Learn to Jog
I’ve been a jogger on and off for many years now. If you want to learn to jog, you need to first decide you want to, set yourself a goal and then make a plan to accomplish that goal.
Sound familiar?
That’s because it’s the same as any other thing you want to accomplish in your life… it starts with a decision.
Make the decision
You’ll see, once you make the decision to learn to jog, you’ll find it much easier to do the rest. Think of anything else you’ve wanted to accomplish in your life in the past…. think of those things you succeeded at, I bet you’ll remember a time where you just made the decision to make it happen.
Set a goal
Once you’ve made the decision, you need to set a goal. A goal to learn to jog is something like “I will be doing 5km in 60 minutes by October 1st”. So you choose the distance, the speed or time it takes and the date you will make it happen.
Make a plan
Ok, so you’ve decided to do it and you’ve set a goal… now you need to make a plan so you know what you need to do on a daily and weekly basis to achieve that goal.
My story
Well, I have to tell you that I heard that from my mentors on every 
subject you can imagine and, to be honest, I learned to jog long before that. In high school I was always a good sprinter and has good lungs to do the 1k in phys-ed but when I was an adult and wanted to start jogging, I just got outside and though “this will be easy” and startted.
Well, lol, let me tell you… I ran for 30 seconds and was out of breath!
Fast forward to about 10 years later and I’m still not jogging, but I decide to join a gym and get on the treadmill at 4-5km/hr for 30 minutes 3-4 times a week. Each week, I would increase the speed by .1 or .2 km/hr, The other thing I did was speed up in the last 5 minutes of my 30 minute workout. I would do +.1 km/hr every 30 seconds for the last 5 minutes to increase my lung capacity.
It worked, 6 months later, I ran a 5km is 22 minutes. Nothing record breaking, but I can tell you that is amazingly good for a newbie.
How to make a plan
The thing about making a plan is that you need to know what’s possible for one. For example, if you try to set a goal of doing a 5km in 15 minutes in 3 months from now and you can only workout 3 days a week for 30 minutes, well, that’s not very likely. But how would you know if no one tells you, right?
To make a plan to learn to jog, you need to know how much time you are wiling to put aside each week and each day, you need to know where you are starting from and where you are going.
You can start with your goal and where you are right now. You may need to go out for a jog right now to find out what you current limit is. For example if you go out and can only do 30 seconds and about 1/4 km before you are out of breath, that would be your start point.
A few things about jogging
First of all, I’m not a doctor or a physical therapist, so consult your doctor if your health is a concern. My comments are not necassirily the right approach for you.
- Make sure you take deep breaths. Inhale with your nose and exhale with your mouth.
- Make sure you land on your toes or your sole, never on your heels.
- Drink plenty of water
- Wear clothes appropriate to the weather
- Don’t expect to run all the time during you jog, it is perfectly fine to walk for a while when you get out of breath.
- When starting, do 30 seconds running, 60 seconds walking.
- You can also just slow down your pace instead of walking if that works for you
Before you know it, you’ll be running marathon – if you keep it up.
I hope this article has helped you. I’d love to hear your comments and feedback by commenting below. As always, please share this with your friends if you fee you got value.