Hill Sprints for Distance Runners

Описание: For more info on this subject check out this blog by Kenya Experience founder, Gavin Smith, at http://www.traininkenya.com/2018/09/2...

In this video Head Coach of the Kenya Experience running camps, Hugo van den Broek, gives a detailed guide to hill sprints for distance runners.

Hill Sprints are exactly as the name suggests; maximal effort runs up an incline. Each run is limited to approx 10 seconds in duration and is followed by a long recovery period (approx 2minutes). Thus allowing you to work at a truly maximal level on each individual sprint. A typical session would therefore comprise of something like 6-8 x 10 seconds Sprint w/2min recoveries.

Hill Sprints are best used on your ‘easy’ or ‘maintenance days’ after a standard endurance run. It is a good idea to schedule hill sprints the day prior to a hard workout in order to prime your muscles. Hill Sprints do not constitute a hard workout in their own right, they are more of an ‘add on’ like you may already use strides. In fact they can be considered as part of a strength and conditioning program as much as part of the running program. Once you make the initial adaptation to the increased muscular effort (and delayed muscular fatigue) you will not find Hill Sprints to be something that leaves you feeling tired the following day. In fact they can actually leave you feeling invigorated the following day. Although they are a maximal effort, each run is short enough, and the recovery long enough to avoid thew accumulation of fatigue.

The benefits of hill sprints for distance runners are numerous and include:

A safe way to practice maximal speed sprinting. The incline of the hill means that less impact is absorbed by the runner.

Strengthening of key muscles and tendons. You can think of Hill Sprints as a weights session where the resistance is the incline of the hill and the technique of the lift is your running action. That makes hill sprints a very running specific form of weight/resistance training. This is an advantage in terms of injury prevention as well as performance enhancement.

Recruitment of muscle fibres. As distance runners the vast majority of our training is sub maximal. As muscle fibres work in cycles we use (and thus train) only a certain percentage of the fibres within our muscles. Thus leaving a portion of our fibres dormant and inactive. These fibres are only called into action during high intensity bouts of exercise such as a sprint finish, or the final few minutes of a competition. At which point the highly trained fibres we use at sub maximal intensities have become exhausted. Therefore we will not be able to call them into action during competition unless we have used these fibres in training. It is no co-incidence that those athletes who are able to sprint at the end of the distance race are those who have practiced sprinting in training. Hill sprints are an easy way to achieve this goal.

Increased Stroke Volume. Maximal effort hill sprints elicit a very rapid heart rate response and teach the heart to pump more blood per single stroke (therefore reducing heart rate at a given intensity)

There are other benefits to hill sprints such as improving ground contact time. Not to be underestimated is also the enjoyment factor. As distance runners we have limited opportunities to take on challenges such as maximal sprinting and you will be surprised how enjoyable this change of emphasis can be. This is something which should not be overlooked when considering an athletes motivation over a prolonged and sustained training period as is necessary for endurance running performance.

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