by Glenn Magas

Created on: September 17, 2009

Increasing the difficulty of your daily jog should not mean adding to the risk of injury. If you have built a base of several weeks of jogging and you feel ready to increase the difficulty, here are 5 Training Tips to add difficulty to your jog or run.

1. Follow the 10% Rule
2. Run at a 1% incline on a treadmill
3. Include Sprints
4. Attack those Hills
5. Tempo Runs

1. Follow the 10% Rule

For an experienced runner or a casual jogger, it is important not to go too far too soon. The 10% rule is highly recommended for new joggers as well as experienced runners. This simply suggests that if you are jogging 10 miles a week, only add 10% to that distance on the following week.

Adding an extra mile to a weekly 10 mile total could be an additional 8 to 12 minutes to your jog routine for the week (for an average runner). That equals 11 miles for the week. The next week, add another 10% or 1.1 miles, and in this scenario, that totals 12.1 miles for the week. The distance and time will grow and in a month's time, if you started at 10 miles a week, you will be up to 13.3 miles a week.

The important part is that you are increasing difficulty by adding distance, and you are making sure to prevent injury by following the 10% Rule.

The 10% rule is the most important rule to follow as you add difficulty to your jog or run!

2. Run at 1% incline on a Treadmill

If you run on a treadmill, then the general rule of thumb is to run at 1% incline to replicate the difficulty of running on the street. Again, the 10% rule should be followed here. If you are running 3 mile sessions, the following week add 10% to that treadmill session for a total of 3.3 mile run on the treadmill.

Sometimes just adding time and distance to your jog is enough difficulty you need to keep your session a challenge.

3. Include Sprints

Dedicate a day to sprints. Do a warm-up then include sprint sessions. An idea of sessions for shorter distances could be 4x100 meters. That's four 100 meter sprints. Do a 100 meter sprint followed by an easy jog for 2 minutes to recuperate. Follow this with another 100 meter sprint and easy jog for 2 minutes. Do that again two more times.

After doing 4x100 meter sprints that's a quarter mile run plus the time and distance on your recovery jogs. If you are accustomed to longer distances, do 4x200 meter or 4x400 meter sprint session.

Make sure to keep it in the range that your body can handle or you will risk injury! Again, the 10% rule is important here as well.

4. Attack those

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