Hill Training

Posted on: October 22 2014 / Written by: Brett Lunger

Hill training? What is that? If you thought that it meant obedience training for your hills, you would be wrong. Hills cannot be trained to sit, to woof, or to roll over. If you thought so, please skip this and go to my next blog.

In fact, hill training embodies the spirit of what I wrote for the letter “E” in the Youth Version of my workbook.

Hill training is a training regimen that uses an uphill grade to achieve a targeted training objective. It is a vital component of any decent training program. It is a tremendous strength builder and it works for cyclists as well as for runners.

As with anything, it is important to understand your objective before beginning. For both runners and cyclists, it is pretty simple. Your objective is to gain strength and confidence.

Don’t skip over that “confidence” thing. It can make the difference between 1st and 2nd place.

Have you ever run with a group on a hilly course? Did you notice how it got quiet just before hitting the hills? Why? Hills suck; that’s why. No two ways about it and everybody knows that.

By doing effective hill training, you will gain strength and confidence. Having done effective hill training, you will start any uphill section knowing that you are strong, that you have done this many times before.

Of course, your training will not make the hill less steep. It will not be shorter. But if you approach each hill with an attitude of strength and confidence, you will soon gain a reputation for being dominant on what most people fear. The edge you will have gained through your hill training will live not only in your own mind, but in the minds of those around you. You know it and they know it! How sweet is that?

We will examine the details of hill training for runners and cyclists in separate blogs.