The STACK Exercise of the Week will help you improve your overall sports performance—including strength, speed, conditioning and flexibility. This week, we highlight Hill Repeats, a drill  that improves endurance and running speed.

Who’s Doing It

• Chris Legh, professional triathlete

Muscular Benefits

• Increases speed and endurance

Sports Performance Benefits

Hill Repeats improve race endurance by challenging your quads, hamstrings, glutes and calves when running uphill. Repeatedly performing this drill trains these muscles to delay lactic acid build up, which will help you run faster for a longer time. Also, sprinting uphill teaches you to land on your midfoot and maintain your posture to find an efficient running form. This eliminates wasted stride energy, making it easier to power up challenging hills during a race.

Hill Repeats How To

• Sprint uphill for specified time
• Walk downhill for 20 seconds, then jog the rest of the way
• Recover briefly at bottom of hill before next run

Sets/Duration: 4×30 seconds; as you progress, increase to 6-8×2 minutes

Coaching Points

• Land on midfoot with each stride
• Maintain proper form throughout run