The family need catered to, the house is overpopulated, there’s errands needing run and you’re exhausted from the busy year that has been! It’s supposed to be holiday time; a chance for you to get some more quality training in and then put your feet up in between sessions! Unfortunately, expectation doesn’t always meet reality during this time of year. That’s no reason to get upset and lose motivation though!
Here are five workouts (some as short as 10 minutes) that will provide you with some enjoyable variations and a healthy little heart rate kick to keep you fit and strong during this hectic time:
Here are five workouts (some as short as 10 minutes) that will provide you with some enjoyable variations and a healthy little heart rate kick to keep you fit and strong during this hectic time:
High Intensity Hill Intervals (HIHI)
Here's a killer session that is all over in about 30 minutes (including a healthy warm up). There’s a heap of recent research supporting the VO2 boosting benefits of this session, despite the fact that it is all about high heart rate lactic acid! Definitely Type 2 kind of fun….
Tabata session
Tabata training is a type of high-intensity interval training that works on a schedule of 20 seconds effort, 10 seconds rest, repeat. Typically, one set lasts four minutes. The example below is super convenient; made up of bodyweight exercises, you could do this at home before anyone else in the house has even woken up and it only takes 12 minutes!
Kuegler Progression
This one takes a little longer than the short-burst sessions above, but is a fantastic running-specific workout that caters to all abilities. It is best completed on an athletics track, but can be done on any relatively flat roads or trails near you (you’ll just need a GPS watch or something to tell you your pace). This is a great session to be done with friends of varying abilities.
ParkRun
In parks around New Zealand, and indeed around the world every Saturday morning there are 5km events happening. These volunteer-managed runs are a fantastic little reminder of what it’s like to run in an event with lots of other people around you. Click here to find out more.
10 Minute Mobility Session
I place a lot of emphasis on taking care of your body outside of the many miles of running you do. The James Kuegler Coaching team have developed The 10 Minute Mobility Guide, which is full of innovative and functional movement principles and methods for improving your mobility and overall function. If you’re serious about performance, you should be doing this stuff every single day! If you’re stuck for a workout to do one day, or feel the need for some decent recovery, there’s enough exercises in The 10 Minute Mobility Guide for you to spend a solid hour on mobility! Do as much or as little as you need.
Click here to find out more about James Kuegler Coaching coaching options.
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Here's a killer session that is all over in about 30 minutes (including a healthy warm up). There’s a heap of recent research supporting the VO2 boosting benefits of this session, despite the fact that it is all about high heart rate lactic acid! Definitely Type 2 kind of fun….
- Find a hill long enough for you to run for 30 seconds without running out of real estate, and steep enough to slow you down significantly, but not so steep that you can not run.
- Start with some basic mobility work.
- Run for 10-15 minutes, jogging slowly initially, building the pace and climbing the hill a couple of times.
- The workout is to sprint up the hill for 30 seconds, and then recover for 90 seconds including jogging back down to where you started from. Repeat that six times.
- Go hard!
- Cool down for 10-15 minutes.
- This is a fun one to do with friends.
Tabata session
Tabata training is a type of high-intensity interval training that works on a schedule of 20 seconds effort, 10 seconds rest, repeat. Typically, one set lasts four minutes. The example below is super convenient; made up of bodyweight exercises, you could do this at home before anyone else in the house has even woken up and it only takes 12 minutes!
- Squat: with feet just wider than shoulder-width and toes pointed very slightly outwards, spine straight and chin up, drop down into a deep squat and then drive up powerfully. Engage the glutes throughout the squat. Keeping this exemplary form, repeat the squat. Do as many as you can in 20 seconds, then rest for 10 seconds. Repeat this seven more times (to make it up to four minutes of tabata squats). You should ideally be doing at least one squat per second. Aim for more squats every 20 seconds!
- Supine bicycle or V-sit: both of these are core exercises, so choose one or the other. A simple Google search will bring up images of how to do them. Same as above, go hard for 20 seconds, rest for 10 and then repeat until four minutes is up.
- Hand-release push up: quite simply, lower yourself to the ground in push up position and before pushing back up you must take your hands off the ground. The idea of lifting your hands off the ground each time is to engage the muscles on your back that oppose the pectoral/chest muscles that perform the push up. Same process here; 20 seconds on, 10 seconds off, four minutes.
Kuegler Progression
This one takes a little longer than the short-burst sessions above, but is a fantastic running-specific workout that caters to all abilities. It is best completed on an athletics track, but can be done on any relatively flat roads or trails near you (you’ll just need a GPS watch or something to tell you your pace). This is a great session to be done with friends of varying abilities.
- Work out a pace hat is approximately 2min/km slower than the pace that you would be able to sustain for a half-marathon.
- Using the above pace, run 800m at that pace.
- Without any rest, run the next 800m 15sec/km faster than the previous.
- Repeat until you can not go any faster.
ParkRun
In parks around New Zealand, and indeed around the world every Saturday morning there are 5km events happening. These volunteer-managed runs are a fantastic little reminder of what it’s like to run in an event with lots of other people around you. Click here to find out more.
10 Minute Mobility Session
I place a lot of emphasis on taking care of your body outside of the many miles of running you do. The James Kuegler Coaching team have developed The 10 Minute Mobility Guide, which is full of innovative and functional movement principles and methods for improving your mobility and overall function. If you’re serious about performance, you should be doing this stuff every single day! If you’re stuck for a workout to do one day, or feel the need for some decent recovery, there’s enough exercises in The 10 Minute Mobility Guide for you to spend a solid hour on mobility! Do as much or as little as you need.
Click here to find out more about James Kuegler Coaching coaching options.
Click here to make sure that more articles like this one come direct to your inbox.