Beep Training - The Inspiration

We enjoy running and always have. But we had never ran like this...

We created Beep Training for ourselves. We have always loved running but a few years ago, we had become stale; running had become a slog. We were training for a half-marathon and had slipped into a habit of running 8-10 km per session, every session. We were fit, but we were also bored.

As casual runners who liked to jump on a treadmill a few times a week and enter the occasional race with friends, we had never thought too deeply about running. But it was obvious we needed to mix things up. We began running much shorter distances but a little faster, which was immediately rewarding and fun. We still did longer sessions too, but they were now something different and not so much of a chore.

We wanted to maintain the variety and began looking at different ways to run, and soon stumbled across High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT). The basic premise of HIIT is shorter and more intense workouts, so it was consistent with the changes we had already made.

"We created Beep Training for ourselves. We have always loved running but a few years ago, we had become stale; running had become a slog."

We were sold on the idea of HIIT but could not find workouts that we really enjoyed (and there is a lot to try), so we created our own by adapting something we had done years ago at school – the multi-stage shuttle run test. The test involves running 20-metre ‘shuttles’ continuously, and running them faster and faster as the test progresses. Eventually, the participant is working as hard as they can and ultimately, they must stop. And that is the end of the test (it is not a test that you complete; a friend once described it as sadistic!).

It was obvious to us that with some adaptation this test, developed in the 1980s to assess fitness levels in school children, could become a challenging way to run and train.

As we experimented with the concept; creating and rejecting different workouts, the app evolved to what it is now; a collection of workouts based on the concept of running repeated shuttles but with lots of added flexibility to accommodate different abilities and fitness levels. Unlike the test, it is not a one-size-fits-all approach and hopefully not sadistic!

*Note that HIIT is a concept applied to many types of exercise, not just running. Here is quick introduction to HIIT in another blog post.