10% rule - what exactly is it?

Hi,

 Please can somebody explain to me so that i can slowly get this imprinted on my brain!

 Is it no more than 10% on mileage per week or per each time you go out and run in the course of a week?

 Thank you

S

Thank you.

 So for e.g if i'm currenlty running 3 x 3 miles per week then next week it will be 3 x 3.3 miles and so on....?

 Does it also apply if i want to add in an extra day e.g. 4 times rather than 3 - would i have to factor in what i currently run on a weekly basis - 9miles and include the 4th run into this? e.g. 3 x 3 = 6 and 2 x 1.5?

Yep, I think it means don't increase your weekly mileage by more than 10% at a time and also don't increase then length of your long run by more than 10% at a time.

So if you are currently doing 3 x 3miles = 9 miles this week then you you wouldn't want do more than 10 miles in total next week. If you want to do 4 runs you could do 3 + 3 + 2 + 2.

Brilliant - thank you. 

So if one week i decided i wanted to do 3 runs but the same mileage - i could do 3 x 3 but then if i wanted to do a 4th run i could do 3+3+2+2?  THen of course increase only by 10 percent the following week and so on?

 I just don't want to prevent injuries because for some reason as soon as i get to build up to 4 miles i seem to get a knee niggle or achilles issues and it puts me back to square one - and looking back i think i just try to go too fast or increase mileage just too quickly.

Yes, you could do:-

3+3+3
3+3+2+2
3+3+3+2
2+2+3+1 (back-ff/recovery week)
3+3+3+3
3+4+3+3

etc etc.

It's a bloody silly "rule" cooked up by someone looking for a catchy headline.

It's supposed to be a conservative method of increasing mileage. But if you are running 20 miles a week and increase by 10% a week, you would have nearly doubled it in 8 weeks and nearly trebled it in 12.  That's not even allowing for the fact that if you introduce quality it's a good idea to reduce mileage to maintain overall training load.

If I were you I'd increase mileage and then hold it for a further 3 weeks to see if you're handling it before implementing any further changes.

load can be distance, frequency or intensity

Increasing any of those too much, or too rapidly can lead to injury

or summat like dat

Hi All,

 Thanks for all posts.  I will increase slowly and will stay at a level for a few weeks before progressing again.

 Good to have this cleared up as it's been taxing my little brain