Running Essentials: Hill Rep Training
Hills, hills, hills. Daunting, scary, make you breathe really hard, feel like they’re going on forever... essential to successful running...?
For a lot of people, hills are a source of dread. We will seek out flat routes and shy away from those inclines, but in doing so we are depriving ourselves of an incredibly useful tool for running training and progression. We’re going to take a quick look at the benefits of hill training and provide a couple of simple workouts that anyone can make use of!
Added Bonus! Going up hills gets you access you better views!
But Why?
Whatever stage you’re at in your running journey, hills can be utilised to boost injury resilience, improve form, improve efficiency and increase your power output.
Not everyone’s goal is to perform really well. A lot of us run because we love running and are happy doing what we enjoy, as fast or as slow as our legs will go. However, we all want to be able to do the things we love as often as we want to do them and do those things free of injuries. Hill rep training benefits every runner, from the slowest to the fastest, from the casual to the super serious.
Injury Prevention
Running uphill means that you can put in the same aerobic effort as you would on the flat, but with less impact running through your joints. This makes it a great tool for newer runners who are likely to be more susceptible to injuries like Plantar Fasciitis, Achillies Tendinopathy and Shin Splints. Use the downhills for recovery and run slower but put in those efforts on the uphills.
Improving your running form and efficiency also massively helps with injury prevention and hill training gives you a boost in both of these areas.
Remember you can start off will shallower hills if you’re worried and want to ease into it more slowly!
Getting Started
For newer runners, or runners who are only used to running on the flat, the easiest way to begin to introduce hill training into your runs is to throw in a few 10 second hill sprints during an easy run.
The Workout: 3-6 10 second max effort uphill sprints during an easy run. 60s rest between efforts.
The Benefit: Recruit fast twitch muscle fibres to improve your power output, improve running form and efficiency.
You can also utilise hilly running routes to get the benefits of running up hills during your normal training routine. Hilly long runs are a great way of learning to manage effort as well as using them to improve form and efficiency.
What’s Next?
You’ve been doing hill sprints for a little while and incorporated those hillier runs, what’s the next step? This is where we start to get into more structured workout territory and the fun really begins!
For most runners, we don’t need to consider anything complicated. Below are two bread and butter hill workouts that use can use year round and slot into your training as needed.
Both these workouts can be incorporated into the training for any specific goals. Below we’ll take a look at where these workouts best slot into your training.
Hill Sprints: All year, during any phase of training
Short Hill Reps: During 5k and 10k training, during the early phase of half marathon and marathon training while you’re still working on speed.
Long Hill Reps: During base training or while you’ve not got any specific goals as they’ll keep the fitness ticking over without too much intensity, during the mid stage of half marathon training and the mid-late stage of marathon training.
There we have it! Getting started with hill reps is dead easy and you can start reaping the benefits sooner than you think! There’s never a perfect time to get started, so why not start to build some hill training into your routine over the next couple of weeks so you won’t need to wait as long to see the gains.
Anytime you’re changing the volume or intensity of your training, remember to do so gradually and carefully. Start with the lower rep number suggested for the workouts and build yourself up from there. Give your body time to adjust to new stimulus and, above all, be patient and kind with yourself.
Train safe!
Jess
