effort it's it's exactly what it is fat burning does not equate to this
being reduced the only way we lose fat the only way we we burn body fat in a way that's actually
going to lower your body fat percentage is to be in a calorie deficit I mentioned this in in a
video a couple of weeks ago being in a calorie deficit you consuming less than you burn so you
actually get that thermogenic effect of exercise you you end up burning the stores that you have
and reducing the stores that you have because it's fued the exercise okay if not your body's just
using available fat to fuel itself but you're also taking in the calories that replace the available
stored fat so you're you're not seeing that that sum reduction of body fat so that all that to say
that if you're looking to do this to burn fat as in lose weight you're probably going to end up
disappointed what I'd rather see you do is take a look at what you're eating take a look at what
your putting in your body okay eating drinking as well from a calorific perspective day in day out
and understand that once you get into a calorie deficit your running will actually help support
that calorie deficit and make it easier for you to stay in that calorie deficit as you have a
little bit more wiggle room with the food okay so again it's all about mindset it's all about your
expectations and what you're what you're trying to do with this and on a very similar note not fasted
running this is something I've played with in the past something I've seen a little bit of benefit
to in the past as well fasted running I for me was getting up in the morning and going out and doing
a long slow easy paced run before I've had any food that for me was really beneficial I found
that the times when I was also in the calorie deficit and I was doing that it really did help to
accelerate the the process for me of weight loss cuz I was I was doing it in a deficit as well as
running decent mileage um I was combining those two things now you got to be careful with it
really really careful with it because for those who are in a for those who are running fasted it's
also not unlikely that you're probably going to be a little bit dehydrated if you are getting up
first in the morning and going um and there are so many different there are so many different ways
in which running faster can help from uh improving fat met fat metabolism um improving mitochondrial
efficiency all those sorts of things but is the juice necessarily worth the squeeze if you're
putting yourself in a position where potentially that could be a little bit unhealthy you you can
find yourself you perhaps struggling a little bit later in the day I don't know you you got to play
with that and just just be sensible with it it can also have a bit of a catabolic effect so you can
actually end up starting to lose a bit more muscle mass than you would do if you were simply running
in a deficit on a regular basis okay running in a deficit on a regular basis especially if you're
not doing a lot of strength work and your protein intake which for a lot of us our protein is quite
we probably don't eat enough protein um there will be a degree of lean muscle loss anyway if you're
doing fasted long runs you're going to probably see more lean muscle loss which for us Runners
a lot of us don't have a lot to lose so we need to be careful of that a big mistake that a lot of
Runners seem to make when it comes to running slow to run faster and running at a an easy low heart
rate is that they completely ignore their running form running form is so so so important when it
comes to this kind of thing because you're doing high volume of running and you're doing it in such
a way which could allow you just to a little bit lazy and it's that lazy form that kind of plotting
gate that comes with running at a slow pace again a lot of the time Cadence can take a little
bit of a nose dive we can find that we start to overstride a little bit posture starts to suffer
that's when we start finding that whether it's shins splints whether it's runner's knee whether
it's even things like high hamstring tendonopathy we start to get those overuse injuries starting
to creep in ITB syndrome another great example so we need to make sure that although your running at
an easy patient should feel Rel relaxed you still try and stay on top of keeping your Cadence nice
and high you might not find yourself up at that 180 range if you're running down at 10 11 minute
miles it's very different to whether you're to to if you're running at you know more of a Tempo Pace
but not allowing your Cadence to take such a nose D that it feels heavy and bloody underfoot you
should be looking just to feel that it feels light and responsive underfoot you feel that you're tall
in your posture those two things alone will make a massive difference because it's when you get
tired and you start to slump and the Cadence drops and the contact time gets longer it feels
heavy puts more stress and strain up through the system and most of the time that's where we find
that if Runners have a tendency not to use their glutes that's going to be worse at that point and
you start reinforcing a lot of bad patterns a lot of muscular imbalances that can start leading to
those overuse injuries so keep an eye on your form it really really really matters it's not just
about the numbers on your watch now let's say you're training for a marathon or a half marathon
and you're looking to do so using this low heart rate Training Method and basically doing lots
of long easy slow running it makes sense you're you're training for an endurance event your
endurance needs to be worked on particularly in those long marathon training runs as we're
getting longer 12 14 16 18 20 22 M long runs you're going to be doing lots of easy running your
endurance is going to improve come what may but if you turn up to race day expecting your Target Pace
to be there on demand assuming your Target Pace is significantly faster than your long run Pace it
should be it might not be there you might find that if you've only done long run Pace at low you
know zone two type Pace work in training and all of a sudden on race day you're hoping to run at
whatever your goal pace is you might be setting yourself up for a lot of frustration what I
tend to get people to do to counter that in the last 6 to8 weeks of a marathon training plan
and this works for half marathon as well is for those those key long let's call them long Sunday
runs cuz they so often are for those key long runs in that period before that that real last kind
of big block before your taper begins is to start adding in blocks of Target Pace within Those runs
now there are two versions here either you can do something like we're doing a 16m long run you
could have 2 * 3 miles within that so you do the first few miles you then do three miles at Target
Pace couple of miles at long run P Pace three miles on Target Pace again then finish off through
to the end at long run Pace that's one example or and this is my my favorite what what I tend to
do in fact I start out with those let's say eight weeks to go before taper start out for the first
four of those eight weeks doing those blocks in the middle progressively changing those sessions
to make them slightly more challenging as we go but then for the last four weeks before taper we
started doing what I refer to as fast finish long runs so let's say you're doing again um well no
let's say you're doing 18 Miler you 18 miler in the last couple of weeks before your taper starts
I'd get you to perhaps do 10 miles at long run Pace then the last eight miles you run it in at
Target Pace Target marathon pace you're starting to get your body used to feeling what it is to
actually turn your legs over at that pace again under fatigue not just fatigue on the session but
the cumulative fatigue of all the training that you've done in that block that's why we have the
table because you need to shake that cumulative fatigue so you can actually Peak at the right time
but getting used to Target Pace is so so important you can't just run slow to run faster okay and I
mentioned obviously those long Sunday runs but in fact it's not just about a given long run in the
week when it comes to running slow to run faster low hard rate training what's really important is
the cumulative time you're spending in zone two across a given training week and again the weeks
that you're backing up week after week after week after week as you do that the cumulative effect
that volume you can think of it as mileage but to be honest I'd rather think of it more in terms
of just time spent in the right Zone that is what really starts to move the needle that's what
starts to get you in a position where your heart your cardiovascular system will start to actually
see that that adaptation again it's not just the heart I don't know why I keep saying the heart
um it's it's the the whole cardiovascular system really starts to make such adaptations and there's
something else there's a certain point around about 2 hours of a long run that really seems to
again move the needle in terms of really seeing progress in your ability to run faster at that
easy pace for me it's when I've got to a point and again the same with a lot of the runners that
I've coached you get to a point where you're able to do a couple of 2hour plus runs in the week in
some cases maybe even three 2hour plus runs in the week again that's not for everybody but again
something that I've I've played with in the past with my own training cuz my body responds a little
better to doing fewer runs in the week but making them longer CU I'm a slightly heavier guy um fewer
runs in the week making them longer which means I can get the volume in whilst also ring fencing the
recovery between those runs allowing myself to do runs Beyond 2 hours more frequently seem to really
progress the rate at which I was improving when it comes to running given Paces for a certain heart
rate yeah staying in my zone too so if you have the capacity to do so get up to that point where
you're running longer than longer than 2 hours yes in your long Sunday run or whenever your long run
is in the we long run is in the week but if you can find another time to do kind of a medium
long run in the week that's when you'll start really pouring gas on the effect of this and the
very last point I wanted to make with this is to really really listen to your body get game some
people get so hooked up on the numbers that they just push through regardless okay they they feel
these kind of aches and pains and they think well you know what trably won't get any worse spoiler
it usually does um and they just say right I must hit these certain benchmarks in terms of my
weekly again time spent in zone or weekly mileage or whatever however they're measuring
it you can't just get so obsessed on the numbers got to listen to your body and allow yourself
the time away from running if your body needs it to get the recovery right because as I said
in the video the other day it's better to take a week off proactively to allow yourself to recover
from a small acal pain than it is to be forced to miss a month six weeks that's where your Fitness
is really going to take a nose dive now taking that right back to the start of this your body
does not know the difference between running and another form of exercise so you can get away
with getting on the bike if if your shins are hurting so you ramped on the volume too quickly
get on the bike there's a certain Fitness aerobic fitness endurance which transfers really well from
cycling to running it doesn't really go the other way so in the world of triathlon you see an Iron
Man Triathlon in particular you see people who are really quite injury-prone when it comes to running
they do a lot of their training on the bike they don't do a great deal of running training they
do but they don't do the same as you would do if you're an out andout runner and they absolutely
smash it when it comes to running a marathan off the bike and an Iron Man because they built the
Fitness on the bike now I know for a fact that you could be a great Runner stick that great runner
on the bike and they will be garbage the strength isn't there the it just it just isn't the same but
going that way it works so have some confidence in the fact that if needs be you can just jump on the
bike be static bike or getting out and cycling and you can keep working on this whole system without
actually putting your body through the pounding that is running earlier I mentioned that time
I took 30 minutes off my marathon time in just 6 months using low heart rate training I'll link
to that video on screen now knowing that you made it to the end of this video I'm certain that
you'll enjoy that one I'll see you over there
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