You Should Be Running Hills and Here's Why!

what's up runners coach holly here today we're talking about why hills are so important to your training yes they suck in the beginning and yes they are so hard to run up sometimes but physically and mentally they are absolutely vital to your training they're gonna make you better and i will explain why today let's jump in now i want to set the scene for these hills by discussing different types of power we use when we run positive power we get from when we push off on the ground the foot pushes off the hard surface propels us forward that is considered our positive power negative power would be what we have to do with our body weight to break or control when we're coming on a downhill so think how you control that speed with the gravity how you negotiate that so that you're not just full on sprint down the hill with no control whatsoever the third one is called free power is kind of how i like to describe it we basically get energy returned from running well the more we can push our hips forward use that pulling motion we've talked about in several videos the more our body can last longer and the springier we can be off the ground it kind of finds that midway between the positive and negative power what hills do is they force us to increase our positive power by taking the negative the breaking the controlled landing of downhill out of the picture now we're going up an incline and we have to focus solely on pushing off consider this your strength training for running so speaking of strength training when you're in the gym and you're doing your workouts week to week you know you're getting stronger but maybe you don't understand why basically what happens when you do a strength workout is you are breaking down your muscle fibers so that when you go home you recover you rebuild you come back a little bit stronger than you were before over time the more you do the stronger you get break down rebuild stronger breakdown rebuild stronger the more resistance or challenge you put your body through the more it will break down the stronger it will rebuild that's on a very very very basic level now the same thing can happen when we use hills what happens when we do an incline run is we take that energy return completely out of the equation we're no longer being helped by gravity we can barely be held by that energy return we get on a flat with good run form i talked about what's happening is we're focused solely on the push off that pushing off that incline ground consider that extra resistance which is basically the same as if you were to squat 100 pounds one week and then go up to 115 you know in a couple weeks from there you're adding weight adding resistance for your body to deal with and manage against that's what's happening when you run hills so we like to think of these things as your strength training as a runner hills are also incredible at improving our cadence or raising our cadence if you've never heard of this term before all it is is the number of steps you take in a minute when you run this indicates how long you're landing on the ground so the lower my cadence is the less steps i'm taking per minute which means the longer i'm landing on the ground per step that means more impact on the body maybe more impact on the joints that knee pain ankles whatever gets wonky the higher the cadence the more my body has to force that good position keep my hips forward and lightly pick my feet up off the ground nice and snappy when we add hills to this mix what we can do is challenge ourselves to keep the same cadence we run on a flat while we're going up a hill repeat so you're not running up this hill for a long time necessarily depending on the hill workout but you are working on your form the whole time cadence is a good number to use as reference so let's talk about what that run form looks like if i'm going to keep a higher cadence now if i go out the door and i'm not thinking about my foot strike at all whatsoever eventually i may find myself in a little bit of a marathon shuffle i like to call it i'm just landing i'm not thinking about it right foot left foot that's pretty much the extent of my thought process if i take my headphones out i can hear myself landing usually there's that scuffing sound just like that and eventually maybe i'll get a little tweaked knee or my ankle starts to get sore or over time you know i'm just not feeling good if i'm constantly running in that shuffle i'm barely picking my feet up off the ground if i take that to a hill here's what happens i go to this incline take my same marathon shuffle up still landing the same way but now because i have a resistance from that incline i am forced to put my hips back in order to compensate i take the same marathon shuffle i'm going up the hill hips are back dropped behind me what takes over my low back all of a sudden i'm going up that hill and suddenly my back is screaming even after a few minutes going up low back does everything for me that is no way sustainable that's not going to work when we do these hill workouts so what you're going to do to reverse that is push the hips forward to get the hamstrings engaged so if you turn to the side here with me what you want to do is find a figure four motion up the leg this is going to be between a high knee and a butt kick kind of just that right between motion we just go right up the leg draws it up in order to do this repeatedly i have to keep the hips tucked if i drop them behind i'll notice the hamstring really isn't working back still feels flared up it's really not doing anything if i want to practice this little pulling motion in place exaggerated once i feel that i can make it smaller which is how i'm actually going to run so when i go up that hill i will take that pulling motion with me what happens my hips are staying forward i can keep my eyes higher on the horizon line overall i'm much better off from a longevity perspective to get up this hill on top of that i will be able to hold that higher cadence from maybe what it would be on a flat run i could hold it up a short hill interval with my hips forward using the hamstrings and glutes if i'm back like this and i'm shuffling up the hill much much much harder to keep that cadence up because really the efficiency of the run form is not working for you my challenge to you is to see if you can hold the same cadence you have on a flat on that hill especially in those hill repeat workouts you could be running uphill anywhere from 30 seconds to 2 minutes see if you can hold on to that by using good strong run form reason number three that we love hills they are relatively low impact especially compared to other workouts we've all been on those downhills before where gravity is kind of just yanking us along we're hoping not to roll an ankle or tweak our knee on an uphill you are in charge of your power output your force production if you don't put that effort in you simply can't run up that hill you are brought down to a walk like i mentioned before if you don't push those hips forward to engage the glutes and hamstrings your low back takes over almost immediately and you feel that soon enough to avoid injury compare that to a track workout or a flat interval maybe sprint workout on those types of workouts you can go a lot longer before realizing there's a problem so you might not notice a hamstring or an achilles flare up as easily on the flats and it might show up later whereas on the hills you're kind of forced into that better position right away the other plus here is that the hills are going to get your heart rate up just as high as a sprint workout would but again overall lower impact what kind of trail or ultra marathon runner would i be if i didn't talk about vert or vertical gain if you haven't heard people talk about vert before they are just talking about how many feet they climbed in a run total we've heard people say oh i peered my half marathon i pr'ed my marathon we know that they mean they ran their fastest half marathon their fastest marathon but when people talk about elevation gain or how many feet they climbed in a total run they're talking about how much incline they ran up when you start getting into these hill workouts you're gonna see it really takes grit mentally and physically to push against a constant resistance nothing lets up on a hill it is you against youth up the whole way there is no part of just coasting it really really is up to your power output i love hills for that i really think it makes us stronger on the flats all of the stuff i talked about the cadence the form everything else you have to really really apply it on these hills to get the benefit on the flat the next few flat runs you do after some hill workouts get worked in you will feel stronger and probably faster as a runner if you guys are looking for more ways to get that hill work in and understand why it is so freaking important to your training i want you to click right over here coach kirk did a great video on hills i want you guys to check it out i will see you another day

Channel: The Run Experience

Views: 76,547

Keywords: the run experience, running training, distance running tips, how to run faster, beginner running, half marathon, distance running, trail running, 5k

Id: DTJ3uonwx_4

Length: 7min 33sec (453 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 29 2020