Posted on July 27, 2016 by Jenny Cromack
If you’re in to walking, you will be all too familiar with the accumulation of lactic acid in the lower body. That lovely feeling when the legs become heavy, start to burn and fail to function. To improve your hill walking strength you need to develop a multitude of fitness variables, these include strength, endurance, anaerobic capacity, and the ability to convert lactic acid.
This is the time of year when, weather permitting, many of us take to going out for a nice long walk on a weekend. So try this workout to improve your hill walking strength and avoid that thigh burn!
Obviously you can’t develop all of these at once: it’s important to work through phases which focus on developing a particular element. The workout below falls into the anaerobic capacity/endurance realm and can be used to improve your hill walking strength and capacity to walk for longer!
Use this workout twice per week over a six week period to build some robustness into the back and lower body.
Workout:
- A1. Row 400m
- A2. Front Squats/ DB Goblet Squats x 15 reps @ 35% 1RM
- (Repeat x 5 round) the aim is to complete as fast as possible
- B1. Sprinters Lunge into Step Up x 10 reps per leg
- B2. Run 400m
- (Repeat x 5 rounds) once again the aim is to complete as fast as possible
You should be able to fire through the above two workouts in around 50 minutes, if the workout starts taking over an hour to do you are losing the intensity in the session and you should stop.
Other great exercises to help develop strength and stamina in those legs and glutes are:
- Squats
- Deadlifts
- Walking Lunges
- Alternating Lunges
- High Step Ups
- Bulgarian Split Squats
- And, of course, lots of hill climbing!!