How to start training for a marathon?

How to start training for a marathon? I asked this question once to one of my coaches. He asked, “Are you a runner? Have you been running for sometime?” At that time, I was preparing for my first half marathon and had started 45 mins of regular running practice. I said, “Yes, but I am not good at running. I want to run better. So I want to know how to train for it”. He pondered and replied, “Get up and quickly climb this flight of staircase.” “Oh okay”, said I. I climbed the staircase and came back huffing and puffing. “There there”, replied my coach. He then said,

“You have been training to run for more than half an hour, still climbing up a staircase sent you panting. This is conditioning i.e you have conditioned your body to run but not to climb a staircase.”

Then he told me a few rules of preparing for any sport, which we can apply to training for a marathon.

1. To train for any sport, play that sport

To train for running on the road, run on the road; to train for climbing a staircase, climb a staircase. To train for body-building, lift weights. Simple!

So to train for a marathon, start with running. Initially, run for small distances and then from the very first day try to find out in which part of your body you feel unease or pain.

Then question yourself: is it my back that hurts? Maybe my form of running is not correct. So tomorrow, while running, I will improve my form. Or you may realize that it is the knee or shin that hurts. And you say to yourself that maybe I am not landing my foot softly on the floor while running so tomorrow when I run I will pay a lot of attention to my landing. I will make sure that I am not running by banging my foot on the ground.

2. While playing your sport, find out which joint is used the most

This is where strength and functional training start.

Mimic the movement of your sport and find out what action you do the most in it and what joints are involved the most in doing those actions.

While strength training pay special attention to the muscles around those joints. Strengthen those muscles. Also do functional training moves that support those joints.

For example, in case of running, the ankle, knee and hip joint are used the most. So strength train the muscles around them. Do squats, lunges, deadlifts, calf raises, leg circles etc for functional training. Do farmer walks (walk with weights in hands), incline walks (on the treadmill or on the inclined surface), lateral, backward running, sprinting etc. Yoga is also very good.

3. Improve your form. Strengthen your core.

Poor form takes all the efforts to the garbage bin, or I should say to the injury bin. Good form means strong core, proper alignment of arms, legs and the spine while running. For proper form of the spine, work on the muscles that surrounds the spine i.e work on all the core muscles.

The stronger the core, the better the run; or for that matter, the stronger the core, the better any sport. Use stabilization exercises to train the core.

Do planks, saws, weighted sit ups, bosu ball, TRX, do saws on the swiss ball (Swiss ball is an amazing unstable surface to be used for stabilization exercises for core strengthening), pilates etc.

Warm up, stretch and cool down are very boring but they are very important. Stretch your spinal muscles, leg muscles and arm muscles. Leave no stiffness anywhere. Start with 15 mins, find out what you need to improve, carry those improvements to the next run, go for 20 mins next time, and slowly you will pick up, in the process will losing fat and building muscles (if you strength train). Keep on it. Remember where there is a will, there is a way.

If you do not have much time in a day then run for 3 days and do other training on the remaining 3 days. Oh and I almost forgot to write, massage your joints regularly. You can do it every night 5 minutes before going to sleep. Also, feed your body well!

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