Most Runners Ignore This Strategy To Build Strength
Hard work does pay off
Nothing kills your running time faster than a hill.
Smack in the middle of breaking your personal best you encounter an enemy. A muscle-sapping, lung-bursting foe, who breaks your rhythm and puts an immense strain on your body. And, makes it hard to run a fast time.
Yes, hills are tough and challenging. But once you can bring yourself to incorporate hill work into your training regimen, you can tap into a source of strength and speed.
If you live in flat terrain, stairs make for a great substitute to hills. A treadmill also offers the same benefits.
Hill work Is A Great Boredom Buster
Let’s be honest. Running can get boring. Familiar routes, fatigue, flat courses, and complacency can lead to mental and physical burnout.
Our bodies adapt to our training regimen quickly. Hills provide a welcome distraction. They can also lead to new fitness gains.
Hill work might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but when you are feeling stuck in a rut, adding uphills and downhills to your routine can help prevent mental and physical burnout from boredom.
Hill Work Helps Build Stamina
Because they increase the intensity and difficulty of a run, hills help create intensity which improves both your aerobic (endurance) and your anaerobic capacity.
Climbing a hill naturally increases heart rate, which improves your endurance, speed, power, running economy, and overall strength.
Running on inclines forces your muscles to work harder with each step; as you grow stronger, your stride becomes more efficient and your speed improves.
But, don’t take my word for it.
A 2017 study confirmed the importance of hill running on runners.
In the study, 32 athletes were divided randomly into a control group and an experimental group. The control group was only given endurance training, while the experimental group was trained on both endurance and two sessions of hill workouts per week for 12 weeks. The experimental group showed significant improvement in their VO2 max, resting heart rate, and speed endurance, while the control group did not.
My Hill Work-outs
I hit the hills once every week.
Over the course of the past month, my workouts have changed to mirror my improvement. The variation has been on the steepness and length of hill repeats. They have grown from short, steep sprints to longer, rolling hill runs.
This increase hits all the physiological bases: speed, strength, efficiency, and endurance.
A Beginner’s Guide To Hill Runs
Day One to Fourteen
Duration: Allow up to 30 minutes.
Challenge Level: Easy
How To: Jog for 10 minutes to warm up, then walk for two minutes. From the bottom of a gentle incline, run up for ten seconds, then walk back to the starting point. Run up again for fifteen seconds, then walk down. Run for 30 seconds, walk down. Shorten your stride and keep your feet low to the ground on the ascents. Feeling strong? Repeat the sequence ten times. Do the workout every seven to 14 days.
Maintain An Even Effort
Duration: Allow up to 30 minutes.
Challenge Level: Medium
Day Fifteen to Thirty
If you are anything like me, you probably try to run too fast uphill. Yet, it’s best to maintain an even effort rather than try to sustain a fast pace.
To get stronger on hill runs, you need to work on locking a sustainable pace.
How To: Find an ascent that takes five to seven minutes to cover. Mimic the effort you’d expend on a flat run, no matter how slow it feels. Listen to your breathing: if it gets noticeably heavier, ease up.
A Word Of Caution Before You Start:
- Add hill work to your routine gradually. Doing too much too soon places you at risk of overuse injury.
- Ensure you get adequate recovery: Spread out your hill workouts to help your body recover. Interchange hill work with flat running and strength training.
- Avoid powering past an injury. Running uphill places a higher amount of force on your body than running on flat ground. Seek professional help to help you avoid overload. Your coach will also provide you with alternate workouts to hill work.
Love them or loathe them, one thing is for certain: hills leave us wobbly at the knees, panting and rethinking our strategy.
But with time, you will find, just like I did, that the benefits of hill runs outweigh the downsides.
See you at the top.
As always, thanks for reading. Keep the comments and corrections coming.
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