running hills

Running Hills 101

running hills

How do you run a hill? Do you take it slow? Or do you attack it?!?!

  • You should attack the hill!
  •  Feel each step powerful from your mid foot dorsiflex step through your extended glute muscle.
  • A hill creates a natural forward tilt so keep your chest up so you don’t hunch.
  • Now is the time to DRIVE your knees. Elongate your step—but still land with each step under your body.
  • Keep up this stride up as long as you can, bit remember to keep your cadence up. As you near the crest of the hill speed up your cadence.
  •  Accelerate through the crest. There is often a downhill at the top of a crest. Use the downhill to recover—(then as soon as you’ve recovered use it to fly!).
  •  If the crest of the hill is flat STILL accelerate through. You’ll be shocked how quickly you can recover. Go back to your power breaths keep your feet under your body, don’t over-stride, keep the turn over as quick as possible.
  • As soon as those legs feel a little lighter again remember to pick up those knees again. They will feel heavy following a hill, but remember that’s why we trained so we can attack those hills while others walk!
running hills

Kara Goucher says, “‘Chip’ your way up hills….CHP, which stands for chest, hips, push.  That is, when running uphill, keep your chest up (don’t hunch), hips forward, and push it strongly through each foot!”

 


Comments

3 responses to “Running Hills 101”

  1. […] XX – The Intro (Another great hill song!  Maybe a good one for the top of a hill) […]

  2. I like what you’ve done here, great quality post. I hope you will post more soon.

    1. Courtney Julia Avatar
      Courtney Julia

      Thank you for checking it out!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *