Seriously mate? wrote:
Um bullcrap on a 35 DEGREE hill you were "sprinting up." That would appear to be a nearly vertical hill and you would be lucky to crawl up that kind of grade. A 45 degree hill equates to a 100% grade (for every 1 meter you move horizontally you move 1 meter vertically) so a 35 degree hill would be, what? 70-80% grade? I don't think so.
George Ilie wrote:35 degrees is like this:
http://etc.usf.edu/clipart/42000/42006/pro_35_42006_lg.gifActually I was alternating the hill sprints with stairs sprints. The stairs and the hill were side by side.
I don't think I was pushing 100%, but I was definitely close to depletion.
What surprises me is that scientists and coaches didn't figured out why or how the hills improve the performance.
And I did ;) But I don't know how to take advantage of this information.
Yeah it's ridiculously steep and he probably means 35/2 - 17.5 degrees which is still steeper than any mountain climb in the Tour de France for instance.
But he might have just been making minimal progress up it, and still going full gas and still making useful gains. No problem in mixing a ridiculously steep hill in with a few more reasonable inclines.
Hills allow you/ require you to reach higher maximal force generated by your legs, that's why they are useful. Think - how far can I go by taking only 10 steps? If you can improve your maximal stride length, then each stride at say 60 sec/ 400m is a lower percentage of your maximum, which is good. Of course, to be able to maintain that lower percentage of your maximum longer, you'll need to do aerobic and speed endurance training too. Doing hill sprints at less than 80% of your maximal speed doesn't increase your maximal force nearly as much as doing them at full speed does.
But if you're "depleted" or at all tired when doing a hill sprint, you're not using maximal force, so the benefit is minimal.
That said, doing some repetitions at 50%-90% max speed up a steep hill is good muscular preparation for building up to doing max sprints. Don't jump one day and decide to do a set of all out hill sprints if you're not prepared, take some time to do a few weeks of 60%-80% effort up a steep hill for 5-20 seconds just to get used to it, and you will benefit more once you start the maximal intensity.
