Full Text
:
Hill Running
Hill running has a strengthening effect as well as boosting your athlete's power and is ideal for those athletes who depend on high running speeds - football, rugby, basketball, cricket players and even runners. To reduce the possibility of injury hill training should be conducted once the athlete has a good solid base of strength and endurance.
Short Hills
A short hill is one which takes no more that 30 seconds to run up and has an inclination between 5 and 15 degrees gradient. The athlete's energy source on short hills is entirely anaerobic. The athlete should focus on a running technique which has vigorous arm drive and high knee lift, with the hips kept high, so that they are 'running tall', not leaning forwards.
The session is anaerobic so the recovery time can be long, a walk back down the hill, or a slow jog of 60 to 90 seconds. The total volume will depend on the fitness of the athlete and the reason for doing it. A sprinter looking for strength might do 10 repetitions of 15 second duration up a steep slope with a long recovery where as a distance runner who is trying to improve sprinting speed might do 30 repetitions of 15 seconds duration.
Medium Hills
A medium hill is one that takes between 30 to 90 seconds to run up. This is the length of hill is a good distance for the middle-distance runner, because it combines the benefits of the short hills with the stresses on local muscular endurance and tolerance of lactic acid. Use a hill as steep of one in six to one in ten, so that you can run at something near race pace. The energy source is both aerobic and anaerobic and the athlete will experience the build up in blood lactate as they go further up the hill.
Although the session will usually be quite fast and competitive, it is important that style is emphasised. Scuttling up the hill with a short stride and forward lean may be the best way to get up in a race, but in training, we are trying to develop particular qualities. It is better, therefore, to go for a longer stride and higher knee lift: running tall with the hips pushed forwards, keeping the back upright. Again, the volume of the session depends on the individual.
With a group of youngsters, you can do six to eight runs of 45 seconds, followed by some 10 second sprints on a steeper hill. With top class senior runners, you can do 12 to 15 runs of about 70 seconds, so that it is the equivalent of an interval training session on the track. A good practice is to increase the number by one or two each time the session comes around, while trying to run them at about the same pace. The recovery is a slow jog back to the bottom, and when the times start falling much below those of the first few runs, it is time to stop.
Long hills
A long hill is one which takes from 90 seconds to three minutes plus. Here most of the energy comes from aerobic sources, but if parts of the hill are steep and they are running them hard, there will still be an accumulation of blood lactate. There will be local muscular fatigue in the leg muscles, and possibly in the abdominal muscles too, but the main limiting factor will be the athlete's cardiovascular system.
These hills can be used in two ways:
1) as a hard aerobic training session during the pre-competition season
2) as a hard time-trial session in the early part of the competition period
As these hill sessions are aerobic, the athlete will not use as much power per stride as the shorter hills, and so perhaps would not be used by middle-distance runners, except for one or two time-trial runs. They are particularly good for the cross country or road runner who is running distances of 10,000m and upwards. A session of, say eight three minutes, with a run back of four or five minutes will make a good hard workout.
Mixed hill running
The attraction of mixed hill training is that it can be fitted in with the terrain the athlete is running on and can, therefore, be interesting and full of variety. If they do a fartlek session round a hilly course, they will be able to fit in a number of different runs.
|
