Running outdoors is one of my favorite activities. I have started running regularly over ten years ago when I was a graduate student at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China. After each of my one-hour evening workouts, which included strength exercises and jogging, I was gaining great benefits: I was more athletic and faster, and I had more strength and positive energy.
These days, I usually run twice or three times a week depending on the amount of spare time that I have. And, I feel like a newborn baby after each jog.
Running is a great sport because it is free or cheap for anyone in the world. It does not discriminate.
Good news is that, you do not need to begin with buying an expensive gym membership to start running. Everything you need includes a little bit of motivation, around one hour of free time, sports shoes and any sporty clothes you can find in your closet.
Here are a few great ways how to encourage yourself to start running:
– Motivate yourself. Stand in front of a mirror and ask yourself whether you are happy with how you look like.
– Start today. Do not delay the decision to get going. Replace negative thoughts and the feeling of laziness with positive thinking.
– Find a reason to start running. If you often feel that you lack of energy during the day, it is because you do not exercise, not because you are tired. If you see any excess of fat and flabby arms and thighs, go running! Your muscles are weak because you sit behind the desk or in front of the TV set for too many hours.
– Start slowly. You do not need to immediately complete the whole marathon. Start with walking and then increase the pace and length of your runs.
– Start out small. To warm up, do simple exercises which you may remember from your childhood in the primary school: crunches, bends, squats, pushups, etc. When your body gets stronger, you can extend your warm up.
– Run outdoors. Make sure that you practice outdoors, e.g. in the park, around the lake or in the woods. Avoid exercising at home because you will always find hundreds of excuses to postpone your workout. You will be convincing yourself that there is always something else to do at home that is more important than running. Stop making excuses boy/girl!
– Do not care the weather. Go out for a jog and exercise regardless of the weather, but dress accordingly.
– Run alone. You will find it easier to cope with minor failures knowing that no one is watching you, evaluating your progress or laughing at you in case you do not do well from the very beginning. By running alone, you will not feel embarrassed, if something does not go as planned.
– Do not exercise too much. If you run for too long, you will get extremely tired. Therefore, you will not be willing to run anymore in the next couple of days. Not good. You may even get sick, if you stay for too long in the cold weather. Then, you will not be able to train for a week or longer. Take it easy from the start!
– Change your diet. On par with running, change your diet to get fitter – eat more fruits and vegetables, eat more steamed food and less fried food, eliminate white sugar and reduce salt intake. From my personal experiences, eating healthy has much bigger impact on losing weight than exercising itself.
– Drink water. Drink large quantities of pure water (2-3 liters every day) or fresh juice. Try to stay away from drinking soft drinks because they tend to contain excessive amounts of sugar. No matter where you go, always have a bottle of water with you.
– Reward yourself. After each workout, reward yourself with a small pleasure, for example, buy a new book or go out for healthy dinner with your spouse to a new restaurant.
– Explore the world. Running can bring you to places that you have never been before. With each workout, run a different route to discover new areas in your neighborhood.
– Enjoy. Do not complain that you are tired after training. Enjoy the fact that you have probably extended your life by several hours or even days. Smile!
– Do not get discouraged. To be honest with you, I noticed the first effects of my workouts after about six months. Getting in shape is going to take you a long time, so be realistic. Even though you did not run long enough for the first time, do not get discouraged. Do not let any negative thoughts come into your head. Do not think that something is too hard or you cannot do this. Stay strong!
– Have rest. Do not run every day, but allow your body to recover for at least one day each week. For optimum results, I found out that exercising every other day works best, or two to three times a week.
As you can see, it is quite easy to start running. Do it to enjoy life more. The first weeks after you start running will for sure be very hard because your body needs to get use to coping with more effort than the exercise of sitting on the couch.
But after just a month of regular training, there will not be any more days anymore when you do not want to go out for a quick jog.
