Coping with the Ups and Downs of Running. . . Literally!
By Brianna Delaney
Part I
Just about everyone remembers school cross country, the winding up and down courses through local trails, forests, beaches or paddocks. While the downhill sections felt like racing the winds, going uphill was a battle of wills and leg power against inclines that seemed to grow just for cross country day! Learning to adjust to variable terrains can make a run overall smoother and encourage it as a means of exploring our cities and trails.
Uphill
Running uphill provides a number of benefits not just to our running performance but to our overall strength and fitness too. Requiring more muscle recruitment to overcome the added gravitational forces, it's a natural form of resistance training. This builds strength and power through the calves and ankle to improve the rebound or push off when running, but also works our cardiovascular system harder. Uphill running forces us to land further forward on our foot and helps us learn to engage the natural spring of the calf muscles to push us along.
Despite the benefits of including some inclines into your running, there are a few common mistakes to watch out for; the tendency to lean forward is a big one! Most runners will lean forward from their hips and this causes a number of obstacles:
Reduces hip flexion and the amount of knee drive they can muster
The glute muscles aren’t able to extend behind us properly, lowering the effectiveness of our toe-off and using less of the stored energy in our calf muscles
There is also an increase in difficulty now that your center of gravity is in front of you, giving you more to work against to make it to the top
So then how do we attack the hill and make it feel easy or at least easier? As much as we say don’t lean forward, there is a small amount of natural forward lean your running posture should have. But don’t think ‘from the hips’ rather, think about leaning forward from your ankles. This helps our foot to land more directly under our hip and creates less reaction force with each step.
As we run up the hill try thinking of these cues:
Stand tall and ‘drive your hips’, use your hip muscles to get your knee high and extend out behind you
Create shorter strides as the incline gets steeper
Increase the power in your arm drive
Stay tall and relaxed
Look towards the top of the hill, not your feet!
If this sounds like a lot all at once, here is a simple systematic approach to any hill. As you start to go up, shorten your stride and don’t try to maintain pace, just maintain your rhythm. Check in with your posture, think head up shoulders back and keep your feet low to the ground. Use a light ankle flick to push off, not an explosive push, and as you reach the top of the hill run through the crest without slowing or pulling back.
Focusing on maintaining the rhythm or cadence of our run over pace when we face hills is to even out the amount of effort. It's about equal effort going up, flat or down, not pace. If your breathing is increasing then it's likely you are going too fast, over striding or bounding too far off the ground. Steady breathing = steady effort.
And just like that, those mountains you saw on cross country day now look like mole hills! Look out for Part II where we chase the wind! . . .with control.