What are hill workouts designed to do, why are they used? What are some good hill workouts?
They help you achieve steep angles out of the blocks and therefore translate to better acceleration at the start of the blocks.
A full set of Hill workouts are shown on the GPP DVD. See my review for details.
http://www.charliefrancis.com/community/showthread.php?t=10827
but what if you are not a track sprinter and therefore dont use any blocks? I am a soccer player who wants to improve speed and acceleration as much as possible and so i will never be using any blocks. What will hills do for soccer players?
PS: i have ordered the GPP DVD and am waiting on it and am looking forward to seeing the hill workouts on it
Hills improve your starting technique. They aren’t just a tool for block starts.
Get GPP-DVD !
Hills can also be a great “bridge” from the gym to the track. Depending on the angle of the hill and the duration of the effort, hills sprinting can develop power-endurance in a quite specific way - certainly in a more specific, holistic way than anything you can do in the weightlifting gym because hills add a bit of loading to the sprinting action. Because the ground rises to meet your front foot, there is less impact to the session. But due to the loading, the effort required to run reps is greater
Hills can also be a great “bridge” from the gym to the track. Depending on the angle of the hill and the duration of the effort, hills sprinting can develop power-endurance in a quite specific way - certainly in a more specific, holistic way than anything you can do in the weightlifting gym because hills add a bit of loading to the sprinting action. Because the ground rises to meet your front foot, there is less impact to the session. But due to the loading, the effort required to run reps is greater
yes just dont make the mistake of perfoming hill workouts on hard surfaces, it just KILLS the achiles…Personal experience, that is, grass or dirt at the very least
only ever on grass or dirt, preferably nothing harder and nothing softer (because it’s tough enough trying to hold your technique together without the surface moving beneath your feet, as is the case on sand, so I’m not a sand dunes fan. Been there and moved on…)
off course would be ideal using grass…here I can do hills on grass only 20m or so…for longer ones I have to move to harder surfaces…However, this didn’t affect too much neither me nor other athletes…the message is…hills are important, even if you do not have the perfect environmnet to perform them
i played soccar as well.
Its a great tool for overall fitness and sprint capacity. Try it. It helped me a lot
What about a hill covered with a rubber track surface? I have access to one thats like 30-40m long and its grade is like 30 degrees maybe. I did one session on it (in spikes) with no problems. Is it more of a thing that creeps up on you as the sessions pile up?
What about a hill covered with a rubber track surface? I have access to one thats like 30-40m long and its grade is like 30 degrees maybe. I did one session on it (in spikes) with no problems. Is it more of a thing that creeps up on you as the sessions pile up?
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guess it would depend on the hardness of the tartan but generaly speaking ruber track material transfers back to the feet the force very good, so it would be kinda tough on the achiles/knees
perhaps if your shoes had extra cushioning? I dunno, kitkat and others are much more experienced than me
Running on cement hills are fine. The impact is not bad at all because you’re reaching upwards and there’s no pounding on the joints. The impact of running on flat ground is much worse.
Our greatest problem is that when I would like to give hill drills (late Nov-Feb), they are covered with snow. So for us the side walk is actually safer because it is usually matted snow that absorbs impact but doesn’t move much under the feet. Sometime por technique is a by product because more of the foot has to touch the ground for traction.
What would be thwe difference for q’miler and a 100m athlete for hill workouts in GPP?
KK?..Speedz?..CF?..Beuller? 
…anyone?
I typically work sets of hills of about 40m 3x per week in early GPP and don’t differentiate between the short and long sprinters at that stage.
I reserve differentiation for SPP, but I could see where you could build up to longer hills once a week in GPP for the long sprinters – starting with 40m and adding about 10m a week to one of the week’s sessions, ending up with hills about 120m long. I might try that with some longer sprinters this year. I guess my question would be intensity. With the short sprints, they are quite intense. I don’t think the longer sprints would be as intense. I would probably keep the total volume about the same (<800 meters) or maybe slightly higher for the longer stuff, given it would be less intense.
Remember to keep these slopes shallow to avoid radical changes in mechanics.
I think it somewhat depends on what you’re trying to address. In most setups, GPP is for general conditioning, strength and acceleration.
Interested to hear other thoughts on this.
Wouldn’t you use a different slope for accel vs speed end? I remember something about no more than a 12% grade for Speed end.