I have been lazy.
Really I underestimated the sheer amount of work. Looking back at months of training, a lot of the early wins turned out to be less durable than I thought.
Smile through your marathon
Feel great the next day
- time-basedrunning
- stride-openingyoga
- posture-and-powerkettlebells
- decompressingswimming
Annual injury rates for marathon runners land around 30–60%.
Not because running is bad for us, but because most don't move broadly enough.
The MONS method builds a body that handles marathons with ease
Running
Running economy through form drills and hill sprints. Aerobic capacity, lactate threshold, and VO2 max — planned around the only thing your body actually understands: time under stress.
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Yoga
Range of motion and balance for a frictionless stride. Breath control for the moments running tests it most. Specifically designed for runners’ bodies.
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Kettlebells
Ballistic power. Postural strength. Whole-body coordination. Kettlebells build exactly what running demands, fast and at home.
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Swimming
The perfect counterbalance to running: flushes tired legs, opens the posture running compresses, and trains breath under load.
Learn moreThe three core principles behind it all
Only time at effort builds endurance
Distance and pace are faulty targets that wreck your body.
Your body is a kinetic chain
Trying to spot-target any single piece is a battle you always lose.
Athleticism is a skill anyone can learn
Practice good movement patterns and they become natural.
Real Journey, Real Training
Traditional methods broke me.
I needed something better.
Nico
Founder, MONS Athletics
Ironman 70.3 FinisherFirst Marathon: May 2026
I went from running once a month to running a marathon in 8 months. I was barely holding on, and everything but running stalled.
I needed to become stronger. I had to fix my posture and increase my mobility. Traditional strength training and stretching just didn't cut it.
The answer was kettlebells, yoga and swimming. I had done each separately before, but integrating them into one coherent system was a game changer.
A method I couldn't just keep to myself.
The app does the thinking. You just show up and train.
The app sequences all four disciplines around your race, your life, and your recovery — week by week, on your watch.
Available on iOS · Requires Apple Watch · or read the method, free
Questions
About the method.
Why these four disciplines specifically?
Each one earns its spot on the body's terms. Running is what we evolved to do — that's the work. Kettlebells return us to natural loaded movement, building the power and posture running demands, fast and at home. Yoga is mobility and breath, refined over thousands of years and built for runners' bodies. Swimming adds aerobic volume without impact, the perfect counterbalance to pounding. Together they cover what a marathon body actually needs.
Why kettlebells instead of a barbell or generic strength?
Kettlebells give you ballistic, full-body, asymmetrical loading — the kind of work that translates to a stride. Swings, cleans, get-ups, snatches: explosive hip drive, postural strength, single-side stability. You can do it at home in 30 minutes with one tool. A barbell program doesn't fit a runner's life, and machine-based strength misses the coordination piece.
Why yoga instead of just stretching?
Stretching alone doesn't change tissue or movement quality — it just gives you temporary range. Yoga combines mobility, balance, and breath under tension. The breath training is the part runners underestimate: nasal breathing, controlled exhales, learning to stay calm when your body wants to panic. That's what running tests at mile 20.
Why time-based training instead of pace or distance?
Your body understands stress, not kilometres. Forty-five minutes at easy effort is forty-five minutes whether you ran 7 km or 9 km that day. Time-based training scales naturally with how you feel, removes the temptation to push pace on easy days, and keeps the work honest when terrain or weather change. Pace and distance still matter — they're just the output, not the prescription.
Do I really need all four? Can I just run more?
You can. Most people who do break down before race day. Running alone trains one set of patterns and grinds the same tissues over and over. The other three modalities aren't optional extras — they're what lets you hold the running mileage without breaking. Skip them and you're betting on luck.
I'm a complete beginner — is this for me?
Yes, with the right runway. The method is the method whether you've run a 2:30 or never run a kilometre — easy is still 80% of the work, kettlebells still build the body, yoga still teaches the breath. Beginners just need more weeks to get there. If you don't have a race yet, start with base building and add one when you're ready.