Strides is a light and a short sweet workout that does not involve heavy breathing and a lactic acid build up. Strides usually is a pure leg turnover workout that the repeats are usually no more than 30 seconds.
How to perform Strides or Leg turnover workout
Strides are short and must performed fast and in control since are not sprints. You must not go all out but you should feel your legs going fast and same time in control with a good but not heavy breathing. Heavy breathing equals to lactic acid build up and is something we want to avoid when a stride workout is executed.
Recovery between strides is quite long compare to the stride, for example you may do a 15 second stride and recover with a slow jog for a minute.
Strides are usually performed around your 5k pace or even faster but when you do them forget about the watch pace, focus on going fast but as mentioned not all out.
What is the purpose of a Stride Workout?
Strides will improve your legs coordination of going fast but in a nice control form. A leg speed workout will improve eventually your cadence that is very important for any long distance runner. This workout is easy for our body since is not adding a lot of stress to it and can really help us to feel the speed prior to any speed training period. You can add strides at the end or in the middle of any easy run day but don’t over do it.
Personally i like to add strides at the middle of my easy runs, and i can add 8-10 x 15-25 seconds strides with 1 minute recovery jog in between. that makes your easy run more fun as well.
All of our online running packages includes a variety of runs that will help you to run faster. Learn more about our running coach here.
