If you have wished you could be a runner but have gotten overwhelmed everytime you tried to take it up, you will benefit from these painless methods of building up to running. It’s common for new runners to push themselves too hard in initial workouts, which makes them give up because they feel so miserable. The least painful way to go from walking to running is to walk, then run, and then walk, and then run, slowly increasing how much you run versus walk. It’ll take time and perseverance, but eventually you’ll get there.

Try the stopwatch method of working from walking to running. A stopwatch is inexpensive and incredibly helpful. When working out, start out by walking to warm up. Then pick up the pace, going into an easy run and jogging along until you feel like it’s getting too hard to be pleasurable. Pay attention to how long you were able to run while feeling comfortable. Thirty seconds? Now use your stopwatch to walk for double the time you ran. Take turns running and walking like this, making sure you walk twice as long as you ran. As you progress through workouts, you’ll want to reduce the amount of time you spend walking such that you walk an equal amount of time as you run, and then half the time you run, and eventually cut walking out altogether.

Use a heart rate monitor to become a runner. A heart rate monitor is one of the best tools for easing your way into running. Determine what your fat burning heart rate zone is, and then start out walking. After you warm up, switch into running, keeping an eye on your heart rate monitor to determine what level of exertion puts you into the upper end of your fat burning range. Once you hit heart rate numbers in the upper part of your range, slow down and walk for a while, just until your heart rate reaches the bottom of your fat burning zone. Keep running and walking, always keeping within your fat burning heart rate zone, so you’ll have an exercise session that is challenging but not too hard. Keep this up until you can run but stay inside your fat burning heart rate zone for an entire thirty minutes without walking.

Both of these training methods are slow but steady ways to become a runner.