Where is the top of the hill?

Posted on: September 10 2014 / Written by: Brett Lunger

 Before we talk about hill training answer this question: where is the top of the hill?

No, for our purposes it is not where the hill stops going up and starts going down. It is twenty meters beyond that point. Understand this concept and you will grasp the essence of hill training.

Why twenty meters beyond the crest? What is gained by continuing beyond the topographic peak? You guessed it. By pushing twenty meters beyond the topographic peak, you gain what might prove to be a critical psychological advantage.

How will this happen? Simple. If you do decide to incorporate hill training into your routine, you will quickly learn that hill training does, indeed, suck. Oh and, by the way, racing on hills also sucks.

That is why every time you do hill repeats you must push to that painful point twenty meters beyond the topographic peak. Do that in training and it will become second nature when you race. I guarantee that any opponent who has not trained that way will cave. You win. Of course, if he has been following this blog, you might have a problem.

But there is more. This entire, sadistic, concept has real life value beyond athletic performance. It is relevant to anything you choose to do in life.

Ask yourself, do you want to win? Fine, we all should strive to win. But that alone is not enough. Winning is, well, just winning. But do you want to dominate? Ah, now we are getting somewhere.

If you accept this concept, the concept that the top of the hill is twenty meters beyond the crest, no matter what it is that you have chosen to do, you stand a pretty good chance of being dominant.

Try it. Learn to push beyond the top. Make the effort (see the letter “E” in the youth version of my workbook). You will be glad that you did.