Hill Training. You either love it or you hate it, but everyone knows that hill training is one of the best ways to improve your endurance. Perfecting uphill stamina and preparing your legs for downhill impact can dramatically improve not only your ultramarathon time but also your comfort while running.
Used effectively, hill training is a high-efficiency power workout for runners, building lower-body strength and sharpening running mechanics. Some studies even suggest hill training helps prevent injury compared to flat-ground speed work.
Flat ground speed workouts like interval and tempo training subject your joints to intense repetition, which can quickly damage muscles. Hill training alongside these workouts can provide the same aerobic and muscular stimulus at a slower pace, reducing impact on your knees, hips, and spine.
Unintentional resistance training
Put simply, hill training forces your muscles to work against gravity, making it a form of resistance training that targets your entire lower body and posterior chain. The inclined angle forces your hips to extend, activating and strengthening your glutes and hamstrings. These same angles force your calves and quads to work harder against gravity, while your plantar fascia and Achilles tendons strengthen, improving stability and power.
Speed and Power training
Typically, when you run endurance on flat ground at an easy pace, your fast-twitch muscle fibres are underutilised; therefore, training your nervous system to fire these fibres rapidly helps develop neuromuscular power. Slow-twitch fibres are your endurance cornerstones, slow to tire. When you train both your fast- and slow-twitch fibres, you will naturally have a better balance of power within each stride.
Running form correction
Hills are a great way to force your body into better posture and stride mechanics. An incline step strengthens your hip flexors, encouraging shorter, quicker strides, discouraging overstriding, and forcing you to land on the ball of your foot rather than strike with a heavy heel.
Enhances Cardiovascular Fitness
You’ve probably felt it before, but your heart rate spikes quickly when on an incline as your cardiovascular system works intensely to supply oxygen to your muscles. This makes it a time-efficient way to expand your aerobic capacity, lower your resting heart rate, and boost your VO2 max.
Different types of hill training
Now, you can find a hill and run up and down it as many times as you want, and you will see improvement; however, like going to the gym with no plan, you may not see results as quickly as you’d like. Therefore, there are different styles of hill training that can benefit your specific goal.
Classic short hill sprints
Find a hill with a 5% to 10% incline. Your aim to run for 5 to 30 seconds at near maximum power, with a slow jog or walk back down to the start. Aim to repeat this six to twelve times. This is great for neuromuscular power, leg turnover and fast-twitch muscle building.
Hill Repeats
Find a hill with a 4% to 7% incline. A shallower incline helps protect the quads during longer efforts going uphill. Aim to run for 30 seconds to three minutes at a 6-8 RPE or a fair 5km or 10km pace before jogging back down to repeat. Don’t go out too fast as two minutes uphill can humble you quickly. This works best with fewer repetitions, so 6 to 8 repeats should help. This form of hill running helps boost VO2 max, lactate threshold, and stamina.
Mile Stretch
Find a hill that stretches around a mile, with a gentle incline (3-5%); this could also have a rolling aspect or sections that flatten out. Aim to run one gear above your easy pace, where your breathing is heavier and you can’t hold a conversation, but you’re not going full out. You can repeat this one or two more times; however, doing this repeatedly can affect your strength and stamina. Prioritise quality training over quantity.
Not everyone is blessed with hills around us, so many of us have to battle hill training on a treadmill. Don’t overlook this, as you can get the same benefits from treadmill training. Max Joliffe and Elsey Davis are both recognised athletes who have found great benefit from treadmill training.
Stair climbing: another level of training
Another form of hill training, stair climbers are the unsung heroes of ultrarunning. Used as one of the most effective forms of cross-training, incorporating stair climbing into your training builds the same explosive lower-body strength as hill training.
You may find you sweat a lot during hill training, especially stair climbing. Lifting your bodyweight step by step acts like a continuous resisted squat or lunge, raising your metabolic rate and internal temperature. Even at a slow pace, the stair climber keeps your heart rate elevated and demands more energy than flat-surface running. Getting your body used to a high heart rate can delay the point at which lactic acid builds up in your blood, helping you sustain a faster pace longer.
What goes up must come down
Running downhill presents its own challenges, which can make it harder to maintain pace. Many runners fear falling, and ongoing knee and ankle injuries can make them nervous when approaching a downhill section.
Managing gravity, keeping your centre of gravity balanced and avoiding harsh braking are all great places to start when going downhill. Lean slightly forward from your ankles instead of backwards. Leaning backwards acts like a brake and increases the impact on your knees. Keep your steps short, quick, and fast (high cadence) rather than taking long, bounding strides so you are less likely to fall. Your arms will naturally move out to help with balance but tensing your core can help further.
Finally, look slightly ahead of you on the trail rather than down at your feet to anticipate rocks, roots or changes in the terrain.
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