I’ve been training to become a faster runner so that I can run a half marathon under 1 hour and 30 minutes. I gave myself 40 days to train for it and shave off 9 minutes of my half marathon time. I have 20 things I’m going to incorporate to make this happen and in the last video I shared 3 of those steps which were my run training. Today I have some more tips to share about some extra training that I’ll be doing to speed up my running.

I’ve talked about this before in my videos, if you want to get faster you need to get stronger. So simple logic will lead you to strength training for your legs. In my training schedule I have 3 days where I’m not running, but I’m doing leg exercises. These exercises are mostly targeting my calves and thighs, but also my feet, ankles and knees. The exercises are not just to build up more power for running, but also more strength to prevent injuries.

I’ve made a couple of videos about leg exercises before, so it’s mostly those kind of exercises, squads, wall sits, knee raises, foot circles. I have a whole routine that I go over that covers them all and besides just working the legs I like to mix it up with some pull ups and push ups to work on the core and of course throw in some planks every now and then. I’ll share my exercises with you at the end of this series in a training video.

Besides these fairly simple to do strength exercises I also do speed exercises, these are great exercises to work on your speed, agility and running form. If you’ve ever seen those ladders they put on the ground for exercises and wondered what that is for, this is it. I do different exercises that help me with my speed, get my feet moving quickly and work on fast explosive movements.

So on my weekly schedule I have a Fartlek run, a speed run and a long run and three days of leg exercises and speed exercises. But I have 3 exercises that I like to call the Big 3, these 3 I do every day and are the 3 exercises every runner should do to become faster, become better, become more flexible, just become an overall better runner. They are very simple exercises to perform, but if you were to do only 3 exercises out of all the exercises there are, you should be doing these 3. I’ll demonstrate what they are next time, so make sure you don’t miss it. Right now I gotta run, so until next time, get out there and run.