Do you feel like you're drowning when you run? Did you ever go out for a walk to try to get some exercise in the summer or to get back into your routine and find yourself so exhausted that you never did it again? It's a common feeling when a person starts to lace up their shoes to try something called running, finding possible relief in a formula accepted by the consensus of experts: walk, run, walk, run, walk, run, walk, run, run… and repeat.
Do you feel like you're drowning when you run? Did you ever go out for a walk to try to get some exercise in the summer or to get back into your routine and find yourself so exhausted that you never did it again? It's a common feeling when a person starts to lace up their shoes to try something called running, finding possible relief in a formula accepted by the consensus of experts: walk, run, walk, run, walk, run, walk, run, run… and repeat.
This is not a grated sports disc but rather the one known as the “CaCo” method (an acronym that comes precisely from walking and running), a combination that must be performed at different intervals and during the same session and is recommended for both beginners and experienced runners in this exercise. You start running gradually, increasing the effort little by little and maintaining a constant evolution.
Created by Jeff Galloway, a former Olympian and one of the most renowned runners in the United States, it is a variation of what was originally called the “Galloway Run Walk Run method.” The athlete himself explains it this way: “Most of us, even without training, can walk several miles before fatigue sets in… Walking is an activity that can be done effectively for hours, but running is more work because you have to lift your body off the ground and then absorb the impact of landing over and over again.”
In this way, the continuous use of muscles while running produces much more fatigue and soreness than maintaining the same pace while taking breaks to walk. “If you walk before your muscles begin to fatigue, you will allow yourself to recover instantly, thus increasing your exercise capacity and reducing the risk of soreness the next day,” concludes the athlete, who has worked with more than 300,000 athletes around the world. world, ages and abilities.
Based on this, there is no specific time limit for using the CaCo method, although its followers are generally guided by a balanced guideline, that is, if you run for one minute, you walk for another, and so on as the time increases. “After several weeks, you can establish something like running for 45 seconds and walking for another 45 seconds.” Or, alternatively, do the fastest part in half a minute.
But when it comes to walking, it is not just a stroll contemplating the landscape and the flight of birds. It must be done “at a good pace (not walking, but really making an effort for the body), involving not only the legs, but also the medial area (which helps us maintain good posture) and the upper body” by the armament)”, because this prepares “the effort that is made with the CaCo”, it is emphasized in Sanitas.
“The first thing we must do is establish a maximum time that we want to achieve in our training: we can start with 20 minutes of exercise three days a week, to increase it when we have gained physical condition,” he adds. Of these twenty minutes of exercise, “we will do some running and others walking.” In jogging, the effort must be moderate: “the speed will be average, with a trot that allows us to speak comfortably, we run.”
Sanitas offers a specific guideline: in the first week, start with one minute of running for every four minutes of walking, repeated five times. “In this way, we reach twenty minutes of exercise in total by combining the two activities. While during the run we make a slightly greater effort, the minutes of walking give us time to recover, return to normal breathing and prepare for the next interval.”
It would be a matter of doing this routine for one or two weeks, depending on the body's reaction, and then moving on to the next level: running for two minutes for every three minutes of walking and repeating it five times. The idea is to increase the minutes of running and decrease the minutes of walking until you can run for those 20 minutes in a row and, “once we have reached this first goal of the path, we can increase the training time to 30 minutes and continue” progressively, “concludes Sanitas.