How to run faster without any injuries and overtraining, in other words, how to enjoy your running as much as possible.

Do you think that you need to train hard to the extent that you get tired very much every day and get pain if you want to run much faster than you do now and/or most runners do?

It is at least somehow true. All top athletes run many more mileages and run much more intensively than normal amateur runners do. And the chance of getting injured is also relatively high.

That’s true. I will never say that you can run faster by sitting on a couch and watching Netflix.

But I also want to tell you one truth.

It’s not true that the more you run, the more you get injured.

It’s also not true that the faster you run, the more you get injured. The relationship between injuries and training volume is not proportional at all. Also, the relationship between your level and injury is not proportional at all.

Even it could be that slow runners get injured just as much as runners at top level do.

Even it could be that slow runners are tired as much as top runners are because of training.

Most people believe that if you compare runners who run only 50km a week and 100km a week, runners who run 100km a week are as twice tired as runners who run only 50km a week. But it is not true.

The truth is, runners who run 50km a week regularly are just as much tired as runners who run 100km a week regularly.

I will tell you one more truth.

Runners who run 100km a week regularly are just as much tired as people who do not run at all.

With that being said, you can run a lot faster without losing your energy for other things like your work, your family, your study, your hobby, your friends etc.

But there is one condition.

That is…if you train properly. Only in case you train properly, you can get faster and beat 99% of runners on this planet without getting more and more tired and injured.

Today, I will tell you how to train properly.

The biggest misconceptions people have are : The harder you train, the faster you get.

There is a Japanese saying ‘Good medicines taste bitter’. If the medicine tastes bitter, I feel it works well. So the training. If I feel hard and suffer a lot during training, I feel that workouts work well. Of course, it is not 100% wrong, at least partially it is true.

But it is not true at all that the harder you train, the faster you get. The relationship between training load and training effect is shown by the Sigmoid Curve.

What that means is very simple. Too easy training and too hard training doesn’t make any difference.

I will give you two very easy and simple examples so that you can understand what I mean easily.

Many people go for stroll one hour every day. But most of them do not get faster at all. Of course, probably they run a little bit faster than normal people do. But there is almost no difference. One hour stroll does not get you faster. That makes no difference.

That’s not because one hour is too short, but the intensity is too low for distance running or marathon.

Another example is, sprinters run every day, but they do not run fast in marathon. Even in 1500m race, they cannot run so fast. It is not because the intensity of their training is too low, but their training volume is too low.

No matter whether it is intensity or volume, if it is too low, it makes almost no difference or no difference at all.

How about the opposite site?

Now, I talked about too low volume and too low intensity. What about the intensity of the training is very high or the volume of training is very high?

The story is the same.

The higher your training volume is and/or the intensity is, the faster you get until you cross over a point. But once you cross over the point, it makes no difference at all.

For example, if you are a 3:31 marathoner, in other words, your race pace is 5:00/km, even if you run faster than 4:00/km pace, it doesn’t get you faster a lot.

It’s because your body cannot adapt to that too hard training stimulus and/or simply because then your training volume is too low.

And also, if you run 100km consistently like once a week, the intensity should be naturally too low and that’s why it hardly makes you faster or it doesn’t make you faster at all.

Then what about if you run fast and long or fast and many total mileages?

First of all, in terms of positive side, even if you train harder than your optimal load which is determined by the product of intensity and volume, you cannot get faster than in case you train at the optimal load. This is in case it works well for you.

But we need to think about the negative side too.

How is the relationship between training load and risks of overtraining and getting injured?

It is completely same with the relationship between your income and outcome.

No matter how much money you use monthly, as long as it is less than your monthly income, you have no risk. So, it is a parallel line.

But once you spend more money than your income, the risk goes higher exponentially, not proportionally or gradually, but again exponentially.

The relationship between training load and risk of overtraining and getting injured is the same. Unless your training load is lower than your recovery ability, the line is parallel. You almost have zero risk. But once your training load gets higher than your recovery ability, the risk of overtraining goes higher dramatically, exponentially not proportionally or gradually.

This is the reason why you don’t get injured or get tired too much if you train properly.

But the next question is,,,, what is the recovery ability?

There are two things most people don’t know about recovery ability.

First, you can train your recovery ability just like your muscles. People believe that the older you get, the slower you recover and that is irreversible. No matter how hard you train, your maximal power output goes down as you get older (your muscles get less as you get older).

But it is half right and half wrong.

If you did no training in your 20s, you can recover faster in your 50s if you train properly just like you can improve your maximal power output (you can get more muscles) even after your 50 years old birthday if you train properly. 

Second, recovery ability is determined by your metabolism, more exactly speaking, the dense of your capillaries, how good your heart muscle is, the number of your mitochondria, how good your mitochondria are etc.

And you can train all these above things by so-called aerobic running, more exactly speaking, running which doesn’t require anerobic metabolism, in other words, you don’t feel hard subjectively during your running and/or you don’t hear the sound of your breathing during your running.

So, how to improve your recovery ability is very simple. Just do non-hard running as much as possible with making a little bit variety.

I will just give you an example.

Let’s say if you run faster than 5:00/km pace, you start feeling hard subjectively. Then your fastest running should be 5:00/km or slower. Then, Monday 6km at 5:00/km, Tuesday 12km at 5:40/km, Wednesday 6km at 5:00/km, Thursday 12km at 5:40/km, Friday 6km at 5:00/km, Saturday 20km at 5:40/km and Sunday rest. This is just an example.

But, basic idea is you combine relatively short and fast run with relatively long and slow run. But again, you should not run fast to the extent that you feel hard subjectively and hear the sound of your breathing. The reason why is very simple. If you run with such a hard effort, you cannot increase the total volume of running.

Of course, later you do a little bit hard workouts. But first things first you should do is increasing the recovery ability because once you increase your recovery ability, first of all, you have less risks to get injured, stagnation or even worse getting slower.

And second, you have more possibilities to get faster.

And actually, training for improving recovery ability and your running performance is almost same because increasing the biological energy production in your body is very important for improving your recovery ability and your running performance.

And for both of that, increasing the training volume step by step without pushing yourself is very important.

Also, let me tell you this. The best way of increasing the running volume is increasing the frequency of running. This is the reason why it is very difficult to keep running faster by training only on the weekend. We call them weekend runners in Japan.

No matter how good you were before, if you are a weekend runner now, it is very difficult to run fast.

I have some friends who were one of the best distance runners in the past, for example around half marathon 63 minutes for men and 5000m 15 minutes for women. After they quit running seriously, they decided to be a weekend runner and most of them run much slower than my online course students who started running after the 40 years old or 50 years old birthday.

You don’t need to train so hard to run marathon under 3 hours or half marathon under 90 minutes. But definitely, you need to keep training consistently. More exactly speaking, 5 times a week or more than 5 times a week. If you keep training so consistently without feeling hard and pushing yourself.

Your normal level which you can handle without feeling hard and pushing yourself increases gradually because your recovery ability increases. You can recover faster now, so you don’t get tired or muscle soreness the day after the workout anymore even if you do the same workout.

And if you keep trying to run faster and more to the extent that you don’t feel hard subjectively and get more and more tired, you get faster and faster more or less and finally you run faster than 90% of runners on this planet.

The two biggest reasons why they cannot reach there is, first, they quit. Seriously, they quit. They quit completely or they quit aiming for running marathon under 3 hours or 2:50. And the biggest reason why they quit is not because they are gutless, but they train too hard. If you train hard, you get hurt physically. So, comparing your effort, you cannot get faster. And finally, they get hurt mentally.

And finally, they decide to go for cold turkey. I’ve seen this kind of runners countlessly for my 20 years of career as a runner and a coach.

And the second reason why is because they don’t know how to get there. They don’t know how to run marathon sub 3 hours or 2:50 or even faster. So, they cannot keep motivating themselves.

You need to understand the difference between children and adults. Children can believe anything without reasonable reasons. They believe in Santa Claus, ghosts, tooth fairy, Hogwarts, wizard, demons, literally everything.

But we adults need proof and logic, right?

If I say that a wizard lives in my house or I can use magic, then you would say ‘Show me the proof’, right?

And it makes sense. If you do not say that and believe in me blindly, you are stupid. It’s very difficult to survive in this world especially on the Internet where there are many scammers.

So, to avoid those situations, you need to know the basic principles of training and human body.

Don’t you need any hard workouts?

If you learnt training even if it is just a little bit, many of you readers might make a counterargument that most top athletes do hard workouts, like Interval workouts, Fartlek, Long runs, tempo runs, double threshold runs etc.

That’s true and you can do that too.

But you need to understand the following two things.

Before you go for hard workouts, you need to increase your recovery ability, otherwise your body cannot adapt to hard workouts well. So, your hard effort is in vain at higher rates or I would say the percentage your hard work pays off is very low.

Second, you can do hard workouts, but still try to do them as relaxed as possible. It is hard, you already feel hard subjectively, but still control the workouts and just try to do them slightly harder than your daily workouts.

Most people try to do hard workouts as hard as possible and they think that that is the right thing to do. But no. It’s better to keep reserves always.

There is a Japanese saying ‘Eat only 80% full’.

It’s same with hard workouts. It’s already hard and close to your maximal effort, but you always should be able to run longer or faster if you want. Sometimes you can make the last 400m of 15 times 400m interval sessions or the last kilometer of your 30km run as fast as possible, but it is not for training but for having fun. That’s it. Nothing else.

But I also want to think about one more factor. That is speed.

You can do speed workouts without getting tired if it is short enough. Approximately 80% or probably more, your performance as a runner is determined by aerobic metabolism.

But still it is important to get your body learn how to run fast.

Just think about this. When was the last time you ran at the maximal effort?

If you are not a bank robbery, it would be already 10 or 20 years ago. Sometimes more. Besides, as you get older, speed decreases more than endurance ability.

So, now it’s time to relearn how to run faster. But you should not get tired too much. How can you do that?

There are workouts called wind sprints, acceleration, strides etc. Whatever you call it, basically it is the same. You run short and fast with staying as relaxed as possible. I will give you some examples.

You do 6 times 100m fast with 30 seconds jogging recovery. You do 5 times 200m with 1 minute jogging recovery. You do 6 times 150m with 1 minute jogging recovery etc.

The standard is one fast running session is approximately 100-200m and the total fast running distance is 500m to 1000m. Then, you can finish without getting tired. And the intensity is approximately 80-90% of the maximal effort, in other words, 80-90% of your 100m race pace.

Of course, you probably do not do 100m race, so you don’t know exactly how fast you are able to run 100m. But never mind. Just do not run at the maximal effort. It is fast, close to the maximal effort. But you still have reserves and do not run as fast as possible. That’s it.

It is called wind sprints because it is sprints, but you just try to feel the wind and enjoy it as much as possible. Or it is called strides because if you run fast, your strides get longer automatically.

Or, you can also accelerate the pace. You start running with relatively slow pace with relaxed running style and then try to run faster with staying in the relaxed running style as much as possible. I like this way too.

If you add this kind of supplemental speed workout on your easy run or moderate run 2-4 times a week, you get enough basic speed and your body relearns how to run faster. You just recall the day which your parents shouted to you ‘Run slower’ or ‘Do not run!’.

At that time, we couldn’t stop us from running or running fast, right?

Summarize

Now, let me summarize this article.

The best way of getting faster without injuries and overtraining is doing non-hard running as much as possible without pushing yourself.

If you keep doing this kind of non-hard running, the pace and volume automatically increase with the same amount of effort. And at the same time, you will recover faster than before automatically.

Make a little bit of variety. The basic idea is combining relatively short and fast run with relatively long and slow run.

Do supplemental speed workouts after your easy run or moderate run 2-4 times a week. The standard is that one fast running session is 100-200m and the total fast running session is 500m to 1000m.

If you do above things, you will get the solid base and ready to go for the next step. If you want to learn more how to run faster, please click here to download my free e-book ‘Three things you need to know to run faster dramatically without any injuries and overtraining’.

Thank you for reading!!