Yes, it’s an uphill battle when learning to conquer inclines, but it’s doable with these tips.
If you’ve been trying to get stronger, faster, and just fitter overall, but nothing seems to work, then you might want to consider adding more hills to your workouts. Yes, you will certainly feel the burn in your calves, glutes, and hamstrings on your way up and down, but the hard work pays off.
And the proof is in the research, as a study published in the International Journal of Scientific and Research Publications in 2017 demonstrated that 12 weeks of hill running significantly improved VO2 max, resting heart rate, and speed endurance after monitoring 32 athletes.
Hill running provides strength and speedwork in disguise, says Tyler Morey, USATF-certified run coach and founder of North Coast Running. “Your heart rate is going to increase when you’re going up a hill and so if you focus on building that into your training plan consistently, it’s going to increase your physical aerobic capacity,” he explains.
Running intervals on a track or flat stretch of road is one way to up your aerobic capacity, but if you’re tired of doing the same old workouts, hill repeats are good alternative. That’s especially true considering a study published in the Frontiers in Physiology shows adding hills to high-intensity interval training sessions can help increase the amount of time you spend exercising at or above your VO2 max—a key training tactic if you want to improve this metric.
All of this sounds great, but it doesn’t make running hills any easier. This is why we tapped two run coaches to share their best tips on how to make hill running more enjoyable, so you can reap the benefits of regularly adding inclines to your schedule.
Focus on Your Efforts, Not Your Pace
If running hills feels daunting, the best way to make hill running easier is to focus on your effort rather than your pace, heart rate, or any other metric you may be accustomed to tracking on the run. That’s because pace can drastically change, says Seth Funderburg, UESCA-certified run coach and head coach and owner of Run BMT.
To do this, tune into how you feel and monitor your efforts on a rate of perceived exertion scale, where 1 is a really easy effort and 10 is an all-out effort. Keep in mind RPE is relative to the person, so you may find your 5K, 10K, half, and full marathon efforts don’t exactly align with your running buddies. This is why it’s best to define what these paces feel like for you. Here’s a guideline to get you started:
- Half marathon or longer effort = 6 or 7 out of 10
- 10K effort = 7 or 8 out of 10
- 5K effort = 8 or 9 out of 10
Of course, as you’re tackling the hill you can expect your heart and breathing rate to increase and your pace to slow, depending on how steep the hill is and if it’s warmer outside. But by honoring this strategy, especially on race day, you can maintain and conserve your energy regardless of when you approach the hill, Funderburg explains.
You should also stick to this strategy when running downhill.
Keep a Positive Mindset
Another way to shift your focus away from pace: Repeat positive mantras, says Morey. Because you can expect to run slower uphill, repeating phrases like “I can do this” or “get over the hill” can help you take your mind off of how fast you’re going. Morey’s personal favorite mantra is “take the hill.”
“I am a big believer in the power of positivity as it relates to both life and running,” Morey adds. “Reminding yourself that you are running to reach a goal or that you are doing this ‘for fun’ can help you push through the tougher, more painful parts of running.”
Also, don’t forget words have power, so remember to talk nicely to yourself as you run up the hill. Research shows motivational self talk, imagery, and goal-setting are a few strategies that can help boost athletic endurance—and can get you through tough hill runs.
Improve Your Form
“When you approach a hill, you want to focus on shortening your stride. Leaning forward into the hill and driving your knees and your arms,” says Morey. This will force you to land on your midfoot and increase your leg turnover and cadence, so you’re ready to push off on that next stride, he explains.
Even when running downhill, form is key. “You want to make sure that you’re not overstriding, which is easy to do because of gravity pulling you down,” says Morey. You can maintain control of your momentum as you run downhill by not leaning forward as much, shortening your stride, and also increasing your cadence, he explains.
In addition to making these slight changes, Morey recommends practicing form drills, like A skips, B skips, butt kicks, bounding, high knees, and four to six strides the day before any hard workout, like hill repeats. These exercises can also serve as a part of your warmup. These drills will prepare your running muscles to get moving preworkout, and help you become a better climber and runner overall, he says.
Run Hills More Often
If you want to get better at any particular thing, you have to practice it often, and the same rule applies to hill running. To get better at hills, both Funderburg and Morey recommend running hills at least once a week, or every other week, depending on the structure of your training. The key is to slowly introduce the stimulus to your routine.
“I think the idea of hills could also be simplified in the way that it doesn’t have to be this monumental hill,” says Funderburg. You can start with a small hill and that will be enough to help you improve your form, power, and proprioception, he explains.
The first six weeks of a race build, when you’re working on building strength is a great time to start introducing hills, says Morey. He recommends tacking hill strides to the end of an easy or recovery run or even a long run. Simply run up a hill for 30 seconds, six to eight times at a 5K effort, and jog back down in between intervals. This will prepare you for bigger aerobic workouts and anaerobic workouts to come in future, he explains.
If you’re preparing for a hilly race, then progress your efforts to full hill workouts around the second block of your training. Schedule these workouts in place of track sessions, tempo runs, or speed intervals, says Funderburg. Just be mindful not to schedule hard workouts back to back; for example, you don’t want to complete a hill workout the day after or before a long run.
