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Tuesday, February 7, 2012

What doesn't kill you makes you stronger


Some people hate them to a lesser degree than others, but I'm not sure I've ever met anyone who likes running up them. However, I have also never met someone who was a good hill runner, but not a good runner, so there must be something to it. Turns out, there is, but many of us don't correctly incorporate hills into our training. In order to fix this, we must first understand what hill running does for us as runners. Similar to how you add more weight when lifting to get stronger (assuming you lift weights... haha), running up a hill increases the force requirements for a given workout (compared to running on level ground). You have to pick your legs up higher, which increases range of motion, leading to a longer stride. Running up hills also necessitates quicker turn-over, the neuromuscular adaptions of which carry over into running on flatter ground.

Similar to interval workouts, not all hill workouts are created equal. In order to work on endurance and strength, run longer hill repeats at a less steep grade to work on recruiting slow and intermediate muscle fibers. To build speed, choose shorter, steeper hills to work on building fast twitch fibers. There are some example hill workouts on page 2 of the article. Also, it's important to note that your legs take more of a beating on hill workouts (compared to interval / tempo workouts on level ground), so you might need more time to recover.

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