Once you start running it becomes almost like an addiction. This is one of the few sports in which you will be able to compete against yourself. People always try to beat their best time or to increase their overall pace. However, what happens when you hit a brick wall? It’s time to change up your training! Try these three tips to teach yourself to run faster.

1.  Warm Up Properly. Many people never seem to consider before they run is to do a good warm up. This is going to help get your muscles ‘into gear’. Not only will a good warm up increase your running speed over time, but it is also going to help prevent injury. There are plenty of online resources for running warm ups which you can use to work out the most effective ways to warm up before your running session.

In addition to this, you may want to look into guides on improving your posture. There are so many people out there who are using bad posture when they run, which is severely detrimental to your running speed. If you can change this, you will notice vast changes in your running. You may find that you’ll have to slow your pace down for a short period while you adjust to a new posture position and gain strength in your core.

Another cross-training option is yoga. Doing simple yoga poses and slow breathing techniques will help keep you limber and focused. In addition, yoga has been attributed to relieving depression and fatigue, weight loss, overall body strengthening and relieving pain.

2.  Add Interval Training. You should certainly implement interval training into your training exercises, especially near the start. This will involve running at a slow space (jogging almost) before you kick everything up a notch and begin to run at a fast pace for a pre-determined amount of time before slowing down once again. Almost every professional runner uses this particular technique in their training, and you will be able to benefit from it substantially. When you start training, you will have small ‘intervals’ before you gradually work up to sprinting for much longer periods of time. Eventually you will have conditioned your body to stay at a constant sprint.

For some reason there are plenty of people out there that train on the road. This is going to have an impact on your body due to the hard surface. While it is fine to train on the road once in a while, every so often why not find a softer surface such as grass? With less of an impact on the body, you will find that your times substantially improve.

3.  Run Hills.  Do you find that you are fatigued easily after running for long periods of time? If so, then you should start to include more ‘hill running’ into your workout which will help build up your leg muscles and stop you becoming fatigued as quickly. You could also improve your running by simply walking hills! A good cross training idea would be to try Nordic Walking!

If you follow just a few of the tips above, you will find that your running speed will increase substantially. Honestly, if you continue to apply them you will notice vast improvements rather quickly. Whether you are looking to place better in a race, or simply live with the satisfaction that you have managed to beat your top speed, these tips will be able to help you.

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