Hill Training.

Mae'n amlwch ymwch yn ymwch, ac mae'n amlwch ymwch yn amlwch yn amlwch yn amlwch yn amlwch yn amlwch yn amlwch yn amlwch yn amlwch Mae'n gyddiad o ffordd o ffordd o ffordd o ffordd o ffordd o ffordd o ffordd o ffordd o ffordd o ffordd o ffordd mae'n mynd i'w i'w i'w i'w i'w i'w i'w i'w i'w i'w i'w i'w i'w i'w i'w i'w i'w i'w i'w i Mae'r gweith i'r gweith i'r gweith i'r gweith i'r gweith i'r gweith i'r i wedi wedi wedi wedi wedi wedi wedi wedi wedi wedi wedi wedi wedi wedi wedi wedi wedi wedi wedi i'n gwaith yw'n yw'n gwaith 'Race' yw'n gwaith 'Race' yw'n gwaith 'Race' yw'n gwaith 'Race' i'n gweith i'n gweithio o'n gweithio i'n gweithio o'n gweithio i'n gweithio i'n gweithio i'n gweithio i'n gweithio i'n gweithio i'n gweithio i'n yw'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio nhw'n gweithio yma'r gweithio'r gweithio o'r gweithio yma'r gweithio o'r gweithio o'r gweithio a'r gweithio o'r gweithio o'r gweithio o'r gweithio o'r gweithio o mae'n mwy'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gwe i'n ddyn i'r ddyn i'n ddyn i'r ddyn i'r ddyn i'r ddyn i'r ddyn i'r ddyn ni'n ddyn ni'n ddyn ni'n ddyn ni'n ddyn ni'n ddyn ni'n ddyn ni'n ddyn ni'n ddyn ni'n i'r dwi'n gweithio, i'r dwi'n gweithio i'r dwi'n gweithio i'r dwi'n gweithio i'r dwi'n gweithio. Mae'n fawr i'n ffordd i'n ffordd, mae'n ffordd i'n ffordd i'n ffordd i'n ffordd i'n ffordd i'n ffordd i'n ffordd i'n ffordd i' a'r ffordd a'r ffordd o'r ffordd o ffordd o'r ffordd o ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o oeddwn i'n gweithio oeddwn i'n gweithio oeddwn i'n gweithio oeddwn i'n gweithio oeddwn i'n dweud. Oeddwn i'n gweithio oeddwn i'n gweithio oeddwn i'n gweithio oeddwn i'n gweithio oeddwn i'n gweithio oeddwn. Weithio oeddwn i'n gweithio oeddwn i'n gweithio oeddwn i'n gweithio oeddwn. I'n gweithio oeddwn i'n gweithio oeddwn i'n gweithio oeddwn i'n gweithio oeddwn i'n gweithio oeddwn yma. I'n gweithio oeddwn i'n gweithio oeddwn i'n gweithio oeddwn i'n gweithio oeddwn i'n gweithio oeddwn i'n gweithio oeddwn i'n gweithio oeddwn i'n gweithio oeddwn i'n gweithio oeddwn i'n gweithio oeddwn i'n gweithio oeddwn i'n gweithio oeddwn i'n gweithio oeddwn i'n gweithio oeddwn i'n gweithio oeddwn i'n gweithio oeddwn i'n dweud. Yn gweithio oeddwn i'n gweithio oeddwn i'n gweithio oeddwn i'n gweithio oeddwn i'n gweithio oeddwn i'n gweithio oeddwn i'n gweithio oeddwn i'n gweithio oeddwn i'n gweithio oeddwn i'n gweithio oeddwn i'n gweithio oeddwn i'n gweithio oeddwn i'n gweithio oeddwn i'n gweithio oeddwn i'n gweithio oeddwn i'n gweithio oeddwn i'n dweud. Yn gweithio oeddwn i'n gweithio oeddwn i'n gweithio oeddwn i'n gweithio oeddwn. Weithio oeddwn i'n gweithio oeddwn i'n gweithio oeddwn i'n gweithio oeddwn i'n gweithio oeddwn i'n gweithio oeddwn i'n gweithio oeddwn i'n gweithio oeddwn i'n gweithio oeddwn i'n gweithio oeddwn i'n gweithio oeddwn i'n gweithio oeddwn i'n gweithio oeddwn i'n gweithio oeddwn i'n gweithio oeddwn i'n gweithio oeddwn i'n gweithio oeddwn. So there's such as people would be doing more days and then progress those in a structured way as would be the normal case with most training so if we just part that I think it was important just to address that part because people would be saying you know well what about middle distance run as surely you know and younger people they can do this that in the other way hills. Now there is a reason also for segment in that part too because when you're young you can get away with and you can do a lot more things as you get older. As we know or anybody who's there of a certain age and primarily kind of over 35 and there's a reason why the masters category starts from there because things do start to change a little bit. Not drastically at 35 the drastic changes tend to come around 50 but there are reasons for that physiological reasons and one of the main things that you have to be careful with hills is how you introduce them and also if you have problems with your achilles. Now hills and achilles if you have achilles issues hills generally don't go very well in order to short fast work so if you have achilles problems you need to have them sorted out before you even think about going anywhere near hill reps. The other thing is how you introduce hills is important as is any other type of training when you introduce a new model of training or element of training. There's always a risk of injury so to lessen that risk you have to bring it in very carefully and gradually increase it. So one of the key sessions that I would give elite athletes is similar to the session that I would do when I was a 1500 metre runner. I also now give this session to complete beginners and I come back to that in a minute I just want to talk a little bit more about the elites first and then we'll spin back around why I use this for beginners. So the session that I mentioned before doing something like ten times ten seconds of a walk back recovery was basically for 15 metres and my understanding back then when I was a little bit naive was more to power and speed really for you know the end of a 1500 metre race. But now the sessions that I'd the show or the main session I'd the show is a session of eight times eight seconds what I call hill blasts. Now a lot of you will be familiar with that type of session it's something that can overdoze a lot of Kenyan runners do it and you're also and some of you will understand as well that you're predominantly working the creating phosphate energy system. And it's important to understand that all the energy systems are working all the time but when we do these eight times eight second hill blasts it's predominantly creating phosphate. Now the body has between eight ten twelve seconds depending on who you read which scientist again this is another problem the science has always a little bit scatting contradictory but eight to ten to twelve seconds of creating phosphate in your body. You'll also notice whenever you see a race or say a 5,800, 5,000 metre race at the beginning of the race everyone seems off for about eight seconds and the reason for that is this is a give me you've got eight seconds eight to ten seconds of pre energy there to run pretty much flat out and then as long as you settle down after that then you're okay once you've used your creating phosphate in a race like that then it's pretty much gone. Now when we do a hill blast or hill sprint of eight seconds it roughly takes about two minutes 30 to replenish your creativity in phosphate stores. So what you'll find is people doing eight times eight seconds or eight times ten seconds hill sprints normally on a pretty steep hill with a walk back recovery of about two minutes 30 and that's to allow the creating phosphate to replenish. The idea generally behind these sessions is to recruit fast switch fibres that's one of the main reasons but these hills sprints are the modified version of this which I'm going to come to in a minute but these hills sprints also improve running form and running economy and they bring more power and strength into your stride so obviously the benefits of that are pretty straightforward. So you'll see a lot of elite runners doing these sessions quite often you can do these sessions in a run or towards the end of a run you know like a long run sometimes as well. So once the slower twitch fibres have been pretty much exhausted to go into a session of short hill sprints quite often with the elite end of runners as long as it's introduced properly and carefully is a pretty good idea too. As can over with as set or can over has said that you know at the end towards the end of marathons when the fibres exhausted if you can recruit the fast switch fibres they can help you kind of get across the line. I'm not so much of kind of that idea but and I don't think that's really 100% accurate but I use that the hill sprints from different kind of reason mainly for me it's about running the running economy and running efficiency. I can't remember the chat's name, I didn't know if he's still there but I think he was a professor at Exorcist University. I think he's an Italian guy and he did a fantastic study on this about running economy and hill sprints and for me they're one of the best bang for bucks that you can do for marathons running and that sounds a bit strange because you're only running for eight seconds and you're taking the 230 recovery but marathons running a lot of it is about running efficiency in the economy and this is something that helps that. Now there is a bit of a risk that comes with these because when you do them on a steep hill kind of flat out the hill negates a little bit of the injury worry in terms of the explosiveness of it so you can't obviously go too fast because of the hill although you are trying to run flat out and again the hill is a little bit of a risk for the kiddie so they do have to be broading gradually and carefully. How I've modified this even from my elites because I use them for a slightly different reason. What I've found is depending where a runner is on the twitch fiber spectrum so somebody's more on the slow twitch fiber end of the spectrum. I think these are fantastic and they help them make breakthrough so some examples of that would be from people that you would know would be Eva Cook. I've spoken about this before one of the problems that Eva had when I was coaching her was that she which first came to me she couldn't break 80 seconds for 400 meters just in the one off 400. So I gave her the hill blast to do and then within a few weeks Eva was able to do 10 times 1k at free 20 pace of a 200 job recovery which is 80 seconds per 400. And then follow that in the same session with 10 400s in 72 second 73 seconds and that was down to the hill blast really being able to recruit the fast twitch fibers get a little bit more power into a stride and improve her running economy and efficiency so it was that quick and that drastic. Another example is with Kate Drew out in Spain one of the things that I know it's with Kate on the water training camp was that hip extension wasn't particularly good and she had a low carriage which can be quite good for longer distance running but she also had problems getting some power and speed into her stride and quite often her reps on the shorter end would be quite similar to the medium reps in terms of pace. So we worked on this in Spain and through the hill the hill blast the eight times eight seconds of a 230 water recovery we managed to get a little bit more hip extension more power more speed and again this sort of reflected then on the track we also then introduced flying 150s which I'll talk about another time and the combination of these two help Kate find some more speed and again that reflected in her results. Now how I do these differently is rather than get a steep hill and run up them as fast as you can we have a little routine that we do so we do a few drills and I'll talk about those drills another time that we do before them. There's three drills basically it's high knees and it's the marching drill and then high knees but where the the hill comes up to the comes along the seam of the trousers. So again I'll post some videos on this on Instagram and talk about these in a little bit more detail then they're not necessarily majorly important but with the drill what we would do is for example you would do high knees for 20 meters then walk back then then turn around and then do a 20 meter stride and then walk back and you would repeat that and then the same with the straight leg marching drill 20 meter straight leg marching walk back do a stride and then walk back so we do two of those. The reason for this is when you do the stride is that you know they're called drills for a reason so you do the exercise first and then you drill it in through you put it into the mechanics of your running so with the stride afterwards. Then they're only short because what we want you to do if you're doing these in the winter you don't want to be hanging around for too long so you get the drill is done and then you get straight into the hill blasts. Now for me I tend to use this slightly shallower hill and a lot of coaches do for this but I change the technique of how you run up and so we're looking at probably something around 5% something that you can run up so it feels a little bit more like a stride that you would do before a race. But you have you can feel a little bit of the resistance from the hill as well. Now when you run up it you don't run up it as fast as you can like scamper up the hill because what would happen then is and I see videos of people doing this and they're bent over and they're leaning into the hill. What you have to do is you have to stay perpendicular to the gradient so you're kind of running really tall. So I have a mantra that I tell people to do when they're running up the hill is tall relax pendulum pop pop pop so let me explain. So the tall as I said they're sort of running perpendicular to the hill the relaxed is you've got to try to run as if you're say like a 400 meter when they you know down the back straight nice and cruising like that. The tall relax the pendulum is everything going forward so you're focused on like the you know those balls that sit in corporate offices where you drop one ball and then it knocks the other and they go back and forth like that. You just want everything moving in the same direction you don't your arms coming across the midline EHS so you want to be a little bit like a spring to pump in everything forward but in a very very relaxed fashion. Okay so if you're running tall and relaxed and you're running with this idea of the pendulum you'll probably find that your stride is slightly exaggerated as well so you'll have a little bit of a higher knee lift. And by doing this you can recruit fast switch by as well because it becomes there's more resistance in this so it has instead of having to like scuttle up the hill you're now running with a lot more control and relaxed and I think this helps your autonomous system under central nervous system as well which is one of the key things we're trying to target here. And then pop pop pop is imagining your feet on hot cold so your feet are popping off the ground quickly because one of the issues we've run appeals is you tend to be in the plant plays pays longer so what we're trying to do is like hit the ground and then get some good reaction time off it as well. So this is almost like a mild plyometric exercise because it is in a way it's a cross between a drill a stride and a hill sprint so it's kind of pretty technical. When you get it right you have this feeling of your heel coming underneath your butt and almost like you're cycling up the hill and you feel really relaxed. Generally it takes about three or four reps to get that feeling going and you'll probably hold it only for two because as you get to round about the eighth rep that's enough of these you don't need to be going on more to more and more. There's a lot of people doing sort of ten of these or doing sets of them you only need to do eight of them, they're very very effective. What you'll also find is when you finish the session and then you go to do your cool down. If you look at your watch you're probably running a lot faster than you did on your warm up and that's how quickly these kicking and working into into the system. You'll also find the next day that your legs have a lot of popping they're really good to do in terms of seeing if you've recovered from a session as well and if you're really safe very long run or another workout. It just gets the tension right in the legs. I wouldn't however do them in the week of a race. You're far better doing strides rather than the heel sprints just again because although we do focus on having less ground contact you will have more ground contact running up a hill than you would on the flat so I would use strides. That's kind of how we use these for the elite runners and pretty much for everyone else that I give them to. Now let's talk about everyone else. Again these have to be careful with these because of the risk of injury because you are running near maximum effort and you are on a slope and as we as alluded to earlier as we get a little bit older there are more problems or risks with injury. If you are going to use them say if you're a coach of your athletes or if you're going to bring them into your own training what I do with guys is I would start with four reps and then in the next week they go to six and then to eight so that's how they progress progressively come into the training. So for now what I do is I will sort of mix them up a little bit so one week you might do eight second heel reps and then 12s. I'll come back to the 12s and then the time because I just want to talk about the eight second heel blasts at the moment. So you'd start off with maybe four then six and then eight or maybe even go four five six seven eight but just stop it at eight around there and it's important if you're a coach or a runner to get yourself a video when you do this and then have a little look to make sure you're staying perpendicular to the hill. You can see the slight knee exaggeration that is caused from being perpendicular to the hill. You can see that hip extension and the heel coming underneath the part. So if that isn't happening then you have to address this and you know there are a number of ways that you can do that and we'll talk about drills another time but drills are a good way of doing it. So if you're running up the hill again as I say the old cliché practice makes perfect when it doesn't if you're in the only way practice makes perfect if you're practicing perfectly. So if you're doing the wrong thing sprinting up the hill and I've seen this with a few people that have come to me and I've got them to video themselves. You have to address this because you know if you're doing it wrong then there's no point doing it. You've got to make sure you get it right. So that has to be there and this kind of exaggerated strides stroke drill does sort of affect this anyway or affect it anyway. So when we go to somebody sort of like in their 40s or 50s as well it has to be controlled and what I would say is maybe on the first rep just make sure you're easy into it. That way you would do with a rep in the session you know just focus a lot more on the form rather than getting up the hill and then always repeat that mantra tall relax pendulum pop pop pop and you'll be surprised how well this works it's fantastic. Okay so that's that now why I use these with complete beginner so if you've got somebody who's a four hour marathon runner and I see this a lot and even free 30 in that range there free 30 to 4 30. What I see is people going and they get coaches and they're doing interval training or reps so you they might be doing something like four times six times one mile or six times six minutes something like that or they might be doing tempo runs and so on and so forth. The usual sort of sessions that most of us do but the problem with this is they're not running any faster than they would for like a 10k or a 10 mile or they seem to have like one gear. So I think it's important with runners who are at the slower end of the spectrum is to work on just trying to get them a bit faster first in in terms of my technical point of view and these hill blasts are a great way of doing it they work really really well. I've been experimenting with over the last sort of 16 months or so and having great results. Also rather than giving people the traditional workouts where they might be doing something like I don't know 10 times 1k or 10 times 3 minute or 8 times 1k 8 times 3 minute something like that. There isn't much point really given that to a beginner runner or somebody who's stuck in that sort of like 350 down to 40 areas better to work on getting them a little bit quicker. So a good way to do that is and this is not a session of mine. So when you credit the person who session this is there's a guy called John Kellogg and a lot of you may have heard of him from let's run. He was a coach high school coach and he came up with a session of what he calls a row big strides now the names a bit of misnomer because obviously we're using all the different energy systems whenever we're running so to call him a row big strides is probably not quite right. But basically what the idea is is you do a 42nd effort at about 5k and then you jog back to the start so you might have a lamppost you start a lamppost your time 40 seconds and it takes you to a bench. You stop your watch there and then you don't need to use your watch or stop your watch any more after that just let it run you turn around your jog back and then you do another rep and you do 5 of these 42nd reps at 5k effort. Now for a beginner what you would do is you would start them off at 20 seconds and then in the second week you'd bring them up to 30 seconds and then the third week up to 40 and once they get to 40 seconds you would be doing three sets of these as well. So you would do 42nd effort jog back do five of them and then take a four minute jog and then do the second set four minute jog and then do the third set. Once you finish those three sets when the run is able to do three times 40 seconds you would then bring them you would change them a little bit so you would do the first set at 5k effort or three mile effort. The second set at 3k effort or two mile effort and the third set at mile effort or 1,500 meter effort so they're gradually going through the gears. And then what you do is you have an add-on so when they're finished the three sets you do a four minute jog recovery and then you do two minutes hard or at about 5k effort and then you progress that to three four or five over the following weeks. Once you get to five minutes so they're doing three sets of five times 40 seconds of a jog back recovery with four minutes between sets and then the five minute effort at 5k effort. Then they're ready then if you've been doing the health sprints along with these to transition them into more traditional workouts, interval sessions and watch what happens it's incredible. I've been doing with this with a guy in indico stringent bass and the improvement he's making is phenomenal. So and there's quite a few athletes that have been coaching who've gone from four hours to three hours in one year and it's been mainly down to giving them these types of sessions. They're a really good session but as I said the caveat with this is you've got to introduce them carefully. They've got to they've got to come in in a progressive way especially for people who've come into running later on in life. So like I said at the beginning there with a 1,500 meter runner the young sort of national standard runner they can bang these out no problem and longer heal reps. Why I'm not a fan of longer heal reps for an older runner is because or slower runners as well is because they just don't have the strength and the ability and the form to maintain proper running form running up a hill for a minute a minute and a half at full speed or at say the speed that you would run a mile at and it's not absolute it isn't particularly necessary. However in the next episode I'll go into more hills and ways that you can use hills in different ways too. So hopefully that gets you started because a lot of people have been asking me about the hill blasts and why I use them so that should cover it quite nicely there. Okay the competition for Mauritius as well so we had a lot of entries in from the last last podcast and their all the names are gone into the hat. So here's this week's competition question how long should the hill blast be eight seconds or 30 seconds it's quite a difficult one. So same as last time drop your answers through on WhatsApp Instagram Facebook any well not Facebook Messenger because they don't use that. You can drop it in on Strava or just drop us a text or whatever okay same same same sort of protocol or reply to on Instagram to the podcast or any messages on there or direct message me okay. In English into that if I coach it you know goes into the hat three times and just to let you know the bill is booked it's a poor bedroom biller with an outdoor swimming pool. It's a 350 meters from one of the best beaches in Mauritius restaurants and lots of things and easy to get to a lot of the main sightseeing places on the island. I've got the biller book from the 26th of January to the end of February so one person can win two weeks and then another person can win two weeks. And as I said in the previous podcast if you're the winner you can bring your partner or if you have a family you can bring your family to the four bedrooms plenty of space. So there you go so get your answers in and thanks for listening any questions or anything just gives a shout. And for Val and all of the Magella fans I'll make sure that those posters get sent out and the audio message telling you how much you appreciate your love.