Have you ever altered your running route just to avoid a hill? These running hills tips will help change your mindset, so that even if you don’t love them…you might just start to seek them out.
Ok maybe that’s taking it a bit too far, but at least we’re going to help you learn to embrace them. The benefits to running hills are huge, which is why we’ve dedicated a whole article to that and why every single runner we have starts a new training cycle with hill repeats.
Once you’ve mentally decided you’re onboard for all the benefits, building leg strength and power, then our next step is making sure that you get the most out of these runs. That means helping you become more efficient and smarter with running hills.
7 Tips for How to Run Hills
What if a few changes could making running hills feel easier and make your time spent there more useful? They can! So let’s work on them.
One of the most common mistakes runners make is incorrect form when tackling a behemoth of a hill. Your gait is in fact going to change and will change more with the steepness of the hill.
- Shorter stride
- Less intensity
- Change your arm swing
- Stay tall
- Fuel up
Hill training is actually one of the best ways to improve your overall running form. Use these hill running techniques to get up and over feeling better.
Optimize Your Stride
Rather than extending your stride as if trying to power up the hill, shorten it. It might feel awkwardly short at first, but this will increase foot turn over and requires a great deal less effort.
Think about picking your knee up, which you’ll see in the example of Kilian below. You’re going for that optimal stride you often see with sprinters on the track.
A shorter stride will increase your cadence, it will help drive the knee forward and keep you in a bit of a forward lean.
Conserve Energy
Stop attacking hills, unless you’re doing a hill interval workout. Charging up hill is just wasting energy that you could be using to gain speed on the downhill or maintain your pace later.
Instead, focus on maintaining the effort of your run prior to the hill. In fact, one of the keys to good downhill speed is not being exhausted from the uphill.
Upper Cut Arm Swing
ChiRunning says to imagine that you’re punching someone in front of you with an upper cut. This is to say your arms stay at your sides, but punch up instead of just forward to help propel you.
Once again, you want to ensure your arms are being used to propel you, not just hanging by your sides and not crossing in front of your body.
In fact, many trail runners like to utilize trekking poles which help you to stabilize yourself on the steep inclines, declines and technical parts. HUGE bonus because you’re now getting a full body workout!
Pictured here Killian Jornet doing the upper cut, lifting his knees and landing on forefoot…yeah he’s kinda of an amazing runner.
Practice Perfect Posture
When we get tired, we look down and our shoulders start to slump…this is not going to make getting up the hill easier. In fact it’s going to make breathing harder and slow you down, so pretend someone is at the top and a rope is attached to your hips and pulling.
Imagery is a great tool used by a lot of elite runners, why wouldn’t you attempt it as well?
Visualize a rope around your waist pulling you to the top. This can mentally conserve energy or help to keep your chest up and pulling forward.
Don’t Bend
Adding to the above tip about keeping your head up and chest forward, is don’t bend at the waist. Again this tends to be something we do as we fatigue, but it’s cutting off your air supply and messing up your gait.
Remember you want to stay tall and if it’s getting this hard, then see the tip below about walking!
Fuel for the Effort
Hills increase your heart rate, at which point your body switches from fat to carbs for fuel. Ingesting some carbs prior to hitting steep or hilly portions of a longer training run can be beneficial.
This could mean taking a shot blok 5 minutes before you start hitting hills or after you’ve warmed up and are ready to take on a hill workout.
Downhill runs are a whole different beast, which is why I’ve written a separate post about it! You need to change your form to save your knees and learn how to take advantage of the flow for race day PR’s.
Walk if Needed
Trail runners call this power hiking and it’s a secret weapon to running ultramarathons.
It’s not failing. It’s looking at how your energy is being spent and if running is worth the effort. Hills are going to increase heart rate for everyone, across the board. However, the more adapted to hills that you become you’ll notice you can run farther and farther before your HR is jumping out of Zone 2.
If you’re supposed to be on an easy run and your HR keeps going to Zone 4 every time you hit a hill, then power walk. Keep your easy run, east.
How Often Should You Be Running Hills?
As with all things running remember our rules about not adding too much too soon. If you’ve been generally sticking to the flat areas, then we don’t want you to suddenly only do hilly routes.
Because you’re going to work your quads, calves and ankles differently running both up and down that’s a recipe for disaster.
Instead, I encourage you to look at the vertical gain from your recent runs and then see if you can slowly increase that amount on a few runs per week. It’s ok to still have days that are flatter, but try to overtime work to stop avoiding your hilly route options.
One of the most exciting things while training is to find a long hill and watch as each week you’re able to run more and more of it. Or maybe that’s exciting to me because it’s how I started! But I still use that as my gauge when looking at HR and where my fitness is at.
All right, no more running excuses! Now you know the benefits of hill running, I’m absolutely positive there will be fights over space on every nearby hill.
Looking for more great training tips? Start here!
- Tips to Train for a Hilly Race
- Tips for Running in the Wind
- How Altitude Impacts Running Performance
- Beginner Trail Running Tips
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I am a hill lover! Or at least I used to be! I started long-distance running in NYC and Charlottesville, so it was all hills, all the time! So I could beastmode up them… but now that I'm in Chicago, I've gotten injured because it is so flat. I'm all about the hill!
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Yes I used to LOVE them and sought them out, but since moving to Florida and then Orlando it's become nearly impossible! I have had to get creative!
Those are great hill training tips! That's one thing I don't do enough of. Where I run at lunch, it's quite flat! I might have to use some stairs to do my hills training.
Awesome post…I love me some hills. My running group is actually called the Selden Hills Warriors and we run a 6.2 mile course with about 500 feet of elevation. So obviously I can't say enough good things about hill running! People keep joining our group because they see the amazing progress we all are making by running the hills regularly.
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That's so cool!! I fully agree that hills make a massive difference, love that your group is getting more people on it!!
confession, i love hill runnin! it makes us stronger! yes, and form is key! I learned that the hard way.
Yup I dig it too…again another reason we need to move in as neighbors :)
Love hills. I prefer the uphill!!!
I RARELY run hills when I'm in Florida (because, you know, it's Florida), but this summer I'm in NYC and run hills all the time. They are unavoidable! But a month into regularly running them I definitely feel stronger.
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It's crazy how much I hated that Florida was flat when I moved here, I miss that strong feeling!
Great tips. I feel like I've got downhill running down. Some people slow themselves so much on the downhill and I just think you're hurting your knees and giving up free energy. That's when I make up time. Uphills however I'm working on. I ran Seattle marathon and it was pretty hilly.
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I agree, downhill is really hard for a lot of people which they don't even realize until they relax
Great post! I recently moved to an area with hills, and I already feel so much stronger. For 5 years I ran in a totally flat area, and I would suffer big time in hilly races. Now I am feeling way more confident with hills but I also feel like its helped me in general to become a stronger runner!
Hi Amanda! I think they key idea here is that you have to make yourself do hard things to see a change and get better. Same goes with all types of fitness and sports. Great tips here, which I know I can use just walking around hilly San Francisco. :)
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Heck ya SF is a killer workout any day of the week!
Since leaving Texas on our RV adventure, I've found tons of hills to run on in preparation for the Missoula Marathon coming up. I've focused on effort instead of pace, like you mentioned, and it helps when the hills slow me down.
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I love trail running. I'm only sad it took me this long in life to discover it. Now it's just way too hot in Phoenix to trail run. I won't be back on the trails until the winter. Great tips Amanda!
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I have learned to love hills. I do one hill repeat run a week. I live by lots of hills so just about every run I do has at least one hill in it!
As a former Midwesterner, I was used to flat running and avoided hills, but after a rough race where I burnt myself out on some early hills, I try to train for them more. Now, I mix it up with some flat running, some hillier running, and always add hills in when I'm running on the treadmill.
I don't have a choice about running hills – as soon as I walk out my door I have a choice – up or down! I'm running the Revel Canyon City marathon in November – over 5,500' of elevation loss so I'm starting to focus on better downhill running form. Thanks for the tips.
Getting ready to hit some hills today!
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Haha yep, I've definitely mapped out running routes just to avoid hills – mostly on runs over 10 miles :) I do love adding hill repeats into my training because it does help. I don't think I've ever run a race without any hills, but my hilliest was probably the Zion Half marathon which has a constant uphill gain with some big hills thrown in the middle and end. The scenery was worth it though!
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when we moved to austin in 2000 I had delusions of running.
I thought texas was ALL FLAT! :-)
nope…
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HIll workouts are by far my least favorite workout, but I do hem when my coach puts them on my schedule because I know I need them. I just did hill repeats yesterday, and I definitely was muttering about having to do them. Now I'm just really happy it's over and I won't have to do them again for probably another few weeks. Thanks for the great tips on technique!
I use the treadmill for my hill workout. Should I change from this at all, higher incline vs shorter distance vs speed? 7.5 incline and 7.1 speed for 1/4 mile up and then back to 0 for 1/4 mile then repeat. I live in Winnipeg which is very flat, but run the TCM in Minneapolis every year which ends on a long incline that I have to be ready for.
Thanks!
I definitely need to work hills into my schedule more often. They don’t happen naturally despite living in Utah…most of the area for miles around my house are flat as a pancake. Once the snow melts off the trails though, I’ll have to drive out towards the mountains for some great trail/hill running to supplement my half marathon training! https://runningmybestlife.com/half-marathon-training-diaries-week-1/
Thanks for the post! I’m all about the rolling hills. This way you don’t have to think about creating hill reps or intervals. You just run!
I’d love to know your thoughts on purposely seeking out flat training runs. In the past, I’ve always had more injuries when I’ve been training in flatter areas. But does that mean flat is all bad? Is the repetitive motion of your feet hitting the ground in the same fashion a bad thing, or something we should get our body accustomed to.
Having trained in FL where it is super flat for years, I didn’t have any higher rate of injury. I do think the muscles adapt, but you definitely lose the strength that come from hills.