Despite being a funny sounding word (teehee), fartlek is a Swedish word, meaning \u2018speed play\u2019. Essentially, a fartlek session is a continuous run with speedier intervals, of no set duration or distance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Swedish running coach G\u00f6sta Holm\u00e9r<\/a> is credited with coming up with the training session idea in the 1930s, for the Swedish cross country running teams, who had been beaten in previous years by their neighbouring countries teams.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s since been widely adopted across the world as a very useful form of interval training, designed to build endurance and speed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yes and no. Interval training is often a strictly planned session, such as 8x800m repeats, usually with a defined recovery in between each one. Fartleks in their raw form are random AND are designed to be incorporated into a continuous run session, with recovery at your base rate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fartlek intervals as part of a continuous training session help to improve your endurance (with the continuous run) and also help to improve your pace (as a result of the higher tempo effort for the actual interval, and usually an increase in foot turnover.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They are useful in all training blocks, whether you\u2019re putting in the base miles, doing race specific training, or simply in a down cycle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s also super important to make sure that you don\u2019t overdo these sessions! Once a week at most, or once every couple of weeks is even better. The bulk of training shouldn\u2019t be speed-work or interval-work, to reduce your injury risk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Also remember, start-slow – you don\u2019t want to be heading out at 5k pace for the easy effort part of the workout, as sustaining that with harder efforts will be a challenge!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ideally a true Fartlek is a random pickup of pace at multiple times during a continuous run, of varying durations. However, runners do quite often want some structure to their training, so it\u2019s common to see more rigid approaches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A well known example of this type of workout comes courtesy of Woldemar Gerschler, who was a German coach in the mid 20th Century. He liked the idea of interval training, so created his workout based on the fartlek style of pace pick-ups, with a continuous run.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Beneficial training for 10k , 5k, 3k and cross country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is another session that is considered to be great training for 5k, 3k, and 1500m runners.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This incorporates hill training which can also be considered as a leg strengthening workout. The key here is to pick hills that aren\u2019t too steep, so that you can run up them multiple times without having to stop to recover.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is a timed fartlek session, with timings in the shape of a pyramid, starting at 4 minute efforts, then 3 minutes, followed by 2 minutes, 1 minute, 2, 3, and finally 4 minute efforts to finish.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What are Fartleks? Despite being a funny sounding word (teehee), fartlek is a Swedish word, meaning \u2018speed play\u2019. Essentially, a fartlek session is a continuous run with speedier intervals, of no set duration or distance. … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/richruns.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/richruns.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/richruns.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/richruns.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/richruns.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/richruns.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/richruns.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/richruns.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/richruns.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/richruns.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Are Fartleks just another form of interval training?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
How do fartlek\u2019s help me?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Benefits of incorporating Fartlek intervals into your training schedule<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
However, there are downsides to fartlek training<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
What types of workout can I do?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Gershcler Fartlek<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Watson Fartlek<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Saltin Fartlek<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Astrand Fartlek
Considered to be beneficial towards 800m training.<\/li>Hill Fartlek<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Pyramid Fartlek<\/h3>\n\n\n\n