Have you ever been running up a hill and find that your calves are on fire and your lungs are bursting? Read this to improve your uphill running technique and make your next run up a hill more fun!
The good news is that even if you aren’t one of the lucky few that instinctively knows how to run uphill, you can learn great form and technique to practice on your next hill run. Given time, patience and consistency, much like all your training, you’ll improve. Running hills is great strength work, even as part of a long or easy run. However, if this is new to you, remember to approach change gradually and let your muscles adapt to the hills over time.
Uphill Running Mechanics
Let’s think about the mechanics of running up a hill compared to running on the flat. Your feet need to be lifted a little higher because the ground in front of you is higher up. If you don’t do this, your toes will bang into the slope. Let’s take it to the extreme – consider walking up stairs. To achieve this, you have to engage the hip flexors to lift your knees far higher than you would when walking on the flat.
If you have stairs in your house, try running up the stairs quickly. Note how high you have to bring your knees and how firmly you have to press your feet on the steps to make progress. Also note that you instinctively add a little safety height to ensure you actually make it on to each step without tripping. Give it a go now.
So now, it should be clear that a bigger range of motion is required for uphill running technique, but it’s not just that the legs are moving more. Your ankles and calves are also put under more stress because the angle of the slope forces the ankle to flex more as the foot comes upwards towards the shin (“Dorsiflexion”). If the slope is shallow, you will still be able to get your heel down with each step, but if it’s steep and short, you might find you have to spring up the hill on the balls of your feet only. That extra ankle bend on the shallow slopes and forefoot-only style on the steep slopes can be very stressful to the legs as a whole, putting more stress on the calf, Achilles tendon and hamstring. If you are new to hills, then your legs need time to adapt to all these new ranges of motion, so I’d suggest starting with just running some hills at an easy pace, rather than diving straight into a fast hills session.
Uphill Running Technique
Since your feet need to be lifted higher when running uphill, you’ll need to know how to physically move your legs to achieve this. The key is something called “Knee Drive”. If you haven’t come across this term before, you can find more detail in this article about ideal running form. In the context of uphill running, the quicker you can drive the knee up and forwards, using the hip flexors, the higher the foot will lift up off the floor. Next time you are running up a hill, try driving your knees up a little faster and further.
Maintain a relaxed lift off. Avoid pushing behind you too much while running uphills, because the calves will suffer. Instead depend more in the hip flexors to do the heavy lifting. Experiment with what it feels like to do lots of triple extension pushing down against the ground and then note how it compares to focus all your efforts on lifting the knee up again as soon as the foot has touched the ground. You’ll find the latter is easier on the calves.
When placing the feet back on the ground again (while running uphill), avoid spending too long landing just on the forefoot – your calves and Achilles will feel it! Instead, try to place the foot flat on the slope, with the heel touching down either straight after the forefoot or at the same time – the important bit is that the heel touches the ground:
It’s not possible to heed this advice when running up very steep slopes though, where you’ll have no option but to run up on your forefoot. However, you can’t run up those for very long anyway before running out of energy and needing to walk / hike:
While you are running uphill, your foot will touch back on the ground slightly sooner than normal too, because the ground is higher and closer to you with each step. Therefore the foot will have had slightly less time to whip back down underneath the body, so landing a little further in front of you than would be normal when running on the flat. If it’s a short hill, you don’t need to worry about this, but if it’s a long or steeper hill you will need to take shorter steps to maintain good running form. The easiest way to make your steps shorter is to take quicker steps, i.e. a faster cadence / step rate (steps per minute). If you are aiming to make it up the hill without losing much speed, the higher cadence will also help with that.
You need a slight forward lean from the ankles (not the waist!) to enable you to flow up the hill, but don’t lean into the slope too much, otherwise you risk too much pressure on your calves.
What about the rest of your body? One of the functions of the arms is to drive the elbows backwards and oppose the action of the knees driving up and forwards. If the legs are coming higher off the floor on hills, you’ll need to drive the elbows back harder. Have another go running up the stairs really fast, this time focusing on what it feels like for your elbows and arms. You’ll notice the increased elbow drive needed.
It’s easy to start looking at the floor while running up a hill – your eyes might be drawn to your feet for safety reasons or just from the effort. This isn’t great, because you’ll end up slumping over at the waist. Keep your head up. Look up the hill a little bit at where you are going. Be confident that you are already lifting your feet up enough, with knee drive, to avoid tripping. You are going to need this confidence even more on the downhills. Every now and then flick your eyes down to the ground 5-10m in front of you to check for hazards – if you are looking straight down, by the time you notice a hazard, it’s already too late. Then get back to looking at the road or trail up ahead of you.
Next, let’s think about the effort level required during uphill running. To raise your mass up a hill requires more effort than just travelling forwards on the flat. If you want to maintain pace, your heart rate and effort level will rise accordingly. Or you can slow down to keep your effort level constant, which is nicely facilitated already by the shorter steps required for good form. Manage your effort level according to your current fitness – slow down before you have to.
Finally on really steep hills that you need to walk, you can save energy by leaning forward and pressing your thighs with your hands while walking, also known as power-hiking. Be sure to keep lifting and bending your knees properly while doing this.
Uphill Running Technique Summary
- Practice is essential, but hills should be approached gradually if you haven’t done any before
- Drive knees higher
- Bias towards using the hip flexors to lift the knees, rather than pushing behind you with the feet
- Ensure heels touch the ground, unless it’s really steep
- Take shorter, quicker steps to maintain good form
- Lean from the ankles, not the waist
- Increase elbow drive backwards
- Keep head up, looking up the hill
- Manage your effort level
Shoes on the hills
Shoes come in a variety of “drops”. This refers to the difference in height between the heel and the forefoot. Some are flat, so zero drop. Others are higher at the heel than the forefoot, so have a measurable drop. Shoes with a higher drop are going to be more fun on the uphills because the ankle won’t have to endure quite the same range of motion. Shoes with a lower drop are going to be more fun on the downhills because they won’t tip the feet forward as much. This is just something to be aware of if you have more than one pair of shoes and you’ll come to your own conclusions on what works best for you overall.
Now you know how to run uphill, how about downhill?
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