A beginner’s guide to Jeffing

By Amy Packham, Content Lead

If you don’t see yourself as a “runner”, Jeffing might be exactly what you need.

Joe recently ‘Jeffed’ the London marathon, meaning he did a combination of running and walking throughout the 26.2 miles. He’s since had hundreds of messages asking for more information about how to get started.

So what does Jeffing actually mean and how did it come about?

It started back in the 1970s by a man called Jeff

Jeff Galloway, a former US Olympian, created what he called the “Run Walk Run” method in 1973 while coaching a group of beginners at his running store in Atlanta.

The goal at the time was to help complete non-runners train for a 5K without getting injured or overwhelmed. And not only did they all finish the race uninjured, many ran faster than expected and avoided injury. “We had a 100% success rate,” he says.

“My whole mission in life is to help people improve the quality of their lives,” Jeff tells us. “My contribution is to take away the bad stuff: the exhaustion, aches and pains, allow people to keep running until they’re 100.”

It’s a Run Walk Run method

Jeffing is the approach of running where you take walking breaks to improve endurance, reduce overwhelm and injury risk.

“The problem with non-stop running is, even if you can do it, it produces fatigue levels that require recovery, and feel exhausted after a hard run,” says Jeff. “You can do those same runs with Run Walk Run and just have fun.”

But the name ‘Jeffing’ originated in the UK

The actual origin of the term came from the UK, Jeff says. There was a social media group that formed around 30 years ago called “Run Mummy Run”.

“They discovered my Run Walk Run method and started calling it jeffing,” he says. “The word spread so much that there was a sub group that took it up, ‘Girls Who Jeff’. Now people all around the world know about it.”

There are different ‘Jeffing’ formulas

But the premise is simple: you alternate between walking and running. In the beginning, Jeff simply used “huffing and puffing” as the guideline. In his first class of 22, he forced them to take walk breaks when anyone in the group was huffing and puffing. “When they started huffing, we walked,” he says.

Now, athletes and elite runners use this method, and so Jeff and his team have collected data of more than half a million runners who have used the methods to help people with a specific Run-Walk-Run formula. Depending on the pace you’re running, this will change your walking intervals. “We used to use 1 minute as the standard walk unit,” says Jeff, “but after our reassessment, we found 30 seconds was much better. When people walk longer than that, they usually start slowing down in the second half of the run.”

It can help you run longer or faster overall

Research has shown that you get faster race times, feel better and recover faster if you insert walk breaks right from the beginning, says Jeff. “You don’t have to run to exhaustion,” he says.

There’s a misconception it’s not ‘real’ running

“Often hardcore runners might say you’ve got to run non-stop,” says Jeff, “But is there a rulebook that says that? I’d like to see it! People determine what’s best for them.”

In fact, says Jeff, the winner of the first ever marathon in 1896 in Athena, Spyridon Louis, walked portions of the race.

There is no mandate to improve with Jeffing, he says, the mandate is just to get out there and enjoy the workout. “There is no doubt that people are going to be less stressed, more productive, have more time and enjoyment of family life if they run and use the method.”

Are you ready to Jeff?