Running uphill is a great cardio workout and will really tax your whole body. It’s one of the most strenuous types of exercise that you can do. Typically running hills is thought of as a method to burn a ton of calories and help lose fat, but surely an exercise as difficult as this must build some muscle, right? So, can you build muscle mass in your legs from running uphill? Will running hills make your legs bigger?
Running uphill provides a highly effective workout and can definitely help you achieve a number of fitness goals. If your goal is to build more muscular legs then you should absolutely add some hill runs to your fitness regimen, as this activity is a tremendous leg workout that will seriously tax your quads, calves, glutes and hamstrings. Rather than running for a certain amount of time over some hilly terrain, concentrate on hill sprints. Sprinting up a small-to-medium hill, then walking back down to repeat, is a form of high intensity interval training and will not only build powerful legs but will also help get you shredded by putting your metabolism into overdrive!
Does running hills build the whole leg? Is there a best way to do it? How many hill sprints should you do, and how often? Let’s look a little deeper.
How can you get bigger legs from running hills?
As I briefly alluded to before, in order to get bigger, more muscular legs from running hills, you’ll need to focus more on hill sprints and less on longer sustained runs that include hills. The short, intense burst of a sprint is an anaerobic workout and will essentially do the same thing to your legs as lifting weights.
Running at maximum speed, or close to it, is incredibly demanding on your quads, hamstrings, and calves, as well as your core, and cardiovascular system. When you add an incline to the equation, the difficulty goes through the roof, and so do the results! Simply walking uphill gets tiring fast, jogging is harder, but sprinting uphill is one of the most demanding physical activities there is.
Rapidly raising your bodyweight up an incline will simulate an alternating leg pressing motion. This means that your quadriceps will feel the burn very fast, and you will undoubtedly experience a great pump in these large muscles.
The forward motion will mean that the hamstrings and glutes will be ‘pulling’ the legs back, and your body forward with each step, resulting in good, functional, development in these areas.
Lastly, the incline will also allow for a longer range of motion for the ankle, further working the calves. Running uphill is one of the best calf exercises in existence, most people could just do this exercise and nothing else and have well developed, powerful calf muscles.
If you want bigger legs, and this is the way you have decided to attain them, you should start by doing 4-5 hill sprints, 3-4 times per week. Be sure to warm up thoroughly, and pick a site near you with as steep a slope as you can handle. Run 20-50m up the hill, slow down, and walk back to the start. Rest up to 5 mins if needed so that you can give your best effort on the next one. After you have gotten accustomed to it, start adding 1-2 sprints per session until you get to 10 total sprints per workout. If you can do more, you aren’t going hard enough on the first 10. After 10 all-out hill sprints, your legs will be pumped full of blood and probably a little shaky. Be sure to cool down and stretch.
Do your legs get bigger from running (on level ground)?
If you’ve never run before, or are very deconditioned (out of shape), you will probably experience some muscle growth if you take up running.
However, going for a 30 minute run will not give you big, muscular legs. Running is a great cardiovascular workout, but after the initial boost it will not build significant muscle. In fact, steady-state running is catabolic, that is, too much will actually cause you to lose muscle. This is why distance and marathon runners are typically very skinny and definitely not muscular.
If you do sprints instead of steady-state jogging, you are likely to experience significantly more muscle gain throughout your body. Sprints are a highly anabolic activity and, if performed regularly, will quickly put you on the path to a better physique.
Does incline make your legs (quads and hamstrings) bigger?
The act of propelling your body up a hill is extremely strenuous and will require maximum effort from the large muscles of the thigh, namely the quadriceps and hamstrings. Similar to rapidly climbing stairs, the upward propulsion will simulate a compound lift like lunges, or leg press. The bulk of the upward force comes from the quads, while the hamstrings will be pulling your legs back and your torso forwards.
Your quadriceps are the biggest and most visible muscle on the upper leg and growing this muscle will greatly improve the aesthetics of your legs, as well as making them bigger and stronger.
Does running uphill build your calves?
Due to the style of shorts worn by most men today, the calves are the most visible muscle group on the leg. If you have muscular calves, people will assume your whole leg is well developed. As you move uphill, the calves provide the finishing assist to the quads as an important secondary muscle in the kinetic chain involved.
Since, when you run or walk uphill, the toe is higher than the heel so the ankle is stretched. This means that your calves will experience a fuller range of motion than when you run or walk on a level surface. When you do hill sprints, your calves will burn with the effort, but the growth that will follow will reward all the hard work you put in.
Does running hills strengthen your bones?
Any weight bearing exercise will help to strengthen your bones. Running uphill definitely qualifies as a weight-bearing exercise, since you are carrying your body’s weight while working against gravity. This is true for flat-surface running, and especially so for uphill running as you are climbing higher and fighting gravity even harder.
Your bones are constantly reforming and responding to your activities throughout your life. If you don’t engage in weight-bearing activities, they will become weaker and more brittle. Exercise like swimming and cycling, while highly beneficial in many ways, do nothing for your bones because there is little or no weight-bearing done by the bones in these activities.
Running uphill, and resistance training, are great ways to ensure that your bones remain strong and continue to reform into thicker, stronger configurations.
Should I jog or sprint up hills?
Jogging over hilly terrain will certainly burn more calories than doing it on flat ground, and will provide a better cardio workout. However, when it comes to building strength and muscle size, sprinting is far superior. As an anaerobic exercise, sprinting uses the energy stored inside the muscles instead of waiting around for the heart and lungs to provide it. Sprinting will fully exhaust the muscles directly, and will simulate traditional resistance training to the extent that it will increase protein synthesis muscle growth.
Exercise typically falls into 2 categories. Either: low intensity, long duration (aerobics, jogging); or high intensity, short duration (lifting weights, calisthenics). Sprints fall into the latter category. Add the hill to the sprints for increased resistance against gravity, and you have a muscle-building workout recipe.
So, while jogging uphill is certainly not easy, if you want to build bigger legs, opt for hill sprints instead.
Why is it important to run hills outside? Why can’t I just put the treadmill on an incline?
There’s a few reasons that sprinting up an actual hill is far superior to running on a treadmill set at an incline.
First, the speed factor. Most treadmills don’t go fast enough to accommodate a sprint. The high-end ones that do are rarely at your local health club, and even if they are available for you to use, they’re not really practical for all-out sprints. How are you going to operate the controls if you are running at top speed?
Second, when you run on a treadmill, you aren’t actually going anywhere, so your hamstrings and glutes miss out on resistance. Since these important muscles are not actually propelling your weight forward, they are just going through the motions and your quads are doing all the work. This can lead to muscular imbalances.
Third, the incline setting on a treadmill will likely not approach what you can find outside on an actual hill. Of course this depends on the local terrain where you live, but generally you should be able to find a slope steeper than 15 degrees. Also, as I just mentioned, since you are not actually going anywhere (zero velocity) you are not actually propelling yourself uphill on a treadmill, you’re just fighting the belt trying to stay in position.
Fourth, the treadmill provides a running belt which is perfectly even and flat. There are no ruts or contours for you to anticipate and adapt to. This means that your stabilizer muscles and your balance is minimally tested on a treadmill. When you run on the ground outside, particularly uphill, you have to adjust your steps and stride to the contours of the ground, leading to a more complete form of exercise.
Sprinting up hills is a great way to strengthen and grow the muscles in your entire lower body, so get out there, warm up, and run up some hills!
Related Posts:
Can Squats Be Considered Cardio?
Squats are a resistance exercise primarily designed to strengthen and build the muscles of the lower body. As anybody who has ever done squats will tell you, it is not something that most people can do continuously for a long period of time. It’s too difficult. Comparing squats to a typical cardio exercise like jogging is like comparing push-ups to dribbling a basketball. However if you structure your squat workout the right way, it can resemble cardio and have some of the same cardiovascular and fat loss benefits.
Can You (Should You) Do Cardio On Leg Day?
Ultimately, yes you can do cardio on leg day. However you will definitely want to do the weight training first. You see, you won’t perform as well on whichever one you do second, due to fatigue. If possible, spread them out a few hours, and don’t expect to train too hard on the cardio, your legs probably won’t handle it well. Low impact cardio choices, like swimming or the elliptical trainer, are your best options. Because leg training is so strenuous, it’s really better to do them on separate days. But if your schedule requires it, or if your leg training is not too intense, you can do it and not suffer any reduction in results. It is most important to do the leg training with well rested muscles, so don’t do any intense cardio for at least 24 hrs before if you can help it.
