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Competition Running Tips Training

Improve Your Performance

How to become faster as quickly as possible? This question arises frequently when you’re new to running in competitions. Thoughts like: “My girlfriend was faster”, “I didn’t reach my time goal”, “I finished out of the top 100 in my age group”, make you want to run faster. On the way to improving your performance, there are some basic rules to follow:

  • Grass does not grow faster when you pull it: The training process takes time. Patience and far-sighted thinking are required once you set new performance goals and objectives. To just go from race to race hoping you’ll get faster is not a good plan – you won’t develop, and you’ll tend to just be very stagnant as a runner.
  • With good training there are no shortcuts: After a workout, the body needs recovery time to repair the “damage” caused by the workout. It is during the recovery phase where adaptations happen that allow an athlete to perform the next time on a slightly elevated level. If the next workout is too early, the result is often a downgrade in performance.
  • Who runs fast, quickly tires: Anyone who wants to improve, should always train at their current performance level and not at their “wishful thinking level”. Running in your own optimal training zones leads to adaptations that increase your performance level gradually. The person who always runs too fast neglects the foundation of building a good base. In competition, this person can rarely maintain a consistent tempo throughout the race.
  • Frequency before duration before intensity: You should increase your training schedule step by step, and you’ll see the most improvement in your performance when you are able to increase the frequency of your workouts and not the duration or intensity of those workouts. In other words, running four days per week vs. three will be more beneficial than trying to run longer or faster in one of the three runs you’re already doing. If, because of family or job constraints, three runs is the max, then you should only try to increase the duration of your runs by 10-15%. For example, running for 45 instead of 40 minutes. Only when you’ve maxed out your frequency and duration, you should consider increasing the intensity!
  • Systematically Train: If you want to be a faster runner, your training needs to be specific and in the correct order. The decision of when to work out and for how long is a very important and crucial piece of the puzzle. running.COACH makes these decisions for you with a perfectly scheduled training plan. If you follow the custom created plan for you, a performance increase is certain!

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