Training: Strength Workouts for the Flatlander

CTS MULTISPORT - Strength Workouts for the Flatlander

Ways to increase racing strength when very few hills around

By Stefan Timms

Florida is a place many people come for many reasons; the beautiful people, the beautiful weather, the ocean and incredible beaches. Florida is home of the Gators and Seminoles, of swamps and beaches, but not too many hills. There is nary a hill to be seen. In some places, the exit ramp by the interstate is the largest hill in town. As many run training programs use hill work as a staple workout, it can be difficult to engage the proper energy systems in a vertically challenged state. So, this is for you, the beautiful people of the sunshine state, the home of oranges and miles of beaches; strength and power workouts without the annoyance of hills.

Hills are a beneficial training tool in that they increase the resistance on the body when running. This allows our muscles to develop strength and power. It allows our aerobic system to develop an ability to flush lactic acid that is built up during the workout. Hills provide us an opportunity to work on running technique, and the downhill allows us to increase our turnover. Our goal is to recreate these benefits without the use of hills. We will be creative and try to have some fun at the same time.

Florida is a beautiful state with a wonderful coast and incredible beaches, which go on for miles upon miles. These beaches can and should be used to help develop your running. The soft sand will not only comfort your joints, but it will help to build running specific muscles. The softness of the sand absorbs most of the energy that you put into the ground, and as a result your muscles have to work harder to move you. Simply by running along the beach you will be increasing the strength and power of your legs. However, if you want to go further in using the beach as a tool to become stronger, you should consider doing some speed workouts on the beach. Don't change the speed workouts that you have been doing, but rather do them on the beach.

Treadmill
While running inside might not be very appealing or dramatic, it can be great for developing proper technique and working yourself on "hills". Most gyms and YMCA's have good treadmills, so they are relatively accessible to most people. The real benefit to running on a treadmill is you are able to control your pace and thus run within yourself for the whole workout. Many of the newer treadmills come with programmed hill workouts so you can use these to run hill intervals, or use one that you or your coach has created. The best thing to do would be to run hills with intervals of flat recovery in-between. What you are attempting to do is simulate a hill workout on a treadmill. The secondary benefit to a treadmill is that they are usually located in front of a window or mirror. This is where the technique aspect of training comes into focus. Technique is as important in running as it is in swimming, but it is easier to watch yourself running than it is to see yourself swim. Take advantage of this and use the mirror/window to watch and correct your form. Especially when running uphill, watch how you hold your arms and make sure that they are not crossing in front of your body. You are looking for as little extraneous movement as possible, while remaining relaxed and smooth. Going to a track meet or a road race and watching the leaders will give you a good idea of what good form looks like. Watching a marathon on TV will also allow you to see how fluid and relaxed the leaders are. Try to emulate them during your treadmill runs.

This is where we get a little creative. Since running uphill pits us against gravity, and the resistance against us rises accordingly, we are going to simulate that using weights. It would be ideal if you had a backpack that you can secure to your back fairly snugly. Wearing a camelback type product would be ideal as well. By weighting yourself you are increasing your mass and thus the amount of gravity working on your body. I would not recommend doing this for your long run, but rather you could start to do it in workouts. If you have 4 x 1 mile as your workout, try putting on 5 pounds of extra weight (2.5 liters of water) for your 2nd and 4th interval. You could also try wearing the weight for warm up, although if you choose to do this you should concentrate on technique on not speed. As you become more accustomed to wearing the weight you can either add a little more or wear it a little longer. When you remove the weight you will find that you are running smoother and faster and you will have a huge smile on your face!

Drills
Just as any other sport, running is made up of a series of coordinated movements. The more efficiently and perfectly you perform these movements, then better you will run. Along with aerobic fitness, the limiting factor of a runner's speed is the efficiency with which they perform the series of movements. To help develop better technique runners perform drills, known to most as A's, B's and C's. These drills help to create efficient motor pathways; the path that messages travel from your brain to your muscles. By creating more efficient pathways, the body is able to have the muscles perform a given action even when fatigue begins to take place. While A's, B's and C's are the staple drills within the running world, there are others that will allow for the development of strength and power. The one foot vertical leap is one that I use with my athletes to help develop a powerful back foot push. This drill is performed with a step, jump, and step, jump, and step rhythm. First you take a normal step forward with your right foot. Driving your left leg through and up, you leap vertically off your right foot. You land on the right foot and step forward with your left foot. Then, driving your right leg through and up, leap off your left foot. Be sure to use your arms to help with drive, similar to the way you use your arms in running. Do this for about 5 repetitions off of each foot before jogging back to the beginning. Focus on the contraction of your hip flexors and powerfully driving yourself off the ground. As a modification, you can use the same actions and rhythm of this drill and instead of driving vertically, concentrate on covering distance horizontally with each time you drive off your foot. The same muscles are being utilized, but differently. Another idea would include a one or two-foot frog leaps (trying to cover as much distance with each leap as possible).

Stairs
Probably the easiest and most accessible form of hill training in Florida is the stair workout. There are many buildings and everyone has a stairwell; the trick is finding one that is conducive to running. Football stadiums are great places to do these workouts, and if you have access to the bleachers it could be a pretty inspiring workout. Stair workouts help to develop great power and strength; however, they can be quite hard on the body so it is important that you do a proper warm up and cool down, and build up some strength before cranking up the intensity and duration of the workout. Running up and down stairs will become boring quickly, so breaking your stair workout into intervals will help to break up any monotony. Run up one stair and down one, up two, down one, up three, down one, etc. Take the stairs two at a time for as long as possible before switching to every stair. Go up the stairs with two legged leaps. These are examples of how to set up a stair workout.

15 minute warm up
drills (A B C, 2x 20 sec each with 2 strides in between)

1 x 10 flights
2 x every other stair for 10 flights
2 x up one, down one; up two, down one; up three, down one….
1 x one leg hops for 6 flights (alternate legs every flight)

10 min steady state
15 minute cool down

While people in Florida have Disney World and Epcot Centre, they don't have hills. But using the wonderful land that surrounds you - beaches, exit ramps, stadiums - you are able to develop strength and power that comes with hill workouts. Don't jut train…Train Right!

Stefan Timms is a Carmichael Training Systems (CTS) Multisport Elite coach. To learn more about Stefan and CTS, visit the website at www.trainright.com.