In This Series
Sprint Training
Jogging? Off. Increasing the speed and dropping the distance will burn fat, keep your body’s levels of the stress hormone cortisol in check and rev up your metabolism for the rest of the day. “You can fit near-flat-out sprints into a 20-minute window two or three times a week,” says outdoor training specialist Andrew Tracey. “Give it a week, increase the workload slightly each time, and watch your body change.” Mix up these four workouts for high-speed results.
Beach muscle
How Every minute on the minute, run 100m at a near-flat-out sprint – 50m out-and-back is fine if you haven’t got a 100m space. Follow up with five pull-ups and five press-ups, and start your next 100m when the next minute starts. Repeat for 16 minutes, giving you a total of one mile a day.
Why “It’ll strip back the fat and add muscle up top,” says Tracey. For extra man-points, do the pull-ups on a tree.
Speed
How Mark out roughly 50m up a hill. Sprint up at max effort. Walk back down. Repeat this for five efforts. Rest for three minutes and go again, completing three “blocks” of training in total.
Why A decent rest between sets will let you build top-end velocity. “The walk should ideally take four to five times as long as the sprint,” says trainer Tom Eastham. “If you’re using a stopwatch, attempt to keep each effort to a similar time – if you can’t, take longer to do the recovery walk.”
Endurance
How “You’ll need an incline, a decline and a flat section for this one,” says Eastham. “A triangular course would be ideal.” Run up the hill at an effort level similar to your one-mile pace. Descend at a recovery pace then speed up on the flat part. Complete three laps without resting, then rest for the same time as you worked. Repeat for five blocks, trying to keep your pace the same for each block.
Why You’ll build better endurance through the process of accumulated fatigue, where you push hard, recover briefly, then push on again.
Fat loss
How Find a short hill with a steep incline. Run up at max effort, run down at a recovery pace and do ten burpees (chest to floor). Run up and down again, then do nine burpees, then eight, then seven, all the way to one.
Why “It’s a swift kick in the metabolism that’ll also build mental strength,” says Eastham. “After the last set, ask yourself if you could have gone any harder. If the answer is yes, do another sprint and a final set of ten burpees. You’ll do better next time.”
