I trained 8 weeks to run a 5 minute mile...Here's how it went

this is roger bannister roger is about to become the first man to ever break the four-minute mile barrier to put that time into perspective for you he's running at an average speed of 15 miles an hour and here's what I look like trying to run 15 miles an hour on a treadmill so obviously I'm not getting the four-minute mile pace that is Olympic level speed but what I want to do for the next eight weeks is see if I can train and get fast up to run a sub five-minute mile so to start things off I'm be hitting the trap timing myself and seeing how I measure up on day one [Music] my time on day one is seven minutes and 48 seconds I didn't think I'd do a whole lot better than that but I was hoping to come in under 7:30 anyway that leaves me with almost three whole minutes to shave off of my time in just eight weeks [Music] the week one my goal is to Train six days a week that includes jogging 30 to 40 minutes four times a weekend hitting the gym three times with a focus on strengthening my lower body and core and I run ten wind sprints twice a week and a nearby soccer [Music] okay so I've just finished week one and I'm really thinking this is a challenge I should not be taking on by myself so I've called in and I've made an appointment to meet with Chris Shepherd of the runners Academy to try and get some advice on how I should be proceeding with my training and what I should be doing with my next seven weeks and why you choose five minutes more specific yeah have you have you run a mile before chris is a little skeptical of the timeline I've given myself but he's encouraging and he starts running me through a series of exercises to see where I'm at we're gonna start with just getting you running okay we'll get you running I'll look at some things there might be seen from a movement strength flexibility standpoint that we're gonna look at today okay okay but let's start here the key points here with Brendan's running are that he was overreaching heel striking which puts on the brakes so from a performance standpoint and from an injury risk standpoint this is something that we want to avoid okay and the concept that we try to teach our athletes that running is more about applying force downward in a specific direction very quickly and then the action that we want through the hips is a piston action so this up-down motion regardless of what running speed so we've given Brendan some drills to help reinforce this and we're going to talk more specifically about incorporating this into his training [Music] I start incorporating Chris's exercises the next week they're designed not only to foster better running mechanics but also develop balance and strengthen my supporting muscles that are crucial for running [Music] with each stride I want to create a 90-degree angle between my waist my foot and the track so that all of my force is applied straight into the ground propelling me forward I keep this in mind on week three as I tie myself on the 100 200 and 400 meter sprints time so cam just gave me my time and I ran the 400 meter in 82 seconds I need to be able to on the 400 meter 4 times and average 75 seconds a lap and have just 5 weeks to get there my lower body back after foam roll 20 to 30 minutes every day after my runs stretch out and working out my body and even still there are days I wake up feeling stiff sometimes limping because running is just such a high impact sport it's time to figure out how physically demanding running is here's what I've learned so far during this challenge 1 you have to be patient building cardiovascular strength is a long and painful process that requires you to give your absolute max when you're doing circuits this week I'm running 12 circuits of 400 meters with 90 seconds rest and even still the results take time secondly you have to train for speed going for longer and longer jogs might get you in shape but it will do very little to actually make you run faster to do that you have to work on doing Sprint's strengthen your supporting muscles and run with proper technique and finally by actual running shoes I picked these up at a sports store in the running section before I started my training and their junk they're just they're absolutely sneakers so don't be like me do some actual homework before you make a purchase I have two weeks left to go in my training and I cannot convey enough both how tiring and at times demoralizing this process has been but I am too far along and too far invested to even think about giving up now [Music] [Applause] [Music] so I'm back at the same track eight weeks from the day of when I did my original run at 7:48 so I'm gonna do about 20 minute warm-up the only thing that has really changed is I've got a new pair of actual running shoes so I'm gonna do a 20-minute pre workout for my body up because I'm excited I start out running faster than I should which puts me at risk of burning out too soon I need to slow down if I want to have anything left for the second half of this race finish lap one in ninety two seconds and complete lap two and 98 unfortunately my technique still isn't great I'm sowing my arms much more than I should be and my running posture starts to break down as I get tired when I finish lap three my time has fallen all the way to a hundred and fourteen seconds I'm exhausted and I still have one more lap to fight my way through in the end I finished with six minutes and 40 seconds which is a hundred second slower than I thought it would go but yeah well when we talked about this through your journey yeah you know when you first came in us okay I had genuinely no idea how incremental the improvement would be for something like this it's all you know middle they they spend years doing this and it takes a long time to build an aerobic engine and so when you came in sitting in front of me I'm I don't know who you are maybe you are a genetic freak and you've got this huge you know huge engine so I wasn't going to shoot me down right date one however reality is no one doesn't okay no one does this I think your your your heroic strength right needs some work so you were good through like let's say three quarters of some of the workouts and then your times really tanked right right so that means working on your overall aerobic base which means running more right so some of the top middle distance runners that I work with they're still so they're running you know an 800 meter or a mile 1500 meter race they're still on the weekend doing a 20k Plus longer okay ideally though yeah right because it is you know 80 90 percent anaerobic event okay and you you have to build that aerobic engine in the end I fell well short of my original five-minute mile goal which in hindsight just seems ludicrous for me to have picked out but I did manage to shave one minute in eighteen seconds off my original time so there was serious progress made my job going forward now is really just to see if I can keep building off of that progress and not fall back to the state I was before this challenge so I'm gonna take a week off Ronnie just let my body rest recover but after that I'm glassing on my shoes heading back into the cold and I'm gonna see if I can get any closer to that five minute mile pace hey guys thank you so much for watching and I want to give a special thanks in this challenge to Chris Shepherd and everyone at the runners Academy who were so helpful through the entirety of this challenge honestly I would have just been completely lost without their guidance if you want to see all of the stretching and a lot of the training exercises that I did for this challenge you can find all of those in the full breakdown through their YouTube channel which I'm linking over here and if you lucky enough to live in the great city of Toronto you should check out their website which is linked below honestly they're just first-class organization all the way through and I plan on visiting them again as I keep going with my running goals

Channel: Goal Guys

Views: 1,981,305

Rating: 4.8435555 out of 5

Keywords: 8 weeks to run a 5 minute mile, 5 minute mile, 8 week running challenge, how to increase your running speed, how to get faster at running, running technique, how to get better at running, track and field, mid distance running, education, self improvement, fitness, goal guys, cam jones, brendan jones, canadian youtuber, running

Id: HpClwXjDqro

Length: 10min 12sec (612 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 29 2018