3 EASY STEPS TO START RUNNING

#1: Walk, Walk, and Walk Some More: Walking will help serve as a starting base for much of your running routine. First, it gets your legs and body use to the extra activity you are going to be doing. Don't try to rush into running just after a few days of walking either. Walk for at least 3 Weeks straight before attempting any sort of running. Secondly, walking will get you into the routine of doing exercise on a regular basis, so when you are ready to run your body is already use to getting out and doing something, making it that much easier to do the running and keeping it up. You want to do at least 3 days of walking if not 7(one day off a week will not hurt either, but you may start to feel guilty when you take a day off).

#2: Walk, Jog, Walk: Once you have at least 3 weeks of walking under your belt, you can now begin to start jogging a little, but not much. You are going to be using some different muscles when running so you need to take is slowly. Getting hurt now will only set you back and may discourage you. Your jog should not be far, maybe just 100 yards or from telephone pole to telephone pole. Remember to always stretch your muscles before any jogging and also to do at least a quarter mile walk before jogging. You can set up a routine like this: walk, jog, walk, jog, walk for the first week or so and than slowly add in more jogs. For the first few weeks I would keep the jogging days to 3 days a week only, This will allow your muscles to recover and therefore you will be less prone to injury. As each week passes you may add a little more distance onto each jog. You will eventually get to the point where can actually run a half mile without a walk in between(or maybe even further).

#3: Jog: As you have probably realise by now, you have already been jogging for a while now. Congratulations. Now its time to just continue with the jogging and adding more distance and possibly a little more speed. But please remember not to over do it. If you feel your muscles start to tighten up at all, stop and walk and walk the next day until you feel it has gone away. Any sore muscles should be iced. You may want to set a goal for yourself. It usually helps to motivate you. Many people set up a local 5K race as their goal but remember it will takes month of training to get there. If you remember to take it easy, not to over do it you will really come to enjoy it and feel really good about yourself and your accomplishments. Good luck.

Just as an additional note, this program can be adapted to those of you who are looking to increase your mileage.  For example, if you usually run 5 miles but want to get to 10 miles, just run 3 miles, walk a mile, run 3 miles, walk a mile, run a mile and then gradually increase your miles so you are running 10 miles.  From there you than start to decrease your walks(you can even jog, walk, jog, walk your "walks" to make the transition easier.  Happy running!