How to use Kaizen

Chances are Kaizen is unlike any other training plan you have used before. In contrast to most training systems, Kaizen is not going to prescribe your training according to specific paces, intensity levels, HR zones or even distances for any individual run.

There is a good reason for this. There are many, many, ways to train effectively and improve your fitness, however it turns out that the specifics of your training are not as important as most people think. What really matters to how you perform on race day is the cumulative effect of all of your training over several weeks, rather than the exact pace/HR/distance of any specific run.

This is great news for non-professional athletes (i.e. you) since you likely have to arrange your training around your life, rather than the other way around. Most of us have other commitments that mean we can’t always train exactly as we want; family, work, and friends sometimes mean we have to adapt our training.

Kaizen accounts for this by giving you the freedom to arrange your training as you wish within each week and takes a more holistic view of fitness than other training plans. That’s the reason Kaizen simply sets the doughnut as a target and won’t prescribe specifics; the precision is both unnecessary and too difficult for most of us to achieve when you have a life to live outside of running.

There are an (almost) infinite range of ways to improve your fitness, so Kaizen can guide and make some suggestions for you, but it won’t dictate exactly how you should train. Instead Kaizen gives you freedom to train in a way that suits you - all you need to focus on is filling the doughnut.