After last week’s post about racing on hills, I realized I should share some thoughts on running hills in general. So let’s go over good form for running hills, whether training or racing. I’ll start this week with running uphill, then cover running downhill next week.
So, what do you need to know about running uphill? Primarily, just two things: keep your stride rate up and your hips forward.
Keep your stride rate up
Last week, I mentioned why you shouldn’t charge the hill under most circumstances during a race. However, you should keep your legs turning over.
I remember a former coach of mine telling me it’s like riding bike. When you go uphill on your bike, you downshift in order to keep your RPMs up. Same thing with running. Shorten your stride in order to keep your legs turning over.
Now, when running hills in training, you might want to charge them in some situations as a training strategy. For example, obviously, if you’re doing hill repeats, you want to push the hills. In this case, you keep your stride rate and your stride length up and attack the hill.
However, if you are slowing down to manage your effort, this means a shorter stride. That’s perfectly fine. Shorten your stride, keep your turnover up, and you’ll be more efficient on the way up.
Keep your hips forward
You always hear people saying lean into the hill. This is great advice but the way many people lean into the hill is problematic. A lot of people let their hips fall back and lean from the waist or slump their shoulders (as I am demonstrating in a bad example of hill form in the photo above).
There are a couple of problems with this. First, you put strain on your back when you do this and might develop a sore back. Second, you’re not nearly as efficient as you could be because your legs aren’t in great alignment.
Instead of letting your hips drop back, focus on keeping them forward and “run tall”. You’ll get that lean into the hill if you do this but it will be a more efficient full body lean.