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First increase the frequency, then the duration, and only then the intensity of your workouts.

An important basic rule in endurance sports is: Training is always exertion AND relaxation. Sufficient regeneration is important to ensure the body can process the signs of adaption triggered by training. If you train only once or twice a week, you don’t need to worry about your recovery. That leaves plenty of days in between for the body to regenerate.

For most recreational athletes, that’s why: if you want to get better, you need to train more! To attain an optimum effect on your health, you should engage in about 3–5 training sessions a week, each one lasting 20 to 60 minutes. Exceeding this has no additional impact on your health and mainly serves to boost your performance in order to achieve ambitious racing goals.

Those who regularly manage to get in at least three units a week can also continuously step up the duration of their individual training sessions. And only then the intensity. But remember: Intensity and duration compete against each other. Those who train very intensively should not do extensive training at the same time. Intense training prolongs the required recovery time and has to be dosed accordingly.

Your pulse serves as an important gauge in recreational sport. Listen to your heart and check regularly your pulse. And over the course of a week, unleash the whole spectrum in terms of pulse rate and strain. This will enable you to put together a varied training programme. You can also connect your pulse with how you feel and train according to the traffic light system. A casual run once a week in the green range, one moderate exertion in the orange range, and a gruelling one in the red range. A systematic training plan is required only from four training sessions per week and up, because there is a need to control the intensity properly and adapt it to the set goals.

And another important thing: if you want to make continuous progress, you also need to take into account the other fitness factors besides endurance, namely speed, flexibility, and strength.

A last tip for the cold season: if you get a cold, you can still engage in physical activity (at a gentle pace), but with a fever, athletic training is absolutely off limits – even for the next few days after you have recovered! The body needs time to recover from an infection.

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