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| Hill Sprints, Your New Best Friend? By Nathan Donahue Can't go to the gym but you know you have to train? Do you hate jogging with a passion but need some extra conditioning? Let me introduce you to your new best friend, hill sprints! Then try hill sprints! Hill sprints are one of the best tools in your training arsenal and are underutilized by almost all athletes. Hills sprints will improve lower body power, improve your conditioning, and allow you to train outside and away from the gym. Lower body power is one of the most important assist for any athlete. Squats are great for increasing leg strength for sure, but hill sprints offer a nice change. Think about, when sprinting a hill, you drive your entire body up an incline as forcefully and powerfully as possible. The will force your leg muscles to contract as quickly and as hard as possible to send you up the hill. Sprints are also unilateral, meaning one leg pushes at time, this will help improve muscular imbalance. Also, you are removing the load from your back. So, if you are always squatting but feeling stale, do hill sprints instead. Your legs will still get stronger, and the different stimulus will be refreshing. Hill sprints also improve ankle strength, ankle strength is forgotten by most athletes but it is very important for any sport that requires sudden changes in direction. Ever wonder why sprinters are so damn lean? A solid Sprint workout elevates your metabolism tremendously for about 24 hours. I am not sure of all the science behind it, but when I do a lot of sprinting, I lean out quickly and am always amazed at out much my appetite increases. If you train the sprints hard, in an interval format for example, you will be breathing hard and burning off that bacon. Also, you will be improving your conditioning while moving fast, not slow like jogging. You will be getting faster and leaner at the same time!!!! The best part about a hill sprints, is that they are FREE, and you can't do them for very long because they are some damn hard. I usually do about 20-30 sprint workouts with push ups mixed in and then I am spent. No 1-2 hours in the gym that day. Plus, I get to train in the sun, which I always love. To get started find a hill that is a least 60 m long and 10% or more inclined. I like short steep hills but any hill is better than no hill. For the first set I walk up the hill slowly, just warming up a bit. Then the next two or three i jog up the hill and walk down. After that I sprint up the hill, do about 10 push-ups or whatever, then jog down the hill. If your goal is conditioning try to rest no more than 30 seconds at the bottom. If you goal is speed and power, rest one minute then really blast up the hill. Your workout should last no more than 30 minutes from start to finish because you are too tired to sprint anymore and are really just jogging at the end. If you can go longer than 30 minutes, either focus on shorter rest times or increase the intensity by carrying or dragging something heavy. |