By Brian Mac, Sports Coach

Hill running has a strengthening effect as well as boosting your athlete’s power and is ideal for those athletes who depend on high running speeds – football, rugby, basketball, cricket players and even runners. To reduce the possibility of injury hill training should be conducted once the athlete has a good solid base of strength and endurance.

What it does for you
In hill running, you are using your body weight as a resistance to push against, so the driving muscles from which your leg power is derived have to work harder. The technique to aim for is a “bouncy” style where you have good knee lift and maximum range of movement in the ankle. You should aim to drive hard, pushing upwards with your toes, flexing your ankle as much as possible, landing on the front part of your foot and then letting your heel come down below the level of the toes as the weight is taken. This stretches the calf muscles upwards and downwards as much as possible and applies resistance which overtime will improve your power and elasticity. You should look straight aheadas you run (not at your feet) and ensure your neck, shoulders and arms are free of tension. Many experts believe that the “bouncy” action is more important than the speed at which you run up the hills.

Hill work results in the calf muscles learning to contract more quickly and thereby generating work at a higher rate, they become more powerful. The calf muscle achieves this by recruiting more muscle fibres, around two or three times as many when compared to running on the flat. The “bouncy” action also improves the power of the quads in the front of the thigh as they provide the high knee lift that is required. For runners, it can mean higher running speeds and shorter foot strike times.

Hill training offers the following benefits:

• • helps develop power and muscle elasticity
• • improves stride frequency and length
• • develops co-ordination, encouraging the proper use of arm action during the driving phase and feet in the support phase
• • develops control and stabilization as well as improved speed (downhill running)
• • promotes strength endurance
• • develops maximum speed and strength (short hills)
• • improves lactate tolerance (mixed hills)

The benefits of short, medium and long hills are quite different, and can be used at different times of the year.

Short hills
A short hill is one which takes no more that 30 seconds to run up and has an inclination between 5 and 15 degrees gradient. Your energy source on short hills is entirely anaerobic. You should focus on a running technique which has vigorous arm drive and high knee lift, with your hips kept high, so that you  are ‘running tall’, not leaning forwards.

The session is anaerobic so the recovery time can be long, a walk back down the hill, or a slow jog of 60 to 90 seconds. The total volume will depend on the fitness of the athlete and the reason for doing it. A distance runner who is trying to improve sprinting speed might do 30 repetitions of 15 seconds duration.

Medium hills
A medium hill is one that takes between 30 to 90 seconds to run up. This is the length of hill is a good distance for the middle-distance runner, because it combines the benefits of the short hills with the stresses on local muscular endurance and tolerance of lactic acid. The energy source is both aerobic and anaerobic and you will experience the build up in blood lactate as you go further up the hill.

Although the session will usually be quite fast and competitive, it is important that style is emphasised. Scuttling up the hill with a short stride and forward lean may be the best way to get up in a race, but in training, we are trying to develop particular qualities. It is better, therefore, to go for a longer stride and higher knee lift: running tall with the hips pushed forwards, keeping the back upright. Again, the volume of the session depends on the individual.

Long hills
A long hill is one which takes from 90 seconds to three minutes plus. Here most of the energy comes from aerobic sources, but if parts of the hill are steep and you are running them hard, there will still be an accumulation of blood lactate. There will be local muscular fatigue in the leg muscles, and possibly in the abdominal muscles too, but the main limiting factor will be your cardiovascular system.

These hills can be used in two ways:

• • as a hard aerobic training session during the pre-competition season
• • as a hard time-trial session in the early part of the competition period

As these hill sessions are aerobic, you will not use as much power per stride as the shorter hills.  They are particularly good for cross country or road runner who is running distances of 10,000m and upwards.

Mixed hill running
The attraction of mixed hill training is that it can be fitted in with the terrain you are running on and can, therefore, be interesting and full of variety. If you do a fartlek session around a hilly course, you will be able to fit in a number of different runs. Two advantages can come from this type of hill training:

• • Race simulation. It is a good principle to rehearse in training the situations you are likely to meet in a race, such as trying to break open a gap by running hard over the top of a hill and keeping the pace going instead of easing up, as many runners do.
• • Downhill running. This is something that often causes jarring and strains. I do not advise doing repeated fast downhill runs, but I would suggest that you practice to find the most relaxed way of running downhill without strain.

Mixed hill running can also be used to improve running economy and boost an athlete’s VO2 max. To do this identify a six or seven mile undulating hilly course, commence the session jogging at a modest pace and gradually pick up the intensity as you move through the hills. The key is not just to run up and down a few hills in your workout but to find a place where you can run up and down hills constantly. The key is not to let the flat ground running total more than 25% of the workout.

During most of the run, your heart rate should be close to 85% of maximum (85% of maximum heart rate matches up with 76% VO2 max). The idea is to run constantly at a hard but not super fast speed. You should not feel like you are racing but as though you are running just slightly slower than lactate threshold, even if the actual pace is even slower than that. A run of six to seven miles in this manner is enough for a great workout.

Downhill Running
Many runners develop muscle soreness after strenuous workouts or races. Research (Muscle function after exercise induced muscle damage and rapid adaptation, Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, vol 24 (5), pp 512-520 19922) has shown that the muscle pain and loss of strength can be minimised if runners undertake regular sessions of eccentric training. For runners this would involve downhill running, since downhills put the muscles in the front of the leg under intense eccentric duress. A single downhill session (6 to 10 downhill runs over 300 metres) on a 300 to 400 metre hill with an inclination of 10 to 15 degrees should provide protection against muscle pain and loss of strength for at least six weeks.

More examples of Hill sessions
With all hill sessions, it is important to warm up before and to cool down after the hill session – easy jog for 5 to 10 minutes followed by stretching exercises. Two sessions a week for six to eight weeks will improve your overall fitness and running speed.