How to Start Running, by: Muhammad Raza

 How to Start Running 

Believe it or not, running can be one of the most enjoyable and beneficial forms of exercise for those who chose to pursue it. It improves your cardiovascular system, strengthens your muscles and bones (contrary to what many people believe), and builds a great deal of discipline and mental resilience (Victorian Government Department of Health). In fact, evidence has suggested that running also increases your lifespan, meaning you’ll live both longer and stronger (BaylorScott&White). However, starting one’s running journey is much harder than it appears on the surface, and there are a lot of things you have to take into account when beginning this strenuous hobby. That is why, with my years of running experience and the knowledge I have acquired from pounding hundreds of thousands of miles into legs, I have identified and compiled three actionable steps that you can take in order to start running.

The first step to beginning your running journey is actually to start strength training. That seems contradictory, why would I want to hit the gym or start doing squats if I wanna log miles? The answer to this question is that running specific strength training is great for improving your durability and protecting you against injury. Running, in a manner, is also a weight lifting sport: your tendons, ligaments, muscles, and bones have to support multiples of the weight of your entire body continuously for miles on end. If they are not built to handle this load, you are asking for an injury. One of the reasons why so many new runners quit the sport is because they can’t string together training without getting hurt, and strength training is one of the best ways to prevent that.

Now that you’ve started to get stronger legs, the next step to getting into running is actually doing walk-jog intervals. Walk-jog intervals, as the name implies, are workouts consisting of you walking for a specified period of time, and jogging for a specified period of time (eg: 1’ walk -> 30’’ jog, or 2’ walk-> 2’ jog). This is a great way to introduce your body and mind to the action of running in a somewhat easy and non-strenous manner. In fact, this type of training is also used by seasoned athletes who want to get back into running after a tough injury, meaning it definitely can apply to beginners. The other benefits of this type of training are that you can stack up much more training volume by weaving walks between your runs rather than straight up running, and also progress easily by decreasing the walk to jog ratio. Over time, this walk-jog can transition to straight up running as you progress in a manageable way.

The last piece of advice for those wanting to start running is that you need to realize the importance of consistency. While this is cliche advice, the fact is that so many of the adaptations that take place once you start running occur over weeks and months of consistent effort. Every runner who you see casually trotting out 8 mile easy runs and 4 mile hard efforts have built up to that over months and years of consistent training, and everyone has to do this. Also, consistency doesn’t have to be running everyday as far as you can; for a beginner, it can just look like running every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for a moderate amount of time. Overall, running is extremely rewarding, but only if you take the time and energy to follow these actionable steps and continue to do them as you further progress in this sport. 

Citations:

Jones, Bradley. “An Hour of Running Could Add 7 Hours to Your Life.” Scrubbing in by BSWHealth, 18 June 2017, www.bswhealth.com/blog/running-hour-add-7-hours-life.

‌Better Health. “Running and Jogging - Health Benefits.” Vic.gov.au, Victorian Government, 25 May 2022, www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/health/healthyliving/running-and-jogging-health-benefits. Accessed 12 Oct. 2025.