“Incline is a great tool to use to introduce more variety and different stimuli into your treadmill running routine.“
With freezing rain on top of snow here in Minnesota, and reports of various other rough weather conditions around the country, my mind is occupied with treadmill workouts. Some of my favorites include the use of incline, or in other words, treadmill hills.
There have been many studies on uphill treadmill running, including interventions like this one from Ferley et al. This study showed similar improvements between flat and uphill training protocols to important performance variables related to running economy and lactate threshold. They used a 10% incline and did 10-14 repetitions of 30 seconds in duration for the hill repeats, two times a week for 6 weeks. You can certainly try a similar workout but there’s nothing magical about this specific formulation.
Indeed, you can mix flat intervals and hills or use varying durations and intensities of hills, and get more variety, less repetition, and perhaps better outcomes as a result. You can invent your own, and even shift things on the fly to keep it fun and interesting. For those looking for a starting point, I am providing 3 workouts below for you to try. Note that the speeds listed will feel a lot harder in terms of effort, due to the incline, so I have also noted the intended effort level.
Interval duration: 45 seconds
Rest duration and type: 75 seconds slow jog
Number of reps: 10
Speed: Roughly 3k or 2-mile race pace (should feel like mile race effort)
Incline: 6%
Rationale: 10 of these 2-minute cycles gives you a great, high intensity workout in 20 minutes. The combination of speed and incline will push you to a near maximal effort, stimulating VO2max adaptations.
Interval duration: 5 min
Rest duration and type: 1 min walk
Number of reps: 6
Speed: Easy run pace (should feel like threshold effort)
Incline: 10%
Rationale: The high incline makes this a deceptively hard workout. Whatever speed you normally do your easy treadmill running is a good start, but adjust as needed to find a “moderately hard” or threshold-type effort.
Interval duration: 15 seconds
Rest duration and type: 3 min jog
Number of reps: 12
Speed: As fast as you safely can go (should feel like a sprint!)
Incline: 12+%
Rationale: Uphill sprinting is used by distance runners to improve power, neuromuscular coordination and recruitment, and to improve running economy. This can be effectively done on the treadmill, with some caveats. Be sure to warm up thoroughly, and to do the first couple at a less than maximal effort before proceeding to a full sprint. You can also do a small number of these at the end of a run or other workout.
As I said, these workouts are just ideas, and you should feel free to adapt and adjust them. Not only is every runner different, but also treadmills differ in their calibration, as well as their ranges for speed and incline. The main point is that incline is a great tool to use to introduce more variety and different stimuli into your treadmill running routine.
Chris Lundstrom is the head coach of Minnesota Distance Elite – formerly Team USA Minnesota – which includes some of the top distance runners in the USA, including Annie Frisbie, Dakota Lindwurm and Joel Reichow.
