However, my treadmill goes to a 10% grade, I usually use only around a 5% grade which isnt that around the recommended hill grade? I find the faster speeds slightly challenging, not amazing, but hey I said limitations, meaning speed and mechanics, I have no indoor track and its better than running on ice or 2 feet of snow at times.
To me, this doesn’t look like you are saying it is tempo.
I said if you dont have hills you should use other means such as the weightroom and plyos to get similiar work in if you do not have good hills accessible to you.
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If you find it hard to postulate that in a 5 mile long farm/hunting town of 5000 people that there are no good hills to run on then sobeit i am not running around taking pictures to prove a point.
I am outside the damn appalachian mts., I know what hills look like. I am still yet to find so many long grass hills that are SMOOTH (no divots, random potholes, rocks, other crap) and about the right slope.
I was giving my opinion, I think the risks associated with the stiffer surfaces outweigh the benefits of still using them, obviously you think different and thats fine. And your right grass can have divets and holes etc which can also be dangerous, most every surface has pros and cons, thats how it works, all and all I think concrete is a bad choice, thats why I gave it as my suggestion, I’m not an expert, just someone giving their suggestion, your suggestion is equally arguable.
Now there is more information for an informed decision, which is the whole point.
Every thread doesnt need to end in an argument of who knows more, the point is to help each other.
Have you done hill sprints on concrete hills? If you read the thread, I too thought it would be a problem. I then did it and it wasn’t and now my opinion has changed. Give it a try yourself and then decide.
ive used concrete and asphalt hills for me and my athletes and it aint very good.
for starters it tends to make the calves tight like hell, if you dont do it for more than a few (4-5) weeks that doesnt manifest imediatly as a problem but it does carry over to proper sprint work later on, personaly i stoped using concrete hills because it made me have to work on their calves much more than i could afford.
secondly, they are rather tiring, much more so than grass or dirt ones, tiring as in CNS tiring, not muscular tiring.
and damn those achiles, especially athletes with long achiles and relatively long feet are very prone to problems.
i use exclusively med ball work and grass sprint variation for the gpp.
not optimal, but you have to work with what you have
Yes I have used concrete, and it gave me troubles, at first bad soreness in the calves then later shin splints, in fact I refused to do any more hill work because we could only do it on concrete because it was the only thing kepted shoveled on campus.
Even if it wouldnt have that does not mean it is an appropriate surface.
I have often sprinted on sand during vacation, caused me no problems at all in terms of injury, that does not me I suggest doing sprints on sand.
As for your problem finding hills I am sorry for you.
My sentiments are exactly what epote has said, caused much problems, did other things to make up for lack of hill work, maybe not the best, but what i could work with.
At first I was using training flats which definately wasnt a good idea, but I love wearing light shoes to train, again not a good idea, defiantely would not recommend it.
Then went to a decent pair of training shoes I forget the exact name of the shoe it was 3 years ago, it was adidas thats about all I could tell you about it. Helped a little obviously more condusive to training, but still had the same problems.
Added in rubber inserts to try to absorp more shock, helped even more, but still had the pains, starts with soreness in the calves, then knee pain from weak knees from having osgood slaughts, then to shin splints.
I forget the exact volume mortac could probably tell you exactly he was one of the coaches at the time.
I believe the hill was around 60m maybe, again not positive you can ask him (note there was another sprint coach at the time as well so this wasnt mortacs doing), probably around 6-10 reps.
A year or two before that we were doing longer work on the road probably 100+ meters, also had pains on that as well.
I think the problem were the shoes because in training you dont want those light shoes that has no support, your first couple weeks is what probably bought the problems on.
yes that probably was part of the problem the first year i dont doubt it, but the next year when i was doing them as i said i had proper shoes and added inserts as well later on and i was still getting the pain.
But yes, wearing proper shoes is definately a step in the right direction when doing high impact exercise or running.
This will be a gametime decision for my second concrete hill session, as I said I might have felt something in my shins in my last session.
So I was wondering, for the CF 7-week GPP hill work, if you guys had to choose between:
Option A: A good 20 meter grass hill
or
Option B: Sprints with a sled on grass for whatever distance you want
Which would you do?
I play basketball myself (recreationally so I’m not “inseason”) so maybe the 20 meter hill would work for me just fine, due to shorter distances run in basketball. I am looking to cut volume anyhow, as I’m gonna do more jumps/bounds than a sprinter.
with the volume you are doing you should be able to handle running on any surface, i wouldnt use the 20m hill bc you want to progress the distance over time. if you chose the sled that may work since you have already decrease the training volume.
With that the runs were quite long (60m+), the volume was quite high, (~600m) and the rests too short (walkback recovery plus about 1min). I think fatigue and mechanical faults caused by fatigue were contributors to the leg pains.
Need I count the potential heroes we had and basically crippled? ugh