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Hill Sprints for Muscle Mass
Hill sprints for leg size and power
Hill sprints are one of the best tools in your bodyweight training arsenal and are underutilized by almost all athletes. Hills sprints will improve lower body muscle mass, power, improve your conditioning, and allow you to train outside.
Lower body size and power are some of the most important assist for any athlete. Bodyweight squats are great for increasing leg strength for sure, but hill sprints offer a nice change. Think about it, when sprinting a hill, you drive your entire body up an incline as forcefully and powerfully as possible. The will force your leg muscles to contract as quickly and as hard as possible to send you up the hill. Sprints are also unilateral, meaning one leg pushes at time, this will help improve muscular balance. Hill sprints also improve ankle strength, ankle strength is forgotten by most athletes but it is very important for any sport that requires sudden changes in direction.
Ever wonder why sprinters are so damn lean? A solid sprint workout elevates your metabolism tremendously for about 24 hours. I am not sure of all the science behind it, but when I do a lot of sprinting, I lean out quickly and am always amazed at out much my appetite increases. If you train the sprints hard, in an interval format for example, you will be breathing hard and burning off that bacon. Also, you will be improving your conditioning while moving fast, not slow like jogging. You will be getting faster and leaner at the same time!!!!
The best part about a hill sprints, is that they are FREE, and you can't do them for very long because they are some damn hard. I usually do about 10-20 sprint workouts with push ups mixed in and then I am spent. I get to train in the sun, which I always love.
To get started find a hill that is a least 60 m long and 10% or more inclined. I like short steep hills but any hill is better than no hill. For the first set I walk up the hill slowly, just warming up a bit. Then the next two or three I jog up the hill and walk down. After that I sprint up the hill, do about 10 push-ups or whatever, then jog down the hill. If your goal is conditioning try to rest no more than 30 seconds at the bottom. If your goal is muscle mass, speed and power, rest one minute then really blast up the hill. Your workout should last no more than 30 minutes from start to finish because you are too tired to sprint anymore and are really just jogging at the end. If you can go longer than 30 minutes, focus on shorter rest times.
In my book "The Muscle Experiment" I talk about how I was able to put on a solid 39lbs of solid muscle in less than 6 months with bodyweight training, and exactly how YOU can do it as well. In case you haven't downloaded The Muscle Experiment, I suggest you download it immediately and start implementing the little known techniques. This alone should put you on the road to massive size and strength.
To your success,
Mike Thiga
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