You know the part of the race when you feel you’ve hit the wall? Maybe you are on a hill or the flattest section of the course. Your mind is telling your legs and arms to drive, but your muscles are crying out for mercy. We are demanding them to perform at a rate at which they are not conditioned. Our body cannot supply the blood and oxygen that our hip flexors (in particular) are requiring to meet the demands of our heads.

Hip flexor muscles or iliopsoas consist of iliacus and psoas major muscles. These enable you to move your thighs towards the stomach area and are also some of the most important muscles for cyclists, recruited during the pulling up phase.

At least you’ve done your mental homework. But have you neglected working regular hill drills into your routine? Perhaps you do them but don’t know why. Do you vary the type of workouts?

One of the best ways to strengthen those hip flexors and in turn improve the power of our swing phase is to do hill repeats. As we gain strength, our chances of getting injured are diminished. Not only will we finesse our charges on inclines and finish line kicks on flats, but hill repeats also increase our mental confidence. Once you’ve done 15 X 2:00 of a tough hill, one minute of climbing a similar incline in a race will feel easy. It often surprises people that running hills improves speed.

Actually, running hills is speed work in disguise. Your effort will increase as you run up a hill, even if you reduce your pace. Moving your body up the hill requires more work than moving it along a flat surface. Hill running is equivalent to throwing in a surge on the flats. So, in a race, the best way to run a hill is to maintain effort and forget about pace while on the hill. Steady effort is the surest route to a faster time. Trying to maintain pace on the hill is like surging and varying the body’s perceived effort, which will only tire you prematurely.

Those of us who race need to recognize the importance of strengthening our hip flexor muscles. Strong flexors help us maintain a grueling pace, attack a hill, kick with speed on the flats, and protect our bodies from injury. They are an integral piece of training year round that, with variation, can make us more efficient runners and cyclists.

Take to those hills, happy running!!!