The Mental Aspects Of Hill Sprinting

 When we do physical things, we don't always realize how much of the mental side comes into play. We may have muscle memory or we learn certain things many times and they become a reflex but that's mainly because we have conditioned our impulses and our nerves to move at various points and understand concepts faster. When it comes to Running Hills, there isn't much to be seen yet we are in awe of them.

The mental aspects of Sprinting up a Hill is not just in how we program our minds to literally run as if our lives depended on it but also to push our capacity and find out what we are capable of doing. A 10 second burst isn't long but there is so much going on that it would take an encyclopedia to completely explain it. We can however use certain examples on what is going on; in order to even explode into a sprint, we need to use our brain to send messages to the wiring in our body to activate muscle fibers and become in sync with our structure and keep up with sending those signals in order to stay in stride. 

Other than what we signal our body from the brain, it's also a matter of what makes you want to go a little further, run a little faster or toughening up to beat the Hill. There are certain goals we want to achieve and what we are willing to do to achieve those goals. Walter Payton was the man when it came to Hill Sprints, he pushed himself so hard that it made him a machine. He saw beyond what the physical was to take on that Hill and pushed his mental capacity to a level that some of the best athletes in the world couldn't understand. 

The real mental aspects is how you use your imagination and taking goals by putting them together to create the ultimate achievement. Some people visualize, some just run up and don't think about anything else and there are others that do something different and unique. What would it feel like or sound like when you picture yourself as the fastest human alive? What would it feel like if you thought of yourself as a superhero like the Flash or the GOAT of Anime Characters; Goku from Dragon Ball Z? How would you characterize that kind of Speed, the ability to run so hard that it melts fat like butter in a hot pan or that having that power to accelerate your hormones and burn calories as if it was a furnace? Imagination creates a different result when you add in the physicality.

Don't just go to a Hill and run it, make a game of it, a test of your mental game and creating something in your mind that is greater than your human form. In Dragon Ball Z, there was the villain Frieza who is just your typical aspiring dominator with ambitions to be ruler of something but has a unique way of fighting, he can do great things but he doesn't have just one aspect of his body that's at it's peak, he has layers of weird transformations that make him a little stronger than the other and each time he changes his form, he becomes more and more powerful until he reaches the ultimate transformation. When you have that kind of mentality where your body right now isn't even in it's final form, there's a layer of strength and power just waiting to be revealed until it hits a peak.

The most powerful version of yourself isn't even remotely at it's peak and if you picture yourself at your strongest and see "as if" you can harness that power, it could turn into such a reality that it feels unreal to have done it. The net time you do Hill Sprints, picture being in your most powerful form and when it's unleashed, that Hill has no choice but to give in and let you reach the top. Conquer your own Hills and become even more powerful than you can possibly imagine.