Pre-Season Conditioning - Over the Hill

I always love being in the gym, but before getting locked in the gym for months it’s nice to have a little change of scenery. That’s why as much as possible I think pre-season conditioning should be outside or at least in a different setting.

Hill Workout

Find yourself a pretty decent hill. For this workout the steeper the better, you are going to be doing short but explosive hill sprints. These hill sprints are going to help your players develop power in their strides. It will engage lower body muscles more so than when running on a flat surface, and will condition the brain to fire muscle fibers at a greater percentage.

Because these sprints are an anaerobic exercise and we also want to be focusing on aerobic this early in the preseason, I suggest having players go for a 1-2 mile run before they do their sprints. Set a goal time for this part of the run so that it is not a jog that is so slow they would be better off walking. Shoot for less than 10 minute miles.

Once players get to the hill, give a 5 minute break between their run and their hill sprints. Keep them moving, walking around, getting water, and stretching out.

Players will then do 10 hill repeats. The repeat should be about 15 seconds. Have one of your faster players do a repeat to see how far they go in 15 seconds, and then make this the stopping point for the rest of the players for the remainder of their repeats. After each repeat players will get a 2 minute rest so that they are fully recovered before their next sprint, their rest includes walking back down to the bottom of the hill.

Keep timing them and while they’re times will get slower as they fatigue make sure that they are staying within the 15-20 second range to ensure they are pushing themselves for all 10 repeats.