how can you run faster with a lower heart rate some people say you got to do slow runs while other people swear by high intensity intervals it can be extremely frustrating to go through the jungle of bad advice out there not knowing what will make you better and what's a waste of time but after taking my slow runs from a 6-minute per kilm Pace to a comfortable 4minute per kilm Pace helping Runners of all levels do the same and diving into the latest science I'm going to show you four science-backed ways that you can use
to run faster and longer without getting out of breath but before we talk about training strategies we first need to understand when it's actually beneficial to run with a lower heart rate and the answer might surprise you even though running high-intensity intervals is great for heart Health and Longevity and a bunch of other health benefits it's not nearly as effective for becoming a great Runner as most people think at least in the way most people do it you see typically you would expect if you go out running three times per week as fast as you
could you would become faster and while that might be fun and lead to some initial improvements over time you're going to run into burnout injury and a frustrating plateau in contrast running with a lower heart rate makes it possible for you to go longer go more often and also train your aerobic base a lot more if you do it right to find out exactly how to do that we we first need to talk about a highly controversial Topic in the running Community during the 1984 Olympics Dr Jack Daniels noticed that the elite Runners would run
at least 180 steps per minute during their races this observation eventually led to the widespread belief that every Runner should run at least 180 steps per minute which is just ludicrous and even though I started going for 180 steps per minute as well when I started training serious ly a couple of years later a study was published that changed everything a group of researchers wanted to understand how stride frequency aka the number of steps you take per minute and heart rate are related at different speeds they took 12 Runners put them on a treadmill and
collect the data on stride frequency and heart rate at three different speeds 90% 100% And 110% of their preferred Speed the game of the study was to find out the optimal stride frequency that minimizes heart rate at each speed and to figure out how different stride frequencies impact heart rate the study found that the relationship between stride frequency and heart rate forms a parabolic shape at each running speed meaning there is a sweet spot or optimal frequency where the heart rate is lowest deviating from this optimal frequency either by increasing or decreasing stride frequency leads
to a higher heart rate they also found that inexperienced Runners tend to choose stride frequencies lower than the optimal frequency this suggests that many people could benefit from increasing Cadence to lower their heart rate and improve efficiency but what is the optimal stride frequency that we should aim for according to the study if you want to keep your heart rate as low as possible then for most recreational athletes running at recreational athlete speeds our step per minute should be around 170 to 180 and for the people I work with I see that that tends to
be the case lot but it varies so the best thing you can do is to test yourself so go find a treadmill check your camera and then see what happens when you change up your um stride frequency at different speeds by the way I've seen that for a lot of people this can also help with knee pain and ankle pain and all sorts of other things so it can be very well worth your time if you want to learn exactly how to analyze your running form I made a video about that so you can go
check out that video after this one by the way if you want to train running at a different strides per minute than you used to then I found that creating a playlist with only music that has that BPM can help a lot because then you just sort of run to the beat but changing our Cadence is only part of what science has shown that we can do to run faster with a lower heart rate the next strategy will make you feel completely in control even running at high speeds have you ever wondered why some people
seem to never be out out of breath no matter how hard they run I did because I used to be out of breath at the end of every run and at one point it was so bad that I would puke at the finish line which is not what volunteers sign up for by the way in a desperate attempt to find out how to not puke at the Finish Line I found something that actually helped me not do that but also lowered my heart rate in the process to help you understand I want you to think
about your body as a bicycle if the tires are low on air it's harder to pedal and you can't go as fast on the other hand if the tires are filled too much with air they're going to end up exploding but if the tires are filled with the right amount of air you're going to run smoothly and fast it works the same way with your lungs when you're running in fact one study even found that breathing the right way LED to many different health benefits including a lower resting heart rate less stress after exercise and
even a better posture the right way helps your body utilize the oxygen that comes in and therefore your heart does not have to work as hard so how do we breathe when running breathe deeply so your belly expands and then exhale slowly and fully and also I found that if I attemp to hyperventilate then exhaling hard like completely emptying H your stomach or your lungs for for air that tends to help a lot which brings us to the question what should your training look like to be able to run faster with a low heart rate
should we do high intensity training or do slow long runs my dad used to tell me that back in the day they would never do interval training he would always run as fast as he could and as far as he could and it's kind of sad because even though he ended up a decent Runner he never reached his true potential if he knew knew back then what we know today he would have ended up way better way faster you see in a study published in the Journal of applied phology they wanted to see what impact
training intensity distribution had on 10K performance in recreational athletes 30 endurance Runners were split into two groups with different training programs a polarized training group focused mostly on low intensity exercise with a bit of high-intensity exercise but no in between training the other group was a moderately high intensity group who did an in between thresholds endurance training program focusing more on moderately high intensity exercise each Runner ran a 10 km race before and after the program to measure their performance the training intensity was divided into three zones based on heart rate zone one which was
low intensity zone two which was moderate intensity and zone three which was high intensity in the polarized training group The Runners spent about 77% of the time time in zone 1 3% in zone 2 and 177% in Zone 3 in the moderately high intensity group The Runners spent 46% of their time in zone 1 35% in zone 2 and 19% in Zone 3 they found that even though both groups improved the 10K time the group that did the polarized training would improve by about 5% and the group that did the moderately high intensity would only
improve by 3.6% this study suggests that doing polarized training of about 80% of low intensity work and 20% of high intensity work has a greater impact on performance than doing training in between thresholds which begs the question how slow should we go slow running makes us better Runners by increasing our mitochondria in the muscles our capillaries and also our myoglobin I know that's a mouthful but um here's what it means more capillaries improve oxygen and Nutri ENT delivery to our muscles more myoglobin boosts the oxygen that is available and more mitochondria which is sort of
like the PowerHouse of our cells increase our energy production Al together it makes our muscles more efficient improving our endurance and our speed knowing that we can now look at the science to see how we improve these systems most effectively scientific research indicates that capillary growth Peaks at around 60 to 75% of our f 5K Pace myoglobin and mitochondrial development on the other hand Peaks at around 55 to 75% of our 5K Pace this means that our optimal running pace for our slow runs should be around 55 to 75% of our 5K Pace to hit
all of these systems running faster than 75% of our 5K Pace does not seem to add any additional benefit but going as low as 50% you will get almost the same benefits as going at 55 to 75% this means that if you run a 5k at around 20 minutes then your slow runs should be just around 920 to 8 minute mile Pace but you have to do one more thing when you're doing your slow runs you see the best runners in the world follow a specific set of principles to make sure that they improve every
single week so to make sure that you do the same you should check out this video right here [Music] hey he hey
