Consider hill training sessions over the next 4 weeks to improve your power, speed and running posture.
On the uphill section of the circuit, you should be focused on maintaining a well balanced, upright running posture. Keep your shoulders lined up directly over your hips. If you make the mistake of leaning too far forward and your center of gravity gets out ahead of your hips, you have to then do a lot more work to carry your body weight up the hill.
Stay balanced! Concentrate on good knee lift and spring off the ground with a good push from your calves. Keep your arms driving straight ahead. Avoid swinging your arms across the center line of your chest as that tends to create a side-to-side swaying motion in your upper body. You’re trying to run straight ahead and not side-to-side, so make sure your arms are leading you in the right direction.
On the downhill leg speed section, be focused on short, quick strides. Again, maintain an upright and well balanced running posture and make sure that your lead foot is hitting the ground directly underneath your hips. If your foot is reaching out ahead of your hips, you are over striding which is not only inefficient from a running economy point of view, it also results in transferring a lot more shock up and down your leg which increases injury risk.
Make sure that the recovery sections between the crest of the uphill and the start of the downhill leg speed segment are done at an easy pace (8:00-10:00 pace for most of you), and again jog lightly from the end of the leg speed segment to the bottom of the hill before starting the next circuit.
Hill training engages your core much more so than running on a flat surface, so those of you with hip, hamstring, lower back and glute issues should avoid these workouts until your injuries are completely rehabbed. Those of you who are otherwise healthy but do not have great core strength will tend to find yourselves struggling to maintain proper running posture during these workouts. If you’re in that category, do more core strength work (planks)!
George Buckheit is the leader and coach of Capital Area Runners. CAR is a DC metropolitan area club that was founded to provide group training opportunities for highly motivated and competitive minded runners of all ability levels.
