Wednesday, July 24, 2013

The Banana Peel

I love running. I do it every chance I get. I run with my personal training clients and with my group classes. I believe its a way to not only improve cardio vascular health, but self-esteem, self worth, and self efficacy as well. That said, many people I meet are intimated by running. Most believe the are too slow, too fat, or too unhealthy to run.  My answer to them is this: You don't have to run fast or far. All you have to do is run. You. Will. Get. Better.

When I started teaching group fitness classes back in 2008 I was surprised to found out the instructors weren't taking patrons out on runs. I immediately made runs mandatory once a week. We started out with 1-2 mile runs once a week before our weights/ calisthenic training.
As the class grew and people got turned on to running, I began to stretch the runs out a bit longer. We got up to 5-6 milers before a tragedy happened.

 Chelsea King was assaulted and killed while out jogging. (NOT IN MY CLASS)
This (understandably) frightened many of the women in my training group. Since on our runs everyone ran at a different pace, and our runs started at 530 am many of the runners were on their own in the dark for up to 5 minutes at a time. The gym asked me (understandably) to discontinue the am runs. I considered it for a bit, then decided that I wasn't going to let fear rob my clients, or ANYONE  of their right to train wherever and whenever the hell they wanted!

My challenge was to come up with a way to  run a group of clients ranging in age and fitness ability from 50+ year old couch potatoes to 18 year old athletes. I needed to simultaneously challenge the athletes and not leave the health seekers (couch potatoes) behind.

The Banana Peel was born! I'm not sure where the name came from. We just started doing it and one day someone said "Are we gonna do that banana peal thing again today?"

I modified an old Army drill "The Indian Chain" Where by a group of people run in a line. The last person in line will sprint to the front of the line (Usually to relieve the Color Guard) until the next person from the back of the line runs up to relieve him or her.

With the "Banana Peel" everyone can run at their own pace. The fast runners run as fast as they want, the slower runners runs as slow as they need to. Once the fasties get 100 yards or so ahead, they loop back to the last person taking everyone they pass on the way back with them. Everyone loops behind the last person and the run starts again. This way no one gets left behind and everyone has as challenging a run as they can handle.

The thing I didn't anticipate was the morale boost the slower runners get from the encouraging words and high-fives given by the fasties every time they go bag to pick up the slowbies!

Try it. It's kinda RAD!!!

HAPPY TRAINING!!!