By Hayden Shearman
Hills add another dimension to your training that can lead to injury if you’re not careful about recovering properly. Here are four tips to make sure you’re banking away the savings from a great hill session.
- 48 Hours Easy … At Least! The absolute key to recovering from any hard running is time without hard workouts. For a hill session like we’re doing this week in the Workout of the Week, it would be two days minimum of rest or easy runs. But if you’re new to running or new to hill running or older or have injury issues, it could be a lot more than just two days.
- Active Recovery: Over that recovery time, you don’t just want to sit all day. You want some active recovery to promote blood flow. Things like walking, swimming, cycling and yoga are great for encouraging optimum recovery blood flow.
- Calves! Your calves get particularly nailed when running uphill fast. The extra range of motion and increased power required to run uphill, will make them tight and possibly sore. So, spend more time foam rolling, massaging and stretching the lower leg in particular.
- Stay Mobile: With any hard running, the muscles tend stiffen afterwards and tend towards ever shorter and shorter ranges of motion. Counteract this by doing a bit more stretching, drills and yoga. You don’t necessarily need to become more flexible, but you most definitely don’t want to lose range of motion.
