Gravity is Your Friend

Simple training is often the best training and there is little simpler then running up a hill or a set of steps.  This kind of "upward"  training can build stamina, strength, improve running form, increase leg-drive, coordination, promote fat loss, and increase mental conditioning.  Running up hills or stairs also reduces impact and will increase lower body strength without having to load your back with heavy weight.

Hills and steps are similar but each method has it's own set of distinct benefits:

Hills:

• Allow for maximum effort.  You don't have to worry about tripping and knocking your teeth out on a step.
• Usually allow for  easier access to a variety of lengths and inclines.
• You can run up backwards to emphasize your quads and improve backwards running ability for sports.

Steps:

• Forces coordination to hit each step.
• Forces quick feet and knees up style running.
• Allows for plyometric (jumping) exercises and emphasizing the eccentric (negative) muscle contraction.

Now I'm going to outline some methods of training for specific goals.  Don't get caught up too much in the details.  The reality is that regardless of your goal, running hills or steps with a hard effort will increase stamina, aerobic and anaerobic capacity, strength, power, and coordination.



It should go without saying, but if you have injury concerns consult a medical professional first .  This type of training can be particularly hard on your achilles tendon.  Warm up first.  Warm up varies by individual, but a short run, or a slow run up the hill followed by a some stretching of tight areas and maybe a few calisthenics would be a good idea.

Start slow with this training.  This can be hard on you at first so don't go overboard.  Start with a few times up the hill once a week and build from there.  If you start feeling joint pain stop.

Also, when running up the hill/stairs remember to: breath, lean forward but don't hunch over, keep your arms pumping, and think happy thoughts.  If your trying to increase running speed, hills or steps can be part of the solution, but not a magic bullet.  You need to run on flats to run faster.

Goal:  Stamina/Aerobic Endurance
The basic idea here is either use an interval type setup of hard work and recovery or use a longer duration climb from comfortably a hard to eventually stomach-turning pace.  For intervals, the recovery can be an easy jog or walk down the hill/stairs and can last either a set time (for shorter intervals), as long as you need ( for long intervals), or judge it by heart rate.  For example one of my favorite workouts is sprints up a 1/4 mile hill and I wait until my heart rate falls to about 120 (a little more than 60% of max) before repeating..  Again don't get too caught up in the details.

Hills:

• Find a hill of any incline that takes longer than one minute to run up at full speed and run it.  Repeat as necessary.  On the shorter hills repeat several times and maybe leave a little left in the tank.  This will be like track intervals.  On long ones (20 plus minutes) just run it and try to beat your time every time you run it.  Running the longer hills is more like a tempo/threshold run.
• If you only have shorter hills run them and repeat with a quick recovery.

One of my favorite workouts is running up this stretch of road.  It's a quarter mile long and reaches a grade of 20% near the top.

Steps:

• If you have a super long staircase available like up the side of a mountain or up a tall building run it and repeat.  You should probably leave a little left in the tank so you don't trip and knock your teeth out.
• If you have a stadium or bleachers run either intervals of at least two minutes and a recovery of equal or lesser time, or keep going as long as you can run up and down safely.
• Feel free to run two steps at a time or incorporate plyometrics in the middle of your run (demonstrated below).

Goal:  Lower Body Strength/Power
The idea here should be speed, short intervals (<30 seconds), and complete recoveries.  Fast twitch fibers (type IIb) and medium twitch (type IIa) are what we're trying to stimulate here.

Hills:

• Find a short steep hill and run it with maximum effort.  Take as long as you need to recover and repeat until you begin to slow down.
• If you're more interested in strength endurance (type IIa fibers), you can use a little longer hill (<60 seconds), or a slightly shorter recovery.  Again with max effort and when you start to slow significantly terminate the workout.

 

Steps:

• Fast, fast, fast, feet.  Sprint a staircase for under 30 seconds.  One step at a time will place more emphasis on the quads, two or more steps will put more emphasis on the glutes, hams, and hip flexors.
• For further strength development on the way down the stairs, slowly lower yourself one leg at a time to each step.  This should be slow and controlled.  You shouldn't be able to hear the step doing this.
• Plyometrics for power.  These should be brief efforts for max power.  On the max effort jumps demonstrated below do one to five reps.  On the quicker jumps the set shouldn't last very long, ideally under ten seconds.  If your looking for power endurance you can extend the sets.  
• The setting below is not ideal, I prefer wooden bleacher steps as they have a softer landing and are usually a little wider making deceleration easier.  My white boy jumping ability had me grabbing the hand rails upon landing.

Goal:  Fat Loss
It depends.  If your really fat, I'm talking morbidly obese or just really really out of shape, you'd be best served to walk briskly for long durations (30+ minutes) up and down stairs or over a long climb.  This will save your joints and start conditioning your body.

If your just a few pounds over weight or have recently been involved in athletics, use the strength training protocol (probably minus the plyometrics).  Muscle is active tissue so it burns fat.  If your able to do the strength training without issue you can progress to other forms of hill training.

So there it is.  Keep it simple and don't sweat the details.  Hills and steps have been a favorite method of athletes and coaches for a long time.  Check out NFL greats Walter Payton and Jerry Rice running hills in the Youtube clips below.

Have fun and keep training.