40 minutes is the right length for a jog

If you’re new to running that’s a lot You’ve probably wondered what the right duration for a jog is. And if you have asked yourself, it is very likely that you have given yourself an answer in terms of distance. 5 km, 10 km, 21 km, the marathon. Also because most likely you’ve already ended up in some social group, forum or have contacts on Strava where everyone shares their performance in terms of distance and speed.
But if you’ve just started running, you make little, very little of distance and speed. Indeed, chasing distance and speed can be very counterproductive and generate frustration. Because first it is important to find the benefits of running, to make it a pleasant and fun habit, a daily (or almost…) wellness routine. And then, once you’ve built up a good state of form, if anything, think about performance.

40 minutes is the right length for a jog

So here’s why it is better to think in terms of time. Time available and overall running time. And so you will see that 40 minutes is the right duration for a jog.
Without bringing up the high school kinematics exercises on space, time, and speed, it’s pretty intuitive that reasoning in terms of distance to determine how long something should last is entirely subjective. A real, trained runner who finishes a 3 and a half hour marathon could run 10 km in 40 minutes more or less. While a novice beginner could take even 1 hour and 20 minutes, and with great suffering.

Expectations vs reality

But then there are the real data, the objective ones. The vast majority of people who run also have other – much more – to do in life. Working, sleeping, taking care of the children, the house, the shopping, seeing friends, going to the cinema, enjoying an aperitif or a pizza… And the days are 24 hours long, there’s little to discuss about this.

Now reasonably in terms of expectations vs reality, how much time can you set aside a day – and not even every day probably – to run? 1 hour? In the morning in the summer, when it’s cool, in the evening in the winter, when you’ve finished work, and the lucky ones during your lunch break?

40 minutes of running is the right time

Seeing then that time is given and cannot be expanded, 40′ of running is the right time from every point of view.

They’re the perfect time to get changed, get active a bit, with a micro warm-up or a few minutes of brisk walking to prepare the body for the real run, really run and then take a shower. Then having time to do the rest of the day’s tasks.

If you are new to running, that’s enough to start doing something like a real workout. You probably won’t do all of these 40 minutes running, you’ll probably do some of them walking, but that’s exactly how you start running: being around active for a longer, slightly longer time than you can actually run. If you don’t believe us, also read our running training program for beginners.

If you have decided to run to lose some weight, 40′ are enough to activate all the metabolic mechanisms that allow you to burn fat too much and start losing weight. Not suddenly, not in 1 week, but with a little perseverance the results will be seen in a short time. To learn more, you can also read how to calculate time and distances to run to lose weight.

Again if you are new to running, 40′ of time is enough but not too much; that is, not enough running that the next day, or 48 hours later, you can’t do another workout. Yes, there will be some DOMS, but they are good pains that don’t prevent you from giving continuity to your commitment, as we explained in this article.

If you already consider yourself a runner, like you run 10km easily, and you want to improve your performance, 40′ of time is enough to do some quality work even in the middle of the week, waiting to do something longer and more demanding on the weekend. For example 40′ of fartlek can be a fantastic workout to improve speed and also distance of your best performances.

40 ‘of running does not allow excuses: even when time is short, the day’s commitments are many, tiredness at the end of the day after 8 hours of work makes itself felt, you have to get up a little earlier than usual, and motivation tends to weaken, 40′ is a time reassuring to say “yes, I can do it today too”.

40′ are also enough to say that yes, we did our training today toowithout regrets or without that feeling of not having done enough.

Conclusions

In short, for many practical, physiological and even psychological reasons, if you are wondering how much time you should dedicate to running and what is the right duration for a run, an effective answer for training, getting back in shape, avoiding excuses and feeling satisfied with your commitment is 40 minutes. Try and let us know.

Photo by Ivan Andriavani on Unsplash

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