Lydiard Hill Training Advice

Paul,

I would have my younger (i.e. under 35) runners do leg speed work 3 days a week and then a long run of 90-105-120 minutes in rotation. Older guys, like me, I do an relaxed hour on the days between the hill work. My legs are usually trashed by the hill work for the first 2 to 3 weeks. That is what Arthur recommended when I worked with him in Venezuela.

If you want the leg-speed explanation, drop me a line.

good running,

Glenn

we did hills twice a week in the winter period between jan and march, 800m hills one day and 300m hills the other. gradual hills...not super steep. ie, 8 x hill,

Bump

Glenn,

I've always struggled with this... If you are doing leg speed work on the days between hills, does mileage not suffer significantly? What is a typical leg speed day aside from the leg speed drills themselves? More than 20 minutes of running?

Glass Houses,

I usually look at the Hill sessions as equivalent to a 10 to 12 mile run. Each circuit takes slightly more than 15 minutes, with a 10-15 minute warm-up and cool-down I figure it is a hour and a half total running time. As far as the leg-speed workout, that is usually 30-40 minutes with the warm-up. I have the folks who do that finish with a relaxed 40 to 50 minute run, so it ends up being 80 minutes total running time, again in that 10-12 mile equivalent time. 6 days a week puts you at 60-70 miles without the long run which I usually max at 20, so 80 to 90 miles per week equivalent with a good deal more effort involved. It can be quite tiring. And as I have said before the work involved in springing drills has always left my legs, and those I work with feeling quite dead.

Good running,

Glenn

I concur with Glenn here. The young guys I Coach would be out for an hour to 11/2 on a hill session.

I may do the sessions differently to others but the time factor and session aim would be the same..

For instance : I have always struggled with the down hill section of Arthur's Hill work because I feel there is a huge 'technique' factor in running down hill. So I get the guys to run that on the flat.

I also am more of an 'ankle drive'advocate than a 'bounding' advocate.

I can recall John Walker not being able to run downhills because it aggravated a problem he was having so he used to get Arch Jelley to drop him at the bottom of a hill then he would run up the hill,then Arch would pick him up at the top and drive back to the bottom where he did some strides and then off he went again.

Old Story, Horses for Courses.

You must work out what suits you.

Where can see this Lydriad plan ( Online ) ?

Thank you,

Go to

www.lydiardfoundation.org

. Nobby has put a lot of work into Arthur's training and philosophy.

Also on here we had a thread going called Lydiard versus Daniels which went on for ages. Many of us contributed there. Myself and Glen included.

I thought Nobby might have picked up here and made some comment. Maybe he did not see the thread !!!!.

Kim:

Sorry, mate! I did see this thread but, seriously, I didn't have much more to add to you and Glenn. The only comment I have to Glass House would be: don't be too concerned with the weekly mileage unless THAT is your goal. Hill training phase is designed to re-introduce power and flexibility in your legs and get your body ready for track schedule, or anaerobic phase. If that's achieved, it really doesn't matter if your mileage drops a bit. But at any rate, you should be doing plenty of warm-up and cool-down for BOTH hill training and leg-speed workouts anyways. Totalling all that, the mileage shouldn't drop that much more.

One other caution would be; again, do what you need to do, not simply what the schedule calls for. This young lady I'm coaching, we did some hill training last summer but, doing the downhill striding, her leg-speed was actually coming back too quickly. She was training for the marathon and I didn't want her leg-speed to be too sharp so we minimized the downhill striding and didn't do ANY leg-speed exercise in between simply because she didn't need it...or it wasn't desirable for her.

By the way, thanks, Kim, for promoting the website. We are still working on completing it...

Kim/Glenn/Nobby,

Do you see any advantages to the kind of slope? I know from a running drill perspective the incline could be an issue (the bounding and hill springing) However, from Lydiard's hill workouts, was there a grade that he preferred? I would think some inclines could negatively effect an individual's mechanics.

Check out our website (thanks, Kim ;o)). I think I put the quick PPT to explain types of hills to be used. If not, shoot me an e-mail, or contact Glenn or Kim.

Regarding incline of hills. I can recall Arthur (years ago !)saying that as long as you had a hill you could do the work.

Nobby may be able to make further comment on this following story as I am operating purely off memory.

Some "character" at one of Arthur's clinics (It could have been Coach from some flat area like West Texas) said to Arthur. "We don't have hills !"

Arthur's reply was "You have a Football stadium with Bleachers, Thats your hill. Do the stride work on the Field"

Basically, if you have any sort of incline the work can be done.

One of Arthur's tremendous qualities was to teach without compromising what he believed to be true. I pose the question with the hope that we would apply what we have learned from Lydiard and refine it. I think we would be doing him a great disservice to not critically look at what he taught with the hope of refining it. As far as hill incline, my thinking is that, depending on the incline, mechanically we change. For example, steeper hills require more vertical displacement with knee drive and toe off. However, hills with a 4-5% grade would require less of a change in mechanics from a flat surface thereby providing a different training effect. If we look at the purpose of hill training, an important aspect would include increasing an individual's power output and economy over flat ground. However, different grades possibly give the individual the ability to work on those different aspects. My question is, knowing Arthur as you both do (Kim/Nobby) and using his principles along with your own knowledge, can you see using varying grades to stimulate different aspects of power/force output?

Thank you both for the continuing good work you both do in our great sport.

I'm interested in this thread. I run ultras so I needed to tweak the hill work. I have not did hills in quite sometime, although I live in a very hilly area and run hills quite well, I felt I needed to work on them for a new stimulus. I am now in a base phase and want to keep things aerobically oriented for quite sometime before I start anything 'fast.' I have been doing very long hills - focusing on the ankle flex/steady effort. A couple of workouts was 2 miles uphill on gravel/trail, then 2 mile on rocky technical trail for downhill. I would do three sets of this avg 28:30 for the set. This included a 3mile w/up and 3 mile cooldown for a long session. I tweaked it to be closer to home and the hill i'm doing now is 800 up and 800 down and turnaround and come back - the road is one mile exactly. I did 3 of these hitting 11:56, 11:45, 11:42 with 3-4 minutes rest in between each with 3 miles w/up and 3 miles cooldown - the downhill is easy breathing wise but I notice it really works the abs and the hamstrings. The uphill worked the calf pretty hard - I'm running hard but not all out - I was so wiped out though afterwards that I cool downed pretty slow. I again focused on the ankle flex and driving at a steady pace. Is this a correct way to do hills for power and strength.

Flounder (how's Ariel doing? ;o)):

There's always someone who might come back and say, "We race on a flat surface (track) so we don't need to train on hills." Bowerman said that in one of his interviews but I know he didn't quite mean it that way. Hill training can improve runners immensely. "There's no more rewarding way to train than training on the hills," Arthur used to say.

I know you don't mean it that way either. In fact, in a way, you're right. Before Monteal Olympics, Rod Dix on did lots of hill training. Dick Quax criticized by saying that he didn't do enough fast runs on flat. It is true; there's a certain elements of training specifics. I knew of a coach in Japan who said step running is better than hills because of the footing angle (step=flat). I don't think it's right, but in the end you do need to run fast on flat.

Lydiard's hill training consists of 3 different types of exercise. Each has specific advantage and, I would also say, disadvantages as well. You need to figure out which one gives you the best result for the event you're training for as well as your own strengths and weaknesses and decide what to do. I was doing the training with this young lady who was training for her marathon last summer. We did quite a bit of hill training but it was mainly what we call "Steep Hill Running", or Original Lydiard Hill exercise. It was because I believe for longer event, Steep Hill Running is better than Bounding or Springing. Of course, Pekka Vasala was supposed to have loved "Bounding" and he did lots of it before his gold medal performance in 1500m at Munich. If the slope is steep, it would become more of a Springing and this is a great workout for shorter events even for sprinting. Great long sprinting and hurdle coach from CA, coach Jim Bush, told me that he gives credit for all his long sprinting success to Arthur's hill training and I would imagine it was mainly springing (just because of the timing of these two's encounter).

One other side of view is that, while doing lots of hill training, I hurt my Achilles one time and I really couldn't do much uphill running. But I noticed step running didn't really hurt my Achilles as much so we did quite a bit of step running. Of course, step running would not give you as much ankle flexibility so you might need to do some extra stretching exercises. I also noticed with this young lady, she was performing step running better also probably because the distance of each step was set (we did both single steps and double steps). We used the 120 steps behind the Science Museum in St. Paul. We tried to duplicate as much as the original hill circuit; the only thing we didn't do was the windsprints at the bottom simply becuase (1) for marathon, leg-speed wasn't as needed and (2) her leg turn-over came back really quickly by doing downhill striding so I felt she didn't need much more leg-speed work at all. So it's really case-by-case scenario.

For Kim's comment; basically hill training is resistance work. Any form of resistance to your legs would be fine. In his 1983 book, Arthur had series of picture of a guy doing weight training. People thought it was funny but it was simply because, if you don't have any hill or stadium steps, you need to put some resistance to your legs and may need to use weights. of course, we now know that plyometrics may be a better mean to do so. We can do so by running in deep snow, running in knee deep water, sand-dune or sandy beach running (like Bay Watch!)... You can even pull extra weight on flat track for resistance. The point is to re-introduce power and flexibility in your legs. Any form to achieve that would be fine. Hills are the best because you can do all, including running, in one form of exercise. One time, we were supposed to do the Museum step workout but, as we were warming up, terrible thunder storm developed with gusty wind. We changed the plan and did all the hill workout inside the nearby building (7 stories); we simply went up and down the building, from the basement to the top of the building. We coutinued for 55 minutes with easy jogging down at the basement of the building. Except for the downhill section, we believe we achieved the same result.

Nobby has pretty much nailed what I was going to say. However I will put in my pennies worth.

I would not have a clue what %age a hill's steepness is.

I just look at it, run it and then decide what/how we are going to do the workout.

I will give you an example of what I did with a kid (16 years old) from late October to December prior to our National Schools Champs.

This student (Sam) cracked 3 ribs in early October (Mountain Biking .. and wore a tree !!).

He was pretty "Aerobically" fit at the time but of course once he went for a run breathing was a problem !. Luckily this improved immensely over the 7 -10 days after the bike accident.

Because we were then miles behind in our schedule, plus Sam had a heap of National exams just prior to nationals,I decided all we would do is effort runs over 3k , some light Aerobic Intervals for a few weeks and then we would do 4 weeks of Hills.

I "tweaked" the hills by running no further than around 200m,concentrating on ankle drive, springing from that with High knees.

We then walked down the hill after each one and then repeated.

We did fast stride work in a grassy strip nearby between the hills.

After 2 weeks or so of this I then had him running the 200 up the hill in around 35-36 secs, concentrating on that ankle drive.

5 days after having done a session of 10 X Hills Sam ran his first ever 800m in 2:03 on a grass track.

12 days later he ran 1:56.4 to finish 5th in the National schools 800m (After a 2:05 heat and a 1:59 semi)

At no stage did we go near a Track. Everything we did was on forest trails and roads.

I have to say I was slightly surprised as all we had been aiming at was getting Sam into the Final and we would look at next year(The age group he is in is Under 19) The fact he was in the mix at the finish was great for someone so young.

BUT : I have never forgotten the value of hill work and from that respect Sam's run was about right.

Also : Arthur told me in early 80's that it was best to take a kid into that meet 'undertrained', especially if they were not considered to be a contender.

Hope that gives you more of an idea.

A couple of more things to add: One, running up the hill you would push yourself into anaerobic zone; but it seems to me that, you can get the athletes much better racing shape without flirting with the red-line anaerobic over-trained state by using hills. In other words, like Kim shared with his experience, by doing hill training instead of track intervals, the runner would be more fresh and ready to go and, once they start racing, they improve from race to race. Two, I personally like to include some short slight downhill on the other side of the hill IF you do simply "running" workout over the hill, which I like to do seperate from the original Hill Phase. Rule of thumb for that is to start out steeper, longer hill at slower pace to less steep, shorter hill and run faster as races get closer. Anyways, if you include some very short, even 20m or so, downhill part after you go over the uphill section, you sort of get into the rhythm anc coast down in a very good leg-speed pace without struggling. I value this "good movement" or "good feeling in speed" a lot. I wouldn't "sprint" up the hill. I would run up at a strong relaxed pace.