The Ups and Downs of Hill Running

Ken Mierke and Joe Friel

Imagine racing stride for stride with a runner who is just a bit stronger than you. With heart rate redlined, breathing right on the edge of being out –of control, and legs burning, you know you won’t last much longer at this speed. The road turns downhill and you squirt forward as if propelled by a rocket-booster, gapping your stunned opponent. By the end of the downhill, you have a 20-yard lead, heart rate and breathing have returned to sustainable levels and your legs feel bouncy again. This doesn’t have to remain a fantasy. With a thorough understanding of ideal techniques for running hills, consistent concentration and a little hard work you can run faster on hills while expending less energy.

Stair Stepping

Most runners use the stair-step technique to run downhill, creating horizontal propulsion and allowing gravity to pull them down to the ground. The muscles must contract forcefully for propulsion (instead of using gravity) which prevents physical recovery during down-hills.

Stair-step running dramatically increases landing impact, requiring more forceful contractions to “catch” bodyweight at impact and increasing the risk for injuries. This stair-step style of “brake-propel-brake-propel” slows a runner and uses much more energy. If you feel like you hit the ground much harder running downhill than on flat terrain, you are definitely a stairstepper. Instead, learn to roll down the hills. You’ll run much faster, use less energy, and reduce the damage of hard landings.

Roll Down the Hills

Gravity provides most of the propulsion required to run fast downhill. Efficient downhill runners avoid using much energy in either braking or propulsion. Gravity provides plenty of power if you learn how to use it.

Here’s a key point to consider before moving on: Running down hills slowly requires much more energy than running down them fast.

The wheel provides the best insight into optimal downhill biomechanics. On a flat road, a wheel’s center of support is directly under its center of mass and provides perfectly horizontal movement.

Downhill, however, these dynamics change. The orientation between a wheel’s center of support and center of mass rotates with the grade. The wheel’s center of support is behind its center of mass. The wheel will roll parallel to the slope instead of perfectly horizontally.

Efficient downhill runners actually place their foot down behind their hip. This is a difficult movement to perfect because it feels like falling forward. Efficient runners do, in fact, fall forward in a controlled manner with minimal braking. As the grade gets steeper, they lean slightly further forward and maintain a somewhat similar body position relative to the ground as when running on a flat road.
With optimal run technique, the runner’s center if mass always travels in a line almost parallel with the slope of the ground. The force of gravity is used to provide propulsion instead of causing a harder landing. Remember, it takes more energy to fight gravity and slow down than it does to run down quickly and smoothly working with gravity.

The real key to this technique is putting your foot down actually behind your hips. It sounds simple, but it takes practice to establish the correct foot-strike placement. As your leg swings forward, put your foot down much earlier than you do now. When you get it right, you’ll feel yourself squirt forward at foot-strike with no attempt to provide propulsion. Your natural reaction to that will be to reach forward with the other foot and brake to regain “balance”. Fight that tendency. Maintaining balance does not have to mean slowing down. Put the other foot down behind the hips and squirt forward again. Learn to stay light on your feet, turn your legs over very quickly, and avoid braking. Let gravity do the work of propelling.

When coasting downhill on a bike, the bike’s orientation to the road is no different from when riding on the flats and the wheels serve only to hold the rider up. Gravity provides all propulsion. Learning to run downhill this way is extremely efficient. Lean forward, allow your legs to support your weight, and let gravity provide almost all the propulsion.

Bounce Up Hills

Most triathletes realize that maintaining cadence during uphill cycling is critical. They watch beginning cyclists struggle up hills at 60 rpm, wondering mockingly why they don’t shift gears. Then they run up hills doing the same thing as the cyclist they just scoffed at.

• Maintain High Turnover. Maintaining turnover uphill is important for the same reasons as in cycling, plus one major additional reason. Runners gain significant power from the elasticity of the tissues in their feet and calves. When contact time between the foot and ground is too long, this power is lost.
Efficient runners allow uphills to reduce stride length instead of turnover. This enables them to gain power from the elastic response of their legs just as they do on flat roads. Optimal speed is maintained and muscular fatigue is minimized.

• Drive the Knee Up the Hill. To enable the backward and downward foot-strike, the knee must be brought up much higher during leg recovery and the knee remains bent to a much more acute angle until the foot-drag-and-knee-extension movement begins. Driving the knee powerfully upward puts the leg in position to drive downward into the ground, pre-stretch the muscles, and provide both upward and forward propulsion. Using the gluteus maximus, hamstring, and quadriceps muscles together is critical.

• Kick the Ground. When running up hills, pull your foot back and down into the ground, actually feeling like you are kicking the ground. Don’t just wait for gravity to pull you down into the ground, initiate the contact aggressively. Keep contact time between your feet and the ground minimal. Get this right and you’ll feel the same bounce as on flat roads.

Concentrate on your technique on hills, both up and down, in training. A little bit of specific work on your technique will pay huge dividends on race day.

Summary

Downhill
Lean downhill keeping the body in a straight line from the foot to the hip to the shoulder.
Put your foot down early on the leg recovery – behind the hips.
The hips travel parallel with the road instead of “stair-stepping”.

Uphill
Maintain the same high turnover used on flat-ground running.
Drive the knees powerfully toward the top of hill.
Pull the foot back down into ground with a powerful motion.
Minimize contact time between feet and ground – feel the “bounce”.

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Posted: February 16, 2006