Hi! I am Richard Francis. We are doing a video on how to run a marathon. We've just covered speed work. We are onto hill work, building strength in your legs.
A lot of people think you need to get to the gym, lift weights to build strength in your legs for running. But I actually recommend you don't go to the gym, especially if you are a beginner to build a strength in your legs. I believe in more sport specific workouts to build strength. So in another words if you are cyclist, build a strength in your legs on the bike, if you are runner build a strength in your legs during running. So you can do that in the sand, you can do that in the hills, that's probably the two easiest ways to build strength.
Now if you are a beginner, you're probably going to want to stay away from structured interval workout and structured hill workout. So the best way, whether you are training on your own or with a group or partner is, just get to the hills, do some -- stairs are also a good place to build some strength, but it is a very intense workout if you are doing in stairs. Hills are a little bit more gradual and you can guide -- you have a little bit more control over the effort you are putting in rather than doing stairs.
So when you get to the hills, the hills will provide you natural strength building. So really, I am not going to provide too much advice on doing structured hill workouts, because they are very similar to intervals, where you are going for extended period of time, 30 seconds to a minute on, 30 seconds to a minute off. I don't think beginner should really get into those types of structured workouts; for reasons of, you are running into a higher risk of injury and also your fitness levels are probably not as good as somebody who has been doing this for a while.
So I am always going to go back to what I said at the beginning and that is, try to avoid injury and try to avoid burn out when you are training for your first marathon, and the best way to do that is do not do structured interval workouts. And to really just to have fun and enjoy the whole process and journey to getting into the finish lines. Doing hills and the trails is probably one of the best ways to enjoy that. When you are doing your hill workouts, don't do it anymore than once a week, because then you do increase the chances of injury.
So your hill workouts, go and do. If it's a one hour 60 minute workout for that day, you can go and do it on the hills. Put some little bit increased efforts in between on the hill workouts to make sure you are paying attention to your breathing and that you are not extending your efforts too much. But just like I said, just going to the hills alone will help you build your strength.
Now when you go in the opposite direction coming down hill, you want to make sure you're not jogging downhill or running downhill too fast. Be very careful with running downhill, that's when you are most likely going to run into an injury is on the downhill part of it.
So be very careful going downhill. If you get steep in any sections, I recommend walking downhill rather than jogging or running. Never run too fast down a hill. You actually end up using different muscles, you are going to be very sore if you are running down hill. But for safety reasons, make sure you walk downhill and be careful in the sandy sections where you can slip very easily.
So make sure you just -- try to get to the hills, take advantage of the nature you have around you, because hill work is some of the most important work you can get in for training for a marathon, but it also makes it a lot more fun if you get out and do some trails.
The next clip we're going to cover is, how to get the proper stretching to prevent injury and get to the finish line in one piece.
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