Episode 57: The Complete Guide to Hill Workouts

The Strength Running Podcast

Jason Fitzgerald

Health & Fitness, 10k, Beginnerrunning, Marathontraining, Fitness, Injuryprevention, Marathon, Halfmarathon, Running, Sports

4.8 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 26 April 2018

⏱️ 15 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Running uphill (against gravity) stresses your body in a unique way that you can’t mimic on flat land.

That stress results in some fantastic adaptations and benefits:

There’s less impact running uphill so it’s easier on your joints and connective tissues
Hills “force” you to run with better form, reinforcing a more efficient stride
Running up steep grades builds power more safely than running fast on flat terrain
Hills provide the most specific strength work runners could ask for
Hill workouts build strength, speed, endurance, VO2 Max, and every other metric runners care about!

While hill sessions aren’t too race-specific (unless you’re training for an entirely uphill race), they have a valuable place in any training program.

This episode discusses these benefits, when hills should be incorporated into your season, my 3 favorite types of hill workouts, and the type of runner who will benefit most from hills.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Ready, set, go.
0:04.8	This is episode 57 where we're going to discover how to run Hill workouts, their benefits,
0:10.3	and which runners will benefit from them. Buckle up. Hey everyone welcome back to the podcast this is going to be a fairly short
0:28.9	episode today because I'm not interviewing anyone but I do want to drill down on one specific topic
0:36.8	that I think is going to be beneficial for everyone.
0:39.8	And that is Hills.
0:42.1	Hill Workouts, I think, are the unsung hero. is And throughout my own running career, hills have been used strategically in many types of workouts.
0:55.2	In high school, we ran hill repetitions and different types of circuits,
0:59.5	and sometimes we ran the before or after other types of fast work which is just cruel and
1:05.2	diabolical and in college you know we ran similar workouts but we added long
1:10.2	repetitions and reps with cruise recoveries so in other words even the recovery was run at a
1:16.4	quicker pace and those were really hard and then tellingly we ran Hillouts during every single season during summer base training, cross-country, indoor track, and the spring outdoor track season.
1:29.0	If the goal race was 10,000 meters or 800 meters, hill workouts were on the schedule.
1:36.0	Now this shouldn't be too surprising.
1:37.8	The Great American Marathoner Frank Shorter once famously said,
1:41.5	hills are speed work in disguise.
1:44.2	But I think my favorite sentiment about hills
1:46.8	comes from this anonymous quote.
1:49.6	Most of us try to avoid hills,
1:51.6	but what's so good about that?
1:53.2	Think about it.
1:54.0	Flat tires, flat hair, flat returns,
	...

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