Uphill training tips

I'm reeeeally slow going uphill. What are the best tips for improvement?

My sense is that it is my cardio / aerobic fitness that is the weak link - not my legs. This based on the fact that on a 8.2k uphill/ downhill course my legs aren't hurting and still have plenty left in them for the downhill, but my heart rate was averaging about 94% of max on the climb and I am gasping for air.

In a field of about 100 runners, I was about 40th at the top and apparently really struggling compared to those around me. I made up around 15 places on the down, and would have gone faster if it wasn't for being held up on stretches of single track.

If my HR is right up there, am I blessed with a crap aerobic system, or is my training lacking something and can I improve my fitness? Are there things in my technique that could be making me work harder?

Thanks in advance...

Welcome Bena,

Are you at your best weight for the fells?

Leg strength needs considering.

When to run or walk?

I used to use a Garmin HR monitor and could determine how much to push, working on HR.
Once I was in the red I paid big time.
At 50yr old my tempo was 162-165 if I went over for any length of time I suffered and went backwards.
My Max was 182 at that time.

Thanks Stagger - I don't routinely wear a HR monitor but decided to do it to try to better understand why I'm slow on the up (I thought that perhaps I might need to just push harder in races).

My weight doesn't vary much. 10.5 stone/67kg. Been a couple of pounds lighter at times of intense training.
I'm 40 and my max HR tested by multiple hill reps is 180. I can normally get up to ~178 on a sprint finish.

Checking the stats, this particular race was 8.2km, and basically a straight up and down with a 320m climb. I (and everyone around me) was running, not walking the uphill. I had a heart rate of ~170. I held this HR for the duration of the race (uphill and downhill) and managed to increase it to 175 for the last 1.2km. At this HR I was breathing very heavily.

My assumption on these numbers is that I was working fairly hard, and it's not just a case of needing to push harder in the race, but that there is work to be done training...

Edited to add - Thanks for the welcome, but actually I'm not new to this forum. I lost my password to my original account and I didn't seem to be able to make the password recovery work or get any response form the admin, so I gave up and made a new account.

Good figures Bena. You have all the knowledge, it just needs putting in to practice.

Gym session to target specific muscles.

Hill reps to improve techniques.

Vary your hills, short 30sec medium 2-4mins long 8+mins
Also vary the gradient's.

Hope you show improvement and please keep posting your results.��

I would tentatively suggest a bit of treadmill work. Intervals of running uphill at the max gradient, followed by an interval of either flat fast running, or slow the treadmill down a little and fast uphill walking.

It's certainly worked for me in improving the "border line" between where I have to run and where I slow to a walk.

Speed work also helps. But if it's really those hands on knees extremely steep slogs which you need to improve, then I can't recommend much else other than getting out and doing steep hard climbs as much as possible.

First suggestion: train on the same steepness of hills as you're going to race. And train harder that you push in races. That way you can tell yourself "this is easier than Tuesday night's run". Mental games make all the difference.

Second suggestion: don't let it worry you. There are people who are great at climbing and those who aren't. Perhaps you're a natural descender. Work on your climbing, but don't neglect your strengths.

That limit you were at - pushing hard, short of breath, couldn't go faster if paid £1,000,000 - needs to be revisited in training - explore it, find a slope that enables you to enter it in a short period of time, recover by slowing/walking - then repeat as soon as you have started to recover - don't wait for full recovery. Spend 30 to 60 minutes doing this. And make sure you do a decent warm up before races - suffer a little bit in the warm up, and you will be able to do more before suffering in races.

Thanks for the suggestions guys - so basically some speed work and some strength work.
Any particular suggestions on gym work for legs?

My advice is train with folk who are faster than you and have a hard truthful look at your weight. Ben Mounsey took a big step up by losing some (and he ain't a porker). daz h of this parish did same in the past. It sounds daft but 10% off the weight of our dog has made a huge difference

The good news is I'm convinced improving uphill performance is easier than downhill. You can get better downhill with practice but the good descenders are born. Uphill is much more about physics conditioning and hard graft

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Originally Posted by bena

Thanks for the suggestions guys - so basically some speed work and some strength work.
Any particular suggestions on gym work for legs?

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I'd go for cycling rather than gym work. It isolates your quads and is reasonably transferable to uphill running. It also has a lower risk of injury and is more enjoyable. However, opinion is divided in these parts - where's CL to voice the benefits of weight training?

noel, I was going to suggest exactly the same. Hard rideable mountain biking has certainly helped me in the (distant) past and has to be better than pumping iron with a load of muscle-heads

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Originally Posted by Derby Tup

noel, I was going to suggest exactly the same. Hard rideable mountain biking has certainly helped me in the (distant) past and has to be better than pumping iron with a load of muscle-heads

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I train in a gym with a very heavy reputation as a "weights gym" or if you like "muscle heads".

To be honest, it's quite a serious gym, whether lifting weights, boxing, rugby, or myself running. So really I just get left alone to do my thing, which they know I'm serious about. To be honest it works well as I've got the pick of the cardio equipment and not much competition for using it!

I do weights... squats generally, and a very limited amount of leg machine work (there's a discussion about this somewhere else recently, with myself, CL, and a few others all chipping in our two-penneth's worth...

Certainly weights should not be discounted totally. You can do squats without weights, or even with weights to some extent, without ever setting foot in a gym.

Squats are good. I wasn't discounting gym culture; more expressing my love of exercise outdoors. I completely changed the shape of my legs with the 200 squat challenge plus 10,000 ft of climb. The change seems to be largely permanent

Interesting thread because I 'suffer' from exactly the same problem. Downhill speeds are pleasing and I can keep pace and even overtake people but as soon as hit a climb I seem to stall and people glide past me. However, I've been working on it and things seem to be improving. I'll share a recent example and then explain how I think the improvement has happened.

Duddon Valley Fell Race: I've done the race about 8 times and typically finish in around 3hrs 50 - 4hrs 10. Typical split times (on 2 of the climbs) are around 46 mins from the start to top of Harter Fell and around 35 mins from Three Shires to Swirl How. This year I finished in 3hrs 35 with noticeable differences in times on the climbs: 42 mins to Harter Fell and 33 mins to Swirl How. I'm still losing a bit of ground on those around me but not as much as previous years and not as much that I can't claw it back again. More importantly, I'm not as tired on these climbs and have enough left to go again when I get to the top.

The plan: I don't do a huge amount of training (20-30 miles a week with around 6-8,000ft of climbing) but I have tried to be more specific this year. This is what I think has made the biggest difference (in no particular order):

1. I've lost 2-3lbs in weight. Still have more to lose. But this has to be a factor.
2. Training: 1 tempo run of around 4 miles/1, 000ft climbing; 1 hill rep session - typically, 10*1 min hill reps on steep ground (scope for harder sessions here); 1 longer run of around 10 miles with big climbs e.g. red pike from buttermere; a couple of easy morning jogs.
3. Racing - do as many races as you can. I work so much harder in a race.
4. Cycling: I've replaced a morning jog with a 10 mile bike ride. I'm not a cyclist but my quads do work harder on some of the climbs than if I just went out on an easy jog.
5. Recovery - rest your body between races. have a couple of days off(even a week after a race) does me wonders.

Hope that helps a little. Good luck with it all. the body can be trained.

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Originally Posted by noel

I'd go for cycling rather than gym work. It isolates your quads and is reasonably transferable to uphill running. It also has a lower risk of injury and is more enjoyable. However, opinion is divided in these parts - where's CL to voice the benefits of weight training?

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But cycling doesn't isolate the quads. It is actually a compound movement. And what is a bicycle if not an exercise machine?

Until you've trained under the supervision of a competent person on a resistance/weight training program you really don't know what hard training is. And if you haven't you're not really in a position to make comparisons.

Oh and finding a competent person is almost impossible even amongst qualified people. So if you decide to have a go good luck with that.

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Originally Posted by CL

But cycling doesn't isolate the quads. It is actually a compound movement. And what is a bicycle if not an exercise machine?

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FWIW, i find cycling very effective at isolating the lateral quads, i can tell this from what it does to my kneecap tracking. If you look at pro cyclists, it seems to show on them i think.

I've been doing a lot of weight work recently, as i have no idea when i'll be running again. I use the 45deg inclined press, the one used in a seated position. I don't always take the carriage off its catches, just working through the last 8 inches of the press really targets the medial aspect. You can fire the carriage up really aggressively to train your muscles to produce as close to 100% power as fast as possible, rather than a nice controlled lift; this wouldn't be ideal from a deeper position and would likely result in injury, but i get really good results and isolation in the VMO. I can knock it off the catches an do deeper sets if i wish. I only load it up with 100kg, that way you can rep up into the 30s which simulates climbing very closely. You don't get the stability aspect of using a free bar, but i wouldn't want that anyway, i do stability in different ways.

For what it is worth my attempts to get faster uphill has made me think a lot about how to get better...this is kind of what I've tried and has worked for me. I'm no expert and it's a long post but there might be something of some use to you.

1) If you want to run fast hill (you finished in the top 40% so any real improvement would be taking you probably into the top 30 at least) so you first of all have to look at the amount of real speed you have to play with. Fast hill runners are fast runners on the flat and there's a definite correlation. There's the odd runner who has an uncanny knack for ascending quickly (usually with a caveat like super steep) but generally your top end climbing speed is well linked to flat pace. There's a little deviation but not as much is made out sometimes.

2) Running uphill is certifiably the best way of improving uphill speed. Hills at any time are great in training. I try to put them in pretty much every run in some way, except for the odd flat tempo session which will probably have less than 30ft of climb per mile. Hill reps are good, as is running uphills in steady runs as tempo efforts and even slogging around a long hilly run. I'm lucky enough to enjoy running uphills so I don't mind it too much.

3) When I do this in conjunction with some faster running at some other time (usually a flat tempo run or an interval session on the road) I reap the benefits of this even more. I've been running strongly uphill- by my average standard - on two occasions in the past three years, both times I was combining good speed work on the flatter stuff and a lot of hills in my running. I don't do silly-short reps or but I mix up track and road stuff to get a bit more top end speed.

4) Strength work is a massive help. One of my biggest problems with running hills has always been a tendency to keel over a little and probably have too weak quads for the picking my legs up. I've tried to sort that out by doing a fair bit of core work: various planks, supermans, pull-ups, press-ups and also deadlifts. I've always done a bit of outright strength stuff like a chest day or arms and stuff but really that's maybe a couple of easy days a month - it does help though and you won't get ridiculously big like some people think. A lot of fell runners think they'll do a few press-ups and then all of a sudden they'll be getting cast as Arnie in the new Predator reboot and no longer able to get around a BOFRA on a Saturday afternoon. Strength work is a really good thing to look at seriously as a way to improve, it's certainly helped me loads over the past three years I've been doing more of it with my running. It's one of those things where as I've improved at it my running has always improved as well...it's also a good thing to do on a rest day! I don't really do any leg specific stuff like quads, calves, hamstrings etc because I like to rest my legs so I can run hard in more sessions...it's a choice made at the moment out of what I enjoy doing more but if I seem to plateau I'll look to add more in for certain. The one thing I do frequently (sometimes daily) deadlifts with a light weight (bodyweight), generally I do it when I've had a bit of a niggling injury in my leg as they seem to be a miracle cure and they really hit the legs.

4) Recently when I've been thinking about my uphill running I've noticed a lot that I can blow up quite hard from running too quickly at the bottom. I've started trying to make sure that when I'm climbing my breathing is completely regulated and I'm not blowing too hard. Usually the speed difference between breathing heavily on a climb or keeping it calm and controlled isn't too far apart in terms of speed and it's always better to be getting time back at the top than trying to clutch onto seconds as people reovertake you after half the climb. I've practised this a lot on running a lot of steady hills at tempo pace but concentrating on being on that edge for breathing controlled. Obviously you might have the mental pain to push on that much harder side of hard on a climb and not bonk - for me I'm working towards that but it's a long slog (much like most hills.

In short, to try and get better uphill I've had to do more uphill running, do strength work and also seriously look at improving my absolute pace on the flat. Breathing is a good thing and might be worth a look at as well whilst you're doing those things.

A really long answer that I enjoyed writing more than intended. I'm no expert either so take it with a pinch of salt, they're pretty logical though and loads of people would recommend them, I'm pretty much just repeating various things I've read and tried myself - these are the ones which I enjoy and seem to help me improve. I'm always trying to consider what to do improve more, usually as a side thought when I'm running up a hill and I promise myself I'm going to do more yoga, more leg strength work, more reps, more everything. Just pick some things and try them - eventually you'll find some things which work and are fun.

Happy running.

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Breathing is a good thing and might be worth a look at

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yes, I reccommend breathing. It's got a lot going for it :p

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Originally Posted by Dave_Mole

yes, I reccommend breathing. It's got a lot going for it :p

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Top banter!

Interesting about weight loss/gain. I put on about 10lb on purpose last year as my wife said I was too skinny-I don't think I was 6'2 and 11st5. I'm now up to 12st-not exactly fat mind you. Been doing the same amount of running but eating more and doing more strength work. I've really noticed my uphill times slowing, about 10% on a long climb. On the flat and downhill I'm fine-well as fine as I get. I just assumed I was past it (47) but maybe its lugging the extra bulk about?

How many middle aged women complain that their husband is too skinny? I think you're in the minority there.

I hope her enjoyment of your new love handles more than offsets the disappointment of being slower up hills.

Thankfully Mrs Noel likes me skinny. :)

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Originally Posted by noel

How many middle aged women complain that their husband is too skinny? I think you're in the minority there.

I hope her enjoyment of your new love handles more than offsets the disappointment of being slower up hills.

Thankfully Mrs Noel likes me skinny. :)

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Less of the 'love handles' please. It's pure muscle!

Neilly i am also 6ft2" and i am betwen 12.5 and 12.75 stone, and i am far from overweight. I am maybe fairly well built for a typical fell runner, but i think when you are tall, and dare i say it, lanky(!!) like us, it is a fine line. Certainly i used to compete at Kickboxing at a smidgen under 12 stone and i was very skinny, so it's amazing how much a small amount of weight can change appearance.

I could probably get away with being 80kg but i'd not really want my 'walk round' weight to be much lower than that, but we're all built differently.

As to whether it makes a difference to uphill running i can't say, i've been hovering around this weight, give or take a few pounds, since i've been fell running. But as someone who once strayed over 100kg in my bad days, carrying a rucsac is no issue to me as it probably still weighs less that what i used to be lugging round on my waist!

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Originally Posted by neilly

Interesting about weight loss/gain. I put on about 10lb on purpose last year as my wife said I was too skinny-I don't think I was 6'2 and 11st5. I'm now up to 12st-not exactly fat mind you. Been doing the same amount of running but eating more and doing more strength work. I've really noticed my uphill times slowing, about 10% on a long climb. On the flat and downhill I'm fine-well as fine as I get. I just assumed I was past it (47) but maybe its lugging the extra bulk about?

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tbf thats abot 14-15% increase in weight so is bound to have affect I'd guess.

I'm also 6' 2" and tend to be around 12st 6 - 4lb at January. I then have recently been trying to get to sub 12st. On the couple of occasions I've managed I have certainly performed better....core, strength etc have helped also recently. Also I fair few years ago I noted how the step machine definately assisted my afforts on the Ben Nevis Race, admittedly starting at a pretty low point climb wise.

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Originally Posted by that_fjell_guy

tbf thats abot 14-15% increase in weight so is bound to have affect I'd guess.

I'm also 6' 2" and tend to be around 12st 6 - 4lb at January. I then have recently been trying to get to sub 12st. On the couple of occasions I've managed I have certainly performed better....core, strength etc have helped also recently. Also I fair few years ago I noted how the step machine definately assisted my afforts on the Ben Nevis Race, admittedly starting at a pretty low point climb wise.

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Not that it's really important, but I reckon it's more like a 6% increase in weight rather than 14-15%

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Originally Posted by Travs

Not that it's really important, but I reckon it's more like a 6% increase in weight rather than 14-15%

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When I look at photos of me at 11,5 I've got the 'skeletor' look going on, which isnt great. I doubt I can blame my poor performance on my weight, theres plenty of bigger runners out there faster than me. Im just looking for a quick fix!

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Originally Posted by Travs

Not that it's really important, but I reckon it's more like a 6% increase in weight rather than 14-15%

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Wouldn't surprise me with my maths!! :rolleyes:

A good tip for uphill running is to lift the front leg (knee) rather than pushing off from the back leg (calf). Some people (me included) use the calf too much. As well as overloading the calf this causes more ground contact which can slow pace and lean a runner too far forward. Concentrating on lifting the knee first (you will naturally use calf then just after).

Another one is increasing cadence where possible. Best way to achieve this in practice is to imagine it as running one gear easier (like cycling)for the same speed.

Takes a little getting used to but if there are efficiency issues improvements may be made be these adjustments.