Our clinic is open with experts providing both online and face-to-face appointments. Book Online Now
Interval training is not suitable for anyone who has heart problems or other medical conditions. Speak to Lucy and her team or contact your GP if you are not sure.
Most of your runs should be intervals, you only need to aim to do one continuous run a week.
Make sure you don’t sprint or run faster than your normal rate because this will increase your chance of injury.
There are lots of different ways of interval training, it doesn’t matter which one you choose, as long as you are repeatedly dropping your heart rate down and then raising it up again.
Breathlessness is a good indicator of whether you are achieving this. Make sure you walk for long enough so that your breathing rate recovers to the extent that you can comfortably have a conversation using long sentences without needing to gasp for breath.
Start with warming up and then repeat about five blocks of three minutes consisting of running two minutes and walking for one. Then you can build up slowly by adding three-minute blocks.
Remember to include more recovery measures to reflect the additional strain you have put on your body.
Get in touch with Lucy and her physio team if you would like more details on how to best incorporate intervals into your training programme.
Follow @octopusclinic on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram and/or Lucy Macdonald on YouTube to access our latest free videos on marathon training and injury prevention. If you would like our marathon handbook and are running for charity please contact Lucy Macdonald directly on lucymacdonaldphysio@hotmail.co.uk or if you would like to get the video course Your Marathon: Your Physio please click on the link.
We promise to never share your email address with anyone.