Been doing lots of hill workouts on one of the steep hills out here in Boulder. There's one in particular, about a 15% grade, that I have been using. It's about as steep as I would ever race.
Is there any value in using smaller grades, like say 5%, for some of my workouts?
Certainly.
No to your first question. Yes to your second one.
Depends on the purpose and length of the repeats. Short, steep hills are good for strength and form work. I also like to do mile hill repeats. For these, I prefer a hill with a low but consistent grade.
In my school, anything under 64% is a failing grade. You got to get up to at least a 90% for an A grade.
But seriously, short/steep hills are great for hill sprints (similar to strides) and improved speed/strength where as long/gradual grades are great for hill repeats, tempo runs, etc.
Kind of makes sense, but why not do mile repeats on steep hills? (practically there are plenty here that I can run up for a mile)
trainingday93 wrote:
Kind of makes sense, but why not do mile repeats on steep hills? (practically there are plenty here that I can run up for a mile)
Because your mile would suck and it would be slogging up a hill for no freaking point. Steep is for speed, gradual is for longer stuff.
trainingday93 wrote:
Kind of makes sense, but why not do mile repeats on steep hills? (practically there are plenty here that I can run up for a mile)
You can do that. But the workout starts to become specific enough that it might not help you a lot for your goals. If you're training for mountain ascent races, those kind of repeats would be awesome.
But if you just want to click off some fast 5 and 10ks, this is getting away from training your body how it needs to perform in races.
What are you training for right now?
5k, trying to build up some speed and strength.
Any hill.
god almighty you are dumb wrote:
trainingday93 wrote:Kind of makes sense, but why not do mile repeats on steep hills? (practically there are plenty here that I can run up for a mile)
Because your mile would suck and it would be slogging up a hill for no freaking point. Steep is for speed, gradual is for longer stuff.
For speed development, the majority of top coaches suggest using only a few percent grade, actually.
The reason is that a steeper grade slows you down too much to be explosive and it also changes your form quite a bit. The rule of thumb is that the hill should only slow you down 5% or less.
There may be exceptions, but I don't know of any top coaches that suggest steeper slopes for speed work specifically. I would be interested in hearing if you know of any.
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