If you’re getting serious about transforming your body and getting leaner than you’ve ever been, one thing that you’ll want to be focusing on is making sure that you get in some good cardio training.

Cardio is not only going to improve your overall health dramatically but it’s also going to help you up your calorie burn and make sure that you maintain your overall cardio deficit.

When it comes to cardio selection, running really can’t be beat. If you want something that will burn calories quickly, it’s the activity to turn to.

Unfortunately though, many people aren’t able to run for very long at a continuous pace so time must be taken to learn to run longer without becoming fatigued.

Let’s take a quick look at the steps you’re going to have to take to do this.

Alternate between walking and running

The first thing that you should do as you get ready to begin to learn to run is alternate between walking and running.

If you do this and gradually ease yourself into it you’re going to find that it’s far easier to build up how long you can run than if you just try to run for as long as possible straight off the start.

So say rather than aiming for a 10-minute run, aim to alternate between one minute running and one minute walking for a good 30 to 40 minutes. This will actually give you more total time spent running and as you progress on you can adjust it so more time is actually spent running and less time is actually spent walking.

Get out regularly

Second, you also want to make sure that you’re running regularly throughout the week. With something like running you are going to have to work at it consistently in order for it to get better. If you’re only getting out once a week or so it’s going to be very difficult to actually make forward progress.

Instead, aim to perform at least three runs each week. This will keep you moving onwards and seeing the results that you’re after.

Make sure to breath properly

One thing that some people are not doing as they go about their running training which can have a very large influence on the results they see is breathing correctly. If you aren’t breathing as you run you won’t be getting oxygen to the muscle tissues meaning your chances of fatigue are that much higher.

Make sure to keep your breathing steady and controlled as you go about the run. The biggest mistake that often gets made is people are holding their breath so not enough oxygen is coming into the working muscle tissues.

Cut back on leg training

Finally, as you progress with your running routine you’re going to want to ensure that you cut back on the amount of leg training that you do. Leg training is definitely going to hinder your ability to progress with your running workouts since it’s going to fatigue the leg muscles and could potentially even push you into overtraining.

Ideally you should be doing no more than two leg workouts per week if you are working on improving your running. You may even want to cut it back to just a single workout depending on just how set you are on developing your running abilities.

So keep these points in mind. Finding the right balance between running and weight lifting and making sure that you ease into it will be the key things to focus on if you want to be a better runner.

Cabel McElderry is the director of One-to-1 Fitness in Red Deer. He can be reached at 403-341-4041. Also check out www.personaltrainingreddeer.com for more information.