Running Hills for Fitness
Running hills can be a key part of running training. These sessions can build strength, build fitness, and focus on technique. Before you begin doing hill repeats, hopefully, you have built a solid run foundation as described in my prior blog ”Running with Purpose”. You need a solid steady state foundation to build up tolerance and strength to be successful running hills and to prevent injury.
Running hills allows you to focus on techniques that improve your running efficiency. Short compact strides and faster cadence help you run more efficiently. Your run cadence, the number of steps you take per minute is a very individual factor. You should try and run 90 or above during these hill sessions. Focus on a shorter stride landing on your midfoot (not your toes). Your foot should land directly under your body. Running hills allows you to focus on forward lean. This forward lean should be from the feet up with the body relatively in line with feet, hips, and shoulders. The forward lean should not be from the midback hunched over in the shoulders. You can focus on a nice, relaxed arm swing.
Running hills allows you to build strength and stamina. Hills are harder. More effort is needed over the given distance. If you run with a watch that monitors pace, you will be slower at any given effort. Do not avoid hills because you want your Strava to show a faster pace. You are missing out.
Assuming you have a good steady state-run foundation, hill running can be implemented in several effective ways. You can incorporate them in your longer runs. Your focus will be on maintaining your desired effort or heart rate as the terrain changes. The focus on technique aspects including forward lean, faster cadence, and midfoot strike helps efficiency. You can do hill repeats as part of a tempo or harder run. Run 4-6x:30 sec up a hill harder with the recovery jogging back to the bottom. These are hard efforts but not all-out sprints. Focus on good form. As you build strength and endurance, these intervals can be longer. Dr. Robert Green of HUB Multisport writes a workout that is one of my favorites.
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1 mile easy warm up
8 x 3 minute hill climb. Jog back down for recovery.
#1 and #2 are steady with good form running solid, good form
#3 and #4 are harder to maintain that form but bigger effort.
#5 and #6 are harder but still holding back
#7 and #8 are the hardest.
1 mile warm down.
****you can substitute 4 x 3 min if your fitness or time does not allow 8.
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I have found this session builds fitness. This session also teaches the runner to understand the progression of effort from steady to hard. You should reach a little farther up the hill with each interval.
Hill sessions should be considered hard or big-effort sessions. These sessions require the appropriate recovery which for me is about 2 days.
Hill running can be an important part of your run training. Use hill running to focus on faster cadence, midfoot strike, and appropriate forward lean. Use hill running to build fitness and strength. After a hard hill session use adequate recovery.